Mobile Minutes: Amazon’s app delivery gigs; Alibaba’s Paytm stake; Sonos upgrade; Google’s new devices
Amazon taps ‘on-demand’ workers for one-hour deliveries
Under the new service, called Amazon Flex, people sign up for shifts through an app that prompts them to fetch packages from mini-warehouses and take them to customers’ homes in as little as one hour. Amazon pays the drivers about $20 an hour to make the deliveries.
Read more on Wall Street Journal
Alibaba takes stake in Indian mobile payments start-up
Alibaba and its financial services arm, Ant Financial, have made a “strategic” investment in India’s largest mobile payment and commerce platform, Paytm, as investors flock to get a piece of the burgeoning Indian start-up scene.
Read more on CNBC
Sonos software upgrade allows speakers to tune to your room
Users wave their mobile device around the areas of a room where the listener most often is, while the speaker emits a series of blips and tones covering a whole range of frequencies. The app senses where in the room that sound is obscured and compensates using a smart equalizer.
Read more on ABC News
Google unveils new devices to connect smartphone and TV
Google on Tuesday revealed two new Chromecast streaming devices – one for televisions, another for speakers – along with a new tablet computer and a pair of new devices from the company’s Nexus line of Android mobile phones.
Read more on New York Times