Pushbullet launches Portal, an app to transfer files between Android and your PC

Pushbullet also touts that Portal serves as an easy repository for finding any of your transferred files. No need to dig through Android’s file manager—just open up the Portal app and you’ll find everything you’ve sent over.

While Pushbullet has a similar capability for sharing files to your phone, it’s much faster to go the Portal route, which sends them directly over your local network.

Additionally, if your device has an SD card and Android Lollipop, you can specify the transfer go directly to your external storage.

The impact on you: Pushbullet is a hugely popular Android app because of how tightly it integrates your phone and computer. Portal is a nice add-on to have if you want a simple way to send a picture, video, or document directly to your device. No need to use the old-school method of emailing it to yourself or waiting for it to sync through a cloud service.

Here's a Forza-branded Xbox One Elite Controller

The Xbox One Elite Controller might already be the ultimate console gamepad, but here's something we didn't expect to see — not so soon, at least. We found these at the Forza 6 stations in Microsoft's E3 2015 booth: Elite Controllers with Forza-branded thumbsticks and a faceted D-pad celebrating 10 years of the franchise (the first Forza Motorsport debuted in May 2005).

We don't have any other details right now other than they exist. Branded parts makes a lot of sense for Microsoft, especially if they're sold as interchangeable parts (vs. the entire controller package), but while we think it's safe assume these will go on sale at some point this year (Forza 6 will launch in September, the Elite Controller in October), we honestly don't know. So for now, let's just enjoy some pictures.

Box for Office Online lets you edit Office docs from the cloud

The online cloud storage service, Box, is now an official Microsoft OFfice 365 Cloud Storage Partner. Users will see new integrations with Office Online, making it easier to be productive without having to install the full range of Office programs on every device they own. 

According to Box, there are over one billion Microsoft Office files on its cloud at the moment. That makes Office files the single most uploaded files proliferating Box. To make it even easier to access and edit those files, Box created Box for Office Online. This new service is designed to bring users the best of Office Online's online editing capabilities for Office documents paired with Box's multi-device cloud service.

Users will be able to access, create, and upload Office files from a range of devices through their web browser. Box for Office Online users shouldn't have to open any installed programs to complete their Office tasks, which makes it useful for those times you need to use a shared computer, in a pinch.

In April, Box began opening up to developers with the release of an SDK. So, this corporate pairing with Microsoft may be the first in a series of new features coming to Box.

It will need all the extras it can get to compete with big name cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox. This isn't news to Box as it has been repeatedly spearheading free storage campaigns to attract users. Whether it sways users or not, it will be a handy feature for the billions of Microsoft documents already situated on its cloud.

Xbox, PlayStation present new games ahead of E3 conference

Videogame console titans Microsoft and Sony vied for attention ahead of the industry's annual E3 conference, giving fans sneak peaks of the latest Xbox and PlayStation games. 

Microsoft also told gamers that new Xbox One consoles would have "backward compatibility", meaning they will also be able to play games made for the older Xbox 360. Fans were shown clips of upcoming Xbox games - "Halo 5: Guardians","Rise of the Tomb Raider" and "Gears of War" - at an event at the University of Southern California Galen Center on Monday. 

Meanwhile Sony unveiled the newest games for its PlayStation 4 including "The Last Guardian" and "Horizon: Zero Dawn", at a separate event in Los Angeles. It also told fans a deal with Activision would allow PS4 owners to be the first to play the upcoming "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" this summer. The two console makers held the events ahead of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which takes place on June 16-18 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Bowser and Donkey Kong to guest star in Skylanders SuperChargers

The two figures, available exclusively through Skylanders starter packs, will also work as Nintendo Amiibo figures.

Gaming companies Nintendo and Activision have announced a new collaboration Tuesday at the E3 conference: Nintendo characters Bowser and Donkey Kong will be playable in the upcoming Skylanders game.

There are three companies making physical toys that work as in-game characters, Activision's Skylanders, Disney Infinity and Nintendo's Amiibo. They all work in the same way, too: A toy is placed on a platform that reads the NFC chip embedded in its base, connecting to the gaming platform and translating the information on the chip into the game -- so technically, they could work on each other's platforms.

The Bowