Xprize wants to fund a TED Talk given by artificial intelligence, and you can help

Xprize is known for its ambition. The outfit, with the help of some big name (and deep pocketed) partners, has launched initiatives to spur Star Trek-like tricorder development and even get private industry to land a rover on the moon. But now, it's teaming up with TED, that forum for big ideas, to do something a little different. The two companies have just announced an Xprize for Artificial Intelligence and here's the hook: they want the AI to conduct its own TED Talk with no human assist. Mind. Blown. None of this is actually set in stone though and, in fact, the partners are looking to you -- yes, you -- for help in deciding how this all goes down.

Xprize is hosting a dedicated subsite so that readers (excuse us, big thinkers!) like you can pitch in with ideas on what the AI TED Talk format should be, how long it should run, what topic will be chosen and so on and so forth. You'll even get to help determine what type of AI makes the grade: will it be a walking robot, a rollie or a disembodied voice? It's up to you to pitch in and figure it out. Because, hey, if you can't actually help build the AI, setting it up for stage fright is the next best thing.

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Source: Xprize

Tags: ai, ArtificialIntelligence, competition, ted, tedtalks, xprize Next: The NSA may release its own transparency reports .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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The inventor of the web wants you to help create an internet bill of rights

The web has changed a lot in the 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee first proposed its underlying technology, and not entirely for the better -- censorship, reduced net neutrality and surveillance are very real concerns. Berners-Lee and a host of partners are fighting these threats by launching Web We Want, a campaign pushing for an internet bill of rights in every country. The initiative asks you to start a discussion about the web you'd like to see, and to draft a matching set of rights. It's also fostering education efforts, offering small support grants and rallying groups at critical moments. There's no certainty that Web We Want will make a tangible impact, but it should provide a stronger voice to advocates of a free and open internet.

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Via: GigaOM

Source: Web We Want

More Coverage: AFP (Yahoo)

Tags: billofrights, freedom, internet, rights, timberners-lee, web, worldwideweb, worldwidewebfoundation Next: OnePlus dripfeeds more specs for its 'perfect' One smartphone .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Hasbro wants you to add a word to Scrabble's dictionary

At one point or another, all of us have probably argued about a questionable word or three during our Scrabble careers. Hasbro wants to make that easier (or harder, depending on your view) with a contest to add a word to the game's official dictionary. Simply head over to the contest's Facebook page to make a suggestion. Early submissions include "photobomb" and "amazeballs" -- surely you can come up with better by the March 28th deadline. From there, contest officials will put the 16 best words into an elimination bracket, and they'll tally your votes and announce a winner come April 10th. Remember: vote often. After all, you don't want something silly like "dingledorf" to go down as the first player submission, do you?

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NSA Director nominee wants every branch of the military to have a dedicated cyber attack force

It seems like President Obama was pretty serious about that cyber attack list he drew up last year -- his nominee candidate for NSA Director, Admiral Michael Rogers, just told the Senate that the military is building several new cyber combat units. Rogers, who is slated to both take over at the NSA and head the United States Cyber Command, spent several hours answering to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, explaining his views on national security and his desire to be "as transparent as possible with the broader nation about what we're doing, and why." This included a detailed account of the need to create dedicated cyber attack divisions to supplement traditional ground, naval and air forces, which he says will help act as a deterrent to countries that see the United States as an easy target. "Clearly, Cyber will be an element of almost any crisis we're going to see in the future," he told the Senate. "It increasingly is becoming a norm."
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Source: New York Times

Tags: cyberattack, cyberwar, military, nsa, senate Next: Starbucks app to let you pre-order your coffee later this year .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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This music service wants to be the first on Samsung's smartwatches

