For the first time since it was introduced nine years ago, the cost of Amazon Prime is going up. According to Amazon, existing Prime members will pay $99 per year on their annual renewal date, while Amazon Student members will now pay $49.
The Prime Fresh membership fee will remain unchanged at $299.
Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform for creative projects, hit a major milestone today, when it officially racked up $1 billion in pledges.
According to the company’s statistics page, its $1 billion in total funds represents $859 million backing successful projects — with the $1 billion total referring to all projects, including those that are still in progress, or else which failed to reach their funding goal.
To date, there have been 57,121 successful Kickstarter projects — earning the company just under $43 million in the 5% cut that it takes of all successful projects.
A South Korean antitrust watchdog has rejected Apple’s claims that Samsung’s counter-patent suit against the U.S. firm violates the country’s fair competition rules.
Apple lawyers claimed that Samsung’s litigation concerning its SEPs (standard-essential patents) for 3G wireless technology was an act designed to abuse its dominant position in the marketplace — amounting to a violation of fair competition rules.
They may still be wrapped in an ongoing patent dispute, but Apple and Samsung have temporarily put aside their differences to tell the European Union that it should cut down on the ability of companies that license patents to win court rulings limiting product sales.
Apple and Samsung are just two of 19 companies and associations who put their names to the letter, which seeks to battle patent trolls who don’t manufacture actual products but instead rely entirely on license fees.
For gamers who would rather relive the classic days of 2-D platformers, the forthcoming Android and iOS title Venture Kid looks a sight to behold.
With an obvious debt to the Mega Man series, and graphics straight out of the 8-bit era, Venture Kid isn’t a port of an old game but an entirely new one — albeit aiming for an old school, pixelated aesthetic from a time when your typical mobile phone was the size of a brick.
