The CommBank Offers app (left) is entering trial stages, while a new Loyalty feature will let customers ditch their physical loyalty cards. Commonwealth Bank Commonwealth Bank may be a business concerned with helping people save their money, but now it’s going to help customers spend it with two new retail-focused initiatives to expand its mobile …
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Galaxy S6 fails to bring back Samsung’s mojo
The Samsung Galaxy S6, and its many variants like the Galaxy S6 Active (pictured here), haven’t been enough to boost the company’s financial results. CNET Samsung’s Galaxy S6 was supposed to turn its fortunes around. Instead, the company reported its seventh straight profit decline and will be cutting the price of its three-month-old device to attract new buyers. The South …
Read More »Jump the line and get Windows 10 right now
As you’re no doubt aware, today is Windows 10 launch day. If you’re already registered for the new OS, now it’s just a waiting game as Microsoft pushes out the update. Don’t want to wait? You don’t have to: There’s actually a Windows 10 download page where you can grab the OS right now. Although it appears to be focused …
Read More »Forget Windows 10: Remember when Windows 95 was new?
Now playing: Watch this: Start me up: Watch CNET’s early coverage of Windows 95,… 4:25 This summer marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Windows 95, a significant improvement over Windows 3.1 in reliability and ease of use but an upgrade that was dismissed by Apple fans as being 11 years late to the party. Because 1995 also marked …
Read More »Why don’t some people use the Internet?
Who are the 15 percent of people polled who still don’t use the Internet? CNET For the vast majority of people living in the US, Internet use is a given, an expectation, a norm. But about 15 percent still don’t turn to the Net at all, according to new data from Pew Research. That figure is down substantially from 2000 …
Read More »How your next ‘flagship’ smartphone may cost less than $300
The Idol 3 is Alcatel OneTouch’s idea of a flagship smartphone. Josh MIller/CNET When you think flagship smartphone, Apple’s iPhone 6 or Samsung’s Galaxy S6 — devices that start at $650 without a service contract — come to mind. But Chinese smartphone vendor Alcatel OneTouch doesn’t believe flagship necessarily has to equal expensive. “It’s all of the right technology at …
Read More »Telstra wants to Roku with Telstra TV launch
Telstra TV is a rebadged Roku 2. Telstra Australian streaming video fans have often wondered if or when the popular US set-top box Roku would arrive in this country. Well now the wait is over, though a licensing and rebrand as Telstra TV may surprise and disappoint. Announced in a blogpost on Telstra Exchange on Tuesday, Telstra will add the …
Read More »The many faces of Cortana: How Microsoft’s virtual assistant wants to woo the world
Microsoft’s Cortana, a personal virtual assistant, can crack jokes about the Halo games (where the name Cortana originates) and tell country and language-specific jokes. Josh Miller/CNET We live in a world where we’re starting to talk to our computers, but it still feels like the device on the receiving end is a machine. Microsoft believes it’s begun solving that with …
Read More »Twitter’s user growth skids to a stop
Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. James Martin/CNET Twitter has been a slow-growth company for a while. The company on Tuesday warned investors that it’s essentially a no-growth company. “We do not expect to see sustained meaningful growth in [monthly active users] until we start to reach the mass market,” Twitter CFO Anthony Noto told analysts during the company’s second quarter conference …
Read More »Qualcomm invents way to wirelessly charge mobile devices with metal bodies
Qualcomm’s new technology will let you wirelessly charge a device with a metal exterior. Jessica Dolcourt/CNET Mobile phones that sport metal bodies or cases will soon be able to wirelessly charge themselves courtesy of a new technology created by Qualcomm. Qualcomm subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (QTI) announced on Tuesday that it’s the first company to enable wireless charging of mobile …
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