7digital really wants to put its music store on Samsung's new Gear smartwatches. Really badly. Need proof? The company has announced plans to release a hybrid shopping and streaming app for Tizen devices in the second quarter of the year, and it's eagerly highlighting the app's support for wearables -- at last check, Samsung is the only major firm producing wearable Tizen gadgets. The music provider isn't being subtle about its intentions, then, even though it's not making any official connection between its software and the Gear line. If nothing else, 7digital would be a logical fit for the hardware. The company has a history of being the first to offer music services on young platforms, and it was the backbone for Samsung's Music Hub. Don't be surprised if you can buy a hot new song from the Gear 2 on your wrist this spring.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: 7digital

Tags: 7digital, music, samsung, smartphone, smartwatch, tizen, wearable Next: Dell's Precision M2800 workstation is for prosumers who need performance on the cheap
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Once Again, Down Wants To Hook You Up With Your SXSW Hookup

It’s a new year, and a whole new SXSW, but some things don’t change. Thanks to an endless stream of parties with open bars, the (relatively) warm nights, and a large population of web-curious visitors descending on Austin, the tradition of the SXSW hookup lives on. And Down wants to help keep that tradition alive.

Twelve months ago, Down was just a little web app called “Bang With Friends” which sought to help users find out which of their friends also wanted to bang them.

And for a little while, it was basically all anyone would talk about.

That was due to a number of things: There were the secretive founders, who spent months trying to keep their identities under wraps. There was the fascination and utter fear and horror of marking a friend as “down to bang” only to find them return the favor… There was, frankly, the totally forward name “Bang With Friends.”

Anyway, the app rode that notoriety into SXSW last year and launched Bang With SXSW, a separate site for attendees to find non-friends to bang with.

An app store ban by Apple, a “…With Friends” lawsuit by Zynga, and a founder unmasking by the press, and the Down team seems to have mellowed out a little bit.

It’s still trying to get people hooked up at SXSW, but this year it’s doing it the old-fashioned way. Rather than asking them to say who they’d like to hook up with in town — that’s what Tinder is for, after all — it’s telling attendees which parties they should go to. And get drunk. And find someone to hook up with.

The latest update to Down now lists a bunch of parties. Once users arrive, they can use the app and see who else is there and objectify them via app, instead of objectifying them wholly in person.

And when two people mark each other as “down”? Well, you know what has to happen next.

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Cleeng wants to help you monetize your event’s livestream with a new self-service ticketing platform

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EA wants your opinion on Battlefield 4

byEarnest Cavallion Jan 6th 2014 3:30PM

0Whether you love Battlefield 4 or despise its constant crashes and tendency to lose save files, EA wants to hear from you.

The publisher has issued a survey to members of the Battlefield 4 community which first asks players to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Battlefield 4 to a friend, then asks for a short, personalized review of the open-world, first-person shooter. There's no tangible reward for participation, though given the number of vocal Battlefield 4 detractors we've seen since the game's October debut, the chance to release all of that anger directly at the people responsible for the game should prove tempting by itself.

Despite this attempt by EA to take the pulse of its community, Battlefield 4 remains less than functional. The game's ongoing stability issues have improved since launch, but crashes and failures to connect to servers remain common. As a result of these problems, EA now finds itself the target of two class-action lawsuits alleging the publisher convinced players to purchase the unfinished game by filling its marketing materials with false and misleading information.Game InformerShareTags: battlefield-4, bugs, crash, DICE, ea, lawsuit, legal, microsoft, pc, playstation, ps3, ps4, survey, xbox, xbox-one.fyre .fyre-comment-media-expanded{display:none!important}.fyre-notifier-container{display:none}.fyre .fyre-comment-divider>span.fyre-comment-reply-wrapper{top:18px}.fyre .fyre-comment-divider>a,.fyre .fyre-comment-divider>a:hover{top:20px}Battlefield 4 InfoDescription

Battlefield 4 is the genre-defining action blockbuster made from moments that blur the line between game and glory - moments found only in Battlefield. With dynamic destructible environments, epic vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out war, Battlefield 4 gives you the freedom to do more and be more for an unrivaled entertainment experience.

