At UC Davis, Amazon Demonstrates A Novel Way To Bypass College Bookstores

Why should college students waste their precious party days standing in line, when they can order Ramen from Amazon prime? The University of California at Davis recently inked a deal with Amazon to offer student essentials, from Calculus 101 textbooks to mac and cheese, on a new university bookstore website that gives 2% of sales back to the school.

According to the school’s university paper, the Aggie, UC Davis was the first such partnership Amazon announced. Now officially a-go this week, UC Davis is giving Amazon the power to blanket the campus with promotion. There’s even an Amazon student ambassador

“During finals week of Fall Quarter, we had several ambassadors all over campus handing out free pizza and other goodies to fuel the students while they study,” said fourth-year political science Major, Ting Jung Lee said who is now acting as Amazon’s rep.

The discounted Amazon prime membership also seems to making the rounds on student boards:

Students are awash with discretionary spending, which they normally spend in shops around the campus. Amazon sells most of these items and more, from dorm decorations to official t-shirts. So, it makes sense that the University wants to take a cut that they never took before with the sourranding shops.

I’ve witnessed stunts like these work in the past. Back in my college days, I used to see college co-eds in short shorts handing out Red Bull at streaking events and during finals. For brands, college students are a demographic with delightfully transparent desires and well-known spending patterns.

Amazon is aware of it’s Walmart/Godzilla reputation among struggling businesses. It attempted to partner with indie bookstore to sell it’s Kindle reading tablet, which got a mixed reception. College bookstores don’t have the same heartstrings to pluck, so it makes sense for them to partner rather than fight.

With enough momentum from the UC Davis experiment, Amazon won’t just partner with bookstores, it will be the bookstore.

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Zoom's H5 brings high-quality audio recording to budget-minded pros

Are you serious about capturing high-quality audio away from a studio, but not so serious that you need a do-everything recorder like Zoom's H6? You'll want to look into the company's newly unveiled H5, then. While it should match the H6's audio ...



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On Paper, Facebook's a Different Story

Facebook on Thursday announced next week's launch of Paper, a free app for iOS that combines user and curated content into a personalized news medium. Users can create stories as well as receive stories based on their interests and organized into sections. Section stories are chosen by both human and machine curators. The sections cover a variety of subjects -- from sports, world news and animal pictures to business, photography and food. Section stories on all phones initially will be the same, but Facebook has said that may change in the future.



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The Engadget Podcast is live at 12PM (ish) ET!

This week Ben and Terrence are exploring the brave new old world of audio only podcasting, starting as close to 12PM ET as humanly possible. (You know, sometimes life just kinda gets in the way.) Joseph is unfortunately indisposed, either off working ...



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Publishing Platform Issuu Hires Jeremy LaCroix, Formerly Of AOL, To Lead Design

Online publishing platform Issuu is announcing that it has hired Jeremy LaCroix as its head of product design and user experience.

Joe Hyrkin, who became CEO last year, told me LaCroix was particularly suited for the job given his experience with both the digital and traditional publishing worlds. LaCroix’s career includes design/art direction at The Industry Standard and Wired before becoming creative director at CBS Interactive, and then head of UX/design and product for mobile at AOL. (LaCroix left AOL, which owns TechCrunch, in October, and has since done freelance design work for Medium.)

Issuu was actually founded in 2006, before the current wave of mobile and tablet publishing, but unsurprisingly, Hyrkin said its focus has been shifting increasingly to mobile. The company recently updated its Android app, and he said, “We’re not going to be only Android-based for that much longer.”

Other goals include improving publisher monetization — Hyrkin said Issuu already helps publishers make money by allowing them to supplementing their print ads with additional digital content, and by allowing them to link to online stores, but he added, “This year we’re starting to put together what I hope are innovative and very creative advertising opportunities.”

The company says it sees 5 billion page views across 15 million magazines, catalogs, and newspapers each month.

“The common perception is that magazines are in a death spiral,” LaCroix said in the release about his hiring. “I disagree. In fact I’d argue there have never been more publications being produced in human history. The problem today is distribution and Issuu provides a truly unique and compelling method for content to find people.”

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Engadget Eurocast 053 - 1.30.14

The euro crew is back and Dan's got a new haircut. If you listen closely you can hear the improvement it makes. The freshly groomed Mr. Cooper is joined by Jamie and Sharif to discuss Samsung's arrival on high streets across Europe, Sony's super-slim ...



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Meet The First 10 Companies To Take Part In Founders Fund And SOSVentures’ LEAP Axlr8r

Late last year, a couple of venture firms sought to invest in LEAP Motion’s gesture control technology by helping developers to build businesses around it with an accelerator. Today, the LEAP Axlr8r is opening for business and announcing the first 10 participating companies in the program.

LEAP Motion has built an $80 hardware device that allows any user to control what’s happening on their computer through an interface that tracks the movement of their hands. It’s had more than 70,000 developers sign up to test out and build apps for the device, but few actual apps have been launched so far.

The LEAP Axlr8r seeks to change that by taking LEAP Motion’s technology to the next level. With backing from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, as well as SOSVentures, the firm behind hardware accelerator HAXLR8R, the incubator sought out startups doing interesting things with the next-generation gesture control platform.

Like other incubators, LEAP Axlr8r provides participating companies with a small amount of funding — in this case, $25,000 — and puts them through a three-month program that is designed to refine the products and services they’re seeking to build. Housed near LEAP Motion headquarters in San Francisco, those companies will have access to the engineers who built LEAP Motion technology, as well as a number of mentors who can help with other aspects of the design process.

The whole thing ends in a Demo Day on May 9th. We’ll be tracking their progress and are looking forward to seeing what they release. The first 10 companies participating in the accelerator include:

• MotionSavvy – Giving voice to the deaf and hard-of-hearing through real-time American Sign Language translation


• Diplopia – Restoring depth perception for the 5% of the population affected by amblyopia (lazy eye) through virtual reality computer games using Oculus Rift and Leap Motion


• Sterile Air – Creating the “Operating System” to enable a computerized, sterile surgical OR


• LivePainter – Enabling real-time DJ-ing and VJ-ing as performance art via live web collaboration


• Ten Ton Raygun – Gamifying physical rehabilitation therapy for Stroke and other injuries to make rehab fun, quicker, and measurable


• Mirror Training – Making robots an extension of your own body using Leap Motion and video. A DARPA spinoff revolutionizing robotic arm control with a natural user interface and visual feedback for the user


• GetVu – Creating a next-gen augmented reality platform that mixes computer vision with human vision in a wearable device


• Illuminator 4D – Easily create interactive, holographic environments for retail, and in-home usage


• Crispy Driven Pixels – Reinventing 2D and 3D creative software through a new, natural user interface


• Paralagames – Improving hand-eye coordination through games controlled by the hand

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