| Walmart's website lets you Pay With Cash, strips away the 'convenience' of shopping online Apr 26th 2012, 21:43  Here's an idea: order products online, and then pay using regular 'ol dollar bills. Intrigued? That's exactly what Walmart has begun offering on its website today with its new Pay With Cash service. It's no different from initiating a normal web order, save for being another -- and potentially convoluted -- option to hand over your funds and checkout. After selecting PWC, you'll receive an order confirmation, which then allots you 48 hours to print it out and present it your local Wally World. From there, you can choose to pick up the item in store or have it shipped to your house -- in effect, stripping away some of the key conveniences of shopping online in the first place. Of course, one could likely just give their local store a call to place items on hold for a similar result, but hey, more options are always nice, right? At the very least, many without the likes of credit cards and Google Wallets might find some appreciation this method of retail purchasing. Hit up the links below for the all the details. Walmart's website lets you Pay With Cash, strips away the 'convenience' of shopping online originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  TechCrunch | | Email this | Comments | | Twitter app update brings improved discover, search and notifications to iOS and Android Apr 26th 2012, 21:21  It's not like there's any shortage of alternatives, but those sticking with the ooh-ficial Twitter app on iOS and Android woke up to a rather pleasant update today. Briefly, the company's promising improvements to discover, search and notifications, with the new build allowing users to view "Activity" -- described as a "stream of updates that shows which tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists." Search has also been made simpler in both programs, with the Connect tab allowing you to start typing the first or last name or username of the person you're looking for and watching autocomplete handle the rest. Finally (and perhaps most importantly), notifications for Interactions are in place, enabling busybodies to know right away when a tweet has been retweeted or favorited. Hit up your market of choice to get the new bytes, or just visit one of the source links below. Your call -- no pressure. Twitter app update brings improved discover, search and notifications to iOS and Android originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink PhoneScoop |  Twitter, App Store (iTunes), Google Play | Email this | Comments | | Amazon's Q1 2012 earnings: net income down 35 percent to $130 million, net sales at $13.18 billion Apr 26th 2012, 20:36  It's no Apple-sized quarter, but you'd need to be on HGTV's Million Dollar Rooms a handful of times over to scoff at Amazon's Q1 2012 earnings. After reporting $177 million in net earnings last quarter (on $17.43 billion in revenue), the online sales behemoth has today registered $13.18 billion in net sales -- proudly reporting that said tally was up from the $9.86 billion in its Q1 a year ago. Excluding the $56 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 34 percent compared with first quarter 2011. As for operating income? That checked in at $192 million (compared to $322 million Q1 2011), with the outfit noting that the "unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $4 million." Net income also sank 35 percent from $201 million a year ago, but it still left Amazon with $130 million more in the bank than it had just three months ago. It's important to note that the outfit didn't have "the holidays" here to help out, but it's still a bit worrisome to investors when profit margin shrinks. Focusing on more positive things, CEO Jeff Bezos noted that Amazon has "over 130,000 new, in-copyright books that are exclusive to the Kindle Store," again reminding the world that Amazon Prime members can "borrow them for free with no due dates." We're also told that the Kindle Fire remains the top, most gifted and most wished for product across its entire store, while pointing out that the North American sales segment was up 36 percent from Q1 2011 (reaching $7.43 billion). Our overseas comrades -- specifically, Amazon's UK, German, Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and Spanish sites -- accounted for $5.76 billion in sales, up 31 percent year-over-year. Worldwide media sales saw a 19 percent uptick to $4.71 billion, while global electronics and "other merchandise" saw sales grow a whopping 43 percent to $7.97 billion. Notably, the company continually banged on unfavorable exchange rates, so if you're looking for a place to heap blame... well, there you go. Continue reading Amazon's Q1 2012 earnings: net income down 35 percent to $130 million, net sales at $13.18 billion Amazon's Q1 2012 earnings: net income down 35 percent to $130 million, net sales at $13.18 billion originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Amazon | Email this | Comments | |