Show moreMSRP

59.99 USD

Release Date

Available Now

Genre

First Person Shooter

Developer

DICE

Publisher

EA Games

Rating

M (Mature)

View on Amazon.comBreaking NewsDead Rising 3's first DLC episode delayed, now coming Jan. 21More →

Featured StoriesNow Playing: January 6-12, 2014

Posted on Jan 6th 2014 7:15PM

Hands-on with Valve's Steam Machine beta hardware

Posted on Jan 6th 2014 5:05PM

Super abridged Joystiq news review of 2013

Posted on Jan 5th 2014 10:30AM

EngadgetKindle for iOS updated with flashcards, notebook ...Equil JOT nabs Evernote integration for easy ...meMini's wearable camera gives you the gift of ...TUAWEvening news roundup for January 6, 2013 ...Cut the Rope 2 perfects the art of having in-app ...8 Time Machine excuses that don't make sense ...MassivelyNot So Massively: LoL downed by DDoS attack, Star ...The Stream Team: Heroics continue in World of ...DayZ destroys Hall's early sales expectations ...WoWThe WoW Insider Show LIVE! ...How to PvP ...WoW Moviewatch: Brief History of WoW ...AOL TechJoystiq

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NSA wants to make a quantum computer that cracks tough encryption

While the NSA can inflitrate many secure systems without breaking a sweat, there are still some encryption methods that it just can't crack. That may not be a problem in the long term, however. The Washington Post has published documents from Edward Snowden which reveal that the agency is researching a "cryptologically useful" quantum computer. The dramatically more powerful hardware could theoretically decode public encryption quickly enough to be useful for national defense; conventional PCs can take years, even when clustered together. That kind of decrypting power is potentially scary, but you won't need to worry about the privacy of your secure content just yet. It's not clear that the NSA is anywhere close to reaching its goal, and any success could eventually be thwarted by quantum-based encryption that's impossible to break by its very nature. Still, the leak is a friendly reminder that we shouldn't take existing security methods for granted.

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Source: Washington Post

Tags: eavesdropping, edwardsnowden, encryption, internet, networking, nsa, privacy, quantum, quantumcomputing, security, surveillance Next: Researchers turn to Twitter in the search for time travelers .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Samsung's new Smart Home service outlined, wants to connect to third-party services and products

We heard whispers that Samsung was planning big for CES, and we're not just talking TV panels. It's now revealed Smart Home, which attempts to tie together Smart TVs, home appliances and handheld smart devices into one single platform. Perhaps more importantly, the company says it's going to collaborate with third-party partners to extend the platform to products and services beyond only those with Samsung branding.

At the middle of it all, there will be a single app that (as the picture above suggests) will get its hooks into all your wearables, phones and white goods with a cloud-based server keeping your data moving. Device Control will let users adjust lighting and temperature management through your smartphone. Meanwhile, Smart Home will also included embedded voice commands: if you say "going out" into your Galaxy Gear, then the system will automatically turn off your smart lighting and "selected appliances", so presumably not your fridge. The, once out, Home View will let you tap into devices with cameras inside your house, offering up some not-so-covert video streams to your Galaxy phone. Alongside the new system, the company announced a new software protocol too, hoping to forge a new ecosystem -- with Samsung in the middle of it all. Expect to hear more later this week.

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Source: Samsung

Tags: ces, ces2014, hdpostcross, mobilepostcross, samsung, smarthome Next: LG's 105-inch UHDTV isn't coming to CES alone: flat 65-, 79-, 84- and 98-inchers on the way .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Who Else Wants To Make Money With Adsense?

Fact number 1: Kids in high school are making thousands of dollars every month with Adsense.



Fact number 2: Housewives, retirees, mom and dads, who are just staying at home and have never made a dime on the internet have created full-time incomes by simply placing Adsense ads on their web site or blog.



These are just some of the super Adsense earners. You may have already heard about their story for they are among the few who are on their way to making millions worth of cash just by promoting Adsense sites.



Anyone, any age and gender can become money generating Adsense publishers as long as they what it takes. How does one go about this Internet advertising?



Writing articles for Adsense is the way to do it. Using the right keywords in your articles and having Google ads on a certain site has become the most profitable way of marketing that anybody can get into. No experience and level of education needed. If you are not using this strategy, or may not be aware of it in the first place, chances are you may be losing thousands of dollars worth of extra income and still do not know it yet.



This is one of the many reasons why writing original quality content articles is now the latest in marketing buzz. Content and links. When combined together becomes a really powerful tool to a successful web site and richer individuals. Many internet marketing professionals are already aware of the value of an original quality content and how using keywords can drive targeted traffic into their sites from the search engines.



So why dont all these web site owners write and submit their own articles if that is what is important?



The simple and understandable answer is that it takes time to write articles, submit them and get targeted traffic to their websites. That is why they get the services of those who can spares sometime to write the articles that would cater to their site purpose but still turn out as a good quality and unique piece of work.



To get into the Adsense marketing business and start earning some good cash, ask yourself. Did you enjoy writing when you were in school? If you answer yes to this question, you already have an initial advantage over most internet marketing business owners that wants to make money online and doing it at home.



With the boom in the Adsense market comes the need for sites to want fresh, quality and original keyword rich content. This way, web site owners can have a steady supply of articles with the proper keywords that they relate to their site contents. The result of this is seen in the sites page rank when indexed by the search engines. Which, in turn, gets moreAdsense ads to show above, below or next to the article on their website with targeted traffic.



What do people have to do?



Write quality and original content, keyword or phrase rich articles with links to your website in the resource box. Then build a website or web page with targeted keyword or phrase rich original content for the targeted traffic that originates from the articles you wrote. Finally, you will have a Google Adsense ads that are targeted to your keyword or phrase rich original content site where visitors will get to visit when they come looking for information.



A win-win situation if you think more about it. A favor for persons looking for quality content and information. For the persons writing the original content articles. And the person with the quality original content rich website. Of course, the search engines and its advertisers are getting targeted traffic and sales but so what? As long as you are getting something in your favor, it does not really matter what the others are getting for themselves.



So who else wants to start earning money with Adsense. You. Everyone. Anybody. Internet marketing has many opportunities wide open for this people. Writing articles and using Adsense for your kind of internet marketing strategy is one sure way of getting a piece of that action and cash.



Better not be left behind the many making millions already.

Google wants to make your mundane conversations into quirky online comics

Deep down, we'd all like to believe our text-based interactions are worthy of Calvin & Hobbes-style witticisms. They're not and you know it, but does Google? No matter, because the tech giant was just awarded a patent to format your virtual conversations into something more suited for comic strip syndication online. The concept, though gimmicky, isn't as freshly innovative as it might first sound. In fact, both Apple and Microsoft have already had designs on the same. Anyone remember Microsoft Comic Chat?

Okay, so Google's comic-making process is nothing new, but it does have a key differentiator: It's shareable via email, IM or, more likely, a social network "stream" or profile page. The system, as outlined by the patent, merely repurposes conversations, either manually or automagically, between at least two people into a comic strip layout. It's then given a title by the user, an appropriate theme as selected from the user interface and formatted for its intended destination. Beyond that, it's all a matter of where the strip gets posted. Editing permissions can also be extended to second- and third-party users so that the strip lives on. No doubt, it's a fun way to jazz up otherwise mundane online interactions, but that doesn't mean we'll ever actually see this comic generator come to light. You know how these things go. It's a patent; it's good for litigation.

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Source: USPTO

Tags: comicbooks, comics, google, patent, socialnetwork, USPTO Next: Sony launches dedicated Xperia Z Ultra cases for QX lens cameras .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Sprint Wants To Revive Nextel As A Business Brand, Merge Boost + Virgin Mobile Into ‘Sprint Freedom’

It was only six months ago that Sprint decommissioned and shut down the Nextel iDEN push-to-talk network, and while the carrier has no plans to bring that legacy service back, the brand is another story.

According to a source close to the company, Sprint wants to introduce Nextel again — as a brand for business services. The source tells TechCrunch that this is part of a larger branding overhaul coming in Q1 in which Sprint plans to launch a new prepaid brand called “Sprint Freedom” — merging Boost and Virgin Mobile.

Sprint declined to comment for this story, but if the information from the source is accurate, the moves point to Sprint raising its game targeting businesses (particularly smaller and medium businesses) as well as streamlining its patchwork of services.

It also fits with the idea of Sprint – now majority-owned by Japan’s SoftBank – marching on in consolidation mode, shoring up to present a more competitive face against the likes of AT&T and Verizon. Most recently, Sprint has been reportedly preparing an offer for T-Mobile USA, its latest move after acquiring Clear and buying a portion of U.S. Cellular earlier this year.

The Nextel service, our source says, will be part of a bigger push to court business customers. That makes some sense: Nextel’s existing business subscriber base, and brand recognition with that segment, were seen as some of the main reasons behind Sprint’s $35 billion acquisition of the company in the first place.

The new Nextel business, says the source, will be underpinned by more service streamlining: it will be a “premium” offering consisting of the 4G fixed and mobile broadband services that were originally the Clear business. The Nextel name, our source says, will go “on top of everything that was Clear and then target businesses.”

Along with previously-Clear services, there will also be more devices introduced, specifically around Sprint Spark — the tri-band LTE service debuted earlier this year that gives users faster speeds and more reliable connectivity.

Introduced with smartphones from HTC (the One max), LG (G2) and Samsung (Galaxy Mega and Samsung Galaxy S4 mini), Sprint Spark will be extended with two hotspots and three tablets as part of the offering.

And with that, some changes also around pricing, apparently. “Unlimited data options will come back for the hotspots at a premium, but pricing will be tiered by speed,” the source claims. Sprint will also introduce group plans that will apply to the new Nextel devices.

Sprint Freedom

Another part of plan, says that source, concerns Sprint’s prepaid businesses Virgin Mobile and Boost. Collectively, users on these two networks may generate less revenue than Sprint’s postpaid operations, but they serve as a useful counterbalance to the other service, adding customers last quarter as the number of ARPU-rich postpaid users declined.

Like Nextel and Clear, Virgin Mobile and Boost came to Sprint via acquisitions, and it looks like the carrier is now putting that in order, too.

Boost and Virgin Mobile will get wrapped into a new, single service called “Sprint Freedom.” It’s not entirely clear but it sounds as if this could mean the eventual scrapping of the two existing brands. Assurance Wireless, the free mobile phone service provided by Virgin Mobile under the Universal Service Fund, will not be affected, our source says.

While a lot of these plans sound like logical consolidation moves for the company, the question mark will be whether Sprint will manage to juggle all the changes without dropping anything (or anyone) in the process. A new Nextel business service would effectively mean a double-leap with a set of legacy products: first turning the Clear service into one focused less on consumers and more on businesses; and second rebranding it as a Nextel offering, but different from what Sprint was selling as a Nextel service not too long ago.

In the meantime, it is also not clear how a service called Sprint Freedom would sit alongside other services also called “Freedom” — such as Sprint’s international calling plans, not to mention the Freedom Pop “free” wireless service that is a wholesale customer on Sprint’s network.

And just as the closure of the Nextel brand earlier this year may have left some wondering whether Sprint would really let Nextel disappear into thin air, now the same might be said for Boost, Virgin Mobile and Clear. “It’s been a contentious issue for many,” our source said of the internal response to the changes. Perhaps one reason why these details got leaked to us.

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With $1.5M In Angel Funding, byUs.com Wants To Provide Better Recommendations For Important Service Providers

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Google Wants To Build The Ultimate Personal Assistant

Google Search is changing rapidly. Given the company’s love of small, rapid-fire updates, its sometimes hard to keep track of where the company is going, but earlier this month, at the LeWeb conference in Paris, Google Engineering Director Scott Huffman presented a pretty compelling overview of the direction Google is taking in search.

Here’s the gist of it: Google knows our expectations of what a search engine should be able to do is quickly changing. The old “ten blue links” search results page is quickly going away for something far smarter that, according to Huffman, will resemble a personal assistant more than the search tool Google that launched over fifteen years ago. Indeed, that’s what Huffman considers Google’s goal: creating the ultimate personal assistant. The next generation of search, he said, is all about making “all your tasks as you go through the day simpler and quicker.”

That also means that in a large number of cases, you will interact with Google on something that may not even have a screen. The car, he believes, is prime real estate for the Google Search of the future, where you simply interact with the search engine and then engage in a conversation with Google. The living room, too, he believes is a place where Google should just work. That may be on a large screen, but maybe also just through microphones and speakers that wait for your “ok Google” command.

That interaction with Google will be in the form of a back-and-forth conversation, something the company has been working on for a while now. Thanks to its Knowledge Graph, Google has become significantly better at understanding its users intends and it is already able to use voice recognition for at least a limited amount of conversation that is able to work with pronouns (and that’s really the first step in making conversations with computers seem natural). It’s not exactly the Star Trek computer, but it’s a clear first step in the direction Google is taking. Google Know currently handles 38 languages and knows about more than 18 billion facts and their connections. That – more than its search index alone – is what will create the Google of the future.

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In A Post-Amazon World, E-Commerce Site Wayfair Wants To Win At Selling Home Goods And Furnishings

Taking on Amazon when it comes to e-commerce can be a futile effort. There are only a handful of e-commerce companies that have successfully been able to build a billion dollar-plus business in e-commerce (without having physical stores) in a post-Amazon world. Zulily is one of those companies. Another one, which has stayed relatively under the radar, is Boston-based Wayfair.

Wayfair, founded by college friends Niraj Shah and Steve Conine in 2002, was born from CSN Stores, and rebranded as Wayfair in 2011. Shah and Conine are serial entrepreneurs, having sold their first company, Spinners, to XML in 1998.

What’s impressive about Shah and Conine’s company  is that it has quietly been able to create a solid, $1 billion business around selling home goods and furniture online and will likely IPO in the next year or so. Instead of appealing solely to a high-end market, Wayfair focuses on the mid-market, competing with the Macys, Overstocks, Target, Bed Bath and Beyonds of the world. In addition to the Wayfair.com destination, the company also operates a One Kings Lane-competitor, Joss & Main (which focuses on high-end furniture), as well as a modern furniture site (think CB2 or Design Within Reach) called AllModern.

As Shah explains to me, the company hasn’t focused on pursuing massive press attention to flaunt big-name backers, even though Wayfair counts early Twitter backer Spark Capital, Battery Ventures, HarbourVest Partners and Great Hill Partners as investors. In fact, for the forts nine years of operation, the company was bootstrapped. In 2011, Wayfair did decide to raise funding to expand aggressively, and took $200 million from the investors named above.

The site now has 7 million home products available for purchase from a fulfillment network of 8,000 suppliers across 12,000 brands. And Wayfair is seeing $1 billion in order volume, which translates into $900 million in sales for 2013. That’s up from $600 million in sales from 2012.

One drawback to ordering on Wayfair is because of its fulfillment network, and because it is shipping furniture, it can take days or even weeks to receive an item. But unlike Target or Macy’s’ online sites, Shah says, Wayfair actually pays attention to merchandising and has been utilizing technologies such as Pinterest-like inspiration clipboards, and more to help engage consumers. In fact, the company employs over 300 data scientists and engineers to help use these data points towards increasing personalization and engagement. To be fair, the Targets and Walmarts of the world are starting to realize that design, personalization and technology can only help them increase sales, but these companies tend to move slowly.

Home and furnishing spend is a $200 billion market in the U.S. alone, and only five percent is this spending is online. As e-commerce continues to grow, Wayfair’s share of this will too. Right now, Shah estimates that Wayfair has around one percent of all home furnishing spending online. Amazon has expanded into new territories like fashion, wine and grocery, but he isn’t afraid of e-commerce giant growing into the home furnishings territory (via Amazon’s Quidsi acquisition, it operates a home furnishings and supplies site Casa.com). In fact, Shah believes that home furnishings, jewelry and fashion are the only areas in e-commerce where there is room for a number of large companies. That’s because, he explains, the consumer is looking for uniqueness in these categories vs. electronics, books, household supplies, grocery and more.

With the company’s growing sales, it’s of no surprise that Wayfair was one of the companies invited to present at Goldman Sachs’ Private Internet Company Conference in Las Vegas in November. Many of the companies invited to present are the ones bankers want to keep their eye on–and potentially represent in a public offering in the future. For Wayfair, an IPO may not be too far off.

Shah has been open about his intentions to go public. The company also recently brought on former Warner Music Group Chairman Michael Fleisher as CFO.

It’s clear that 2014 will be a pivotal year for the company. Investors will be looking for continued growth, and other large retailers will trying to up their technology game to increase their share of online dollars spent on home furnishings. But for a company that was relatively unknown two years ago, Wayfair’s growth and ascent is impressive. Stay tuned.

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Intel wants to make Barcelona one of the world’s most technologically advanced football clubs

IntelFollow Intelwww.intel.com/Microprocessor Developer… More about Intel

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Amazon wants customers to gift Amazon Coins for games, apps

(Credit:Amazon)

Amazon's app store customers can now buy Amazon Coins, the store's virtual currency, as gifts, the company announced Thursday.

When customers purchase a bundle of Amazon Coins as a gift, Amazon will notify the gift recipient through e-mail. The coins are normally priced at one cent per coin, but Amazon is adding a slight discount for bundles to encourage gifting. Bundles currently range from $4.80 for 500 coins to $90 for 10,000 coins. The promotion ends January 5.

It's a way for Amazon to use existing Appstore customers to attract new ones. The company recently decided to use a similar tactic with Amazon Prime memberships, which customers can also purchase as presents.

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Since coins work the same way as money, it might seem odd that people would buy coins in the first place. Amazon gave Kindle tablet owners 500 Coins for free earlier this year to encourage customers to check out its still growing App Store. Since then, customers have purchased "hundreds of millions" of Coins, according to an Amazon press release.

Amazon quoted one customer as saying, "My daughter and I both have the Kindle Fire HD and the coins are a great way for us to stay on a budget. At the beginning of the month we each buy our Coins for the month."

Customers can use the coins to buy apps as well as items within apps. Amazon also included top purchases in its announcement:

• The top 5 purchased apps and games with Coins are Minecraft - Pocket Edition, Wheel of Fortune, Plants vs. Zombies (Kindle Tablet Edition), Bejeweled 2, and Scribblenauts Remix

• The single most purchased app using Coins is Minecraft - Pocket Edition

• The single most purchased in-app item using Coins is "Get more lives" in Candy Crush Saga

• The first app purchased with Coins was a tie between Jewel Legends: Tree of Life and Cut the Rope: Time Travel HD

Clearly, gaming plays a huge role in Amazon's fledgling store. The company is using promotions like Amazon Coins in an effort to grow the store, which is considerably smaller than Apple's app store or Google Play. If people really are buying Coins, it's a show of commitment from users that Amazon hopes will encourage app developers.

Topics: E-commerce Tags: Amazon Appstore, Amazon, Amazon Coins

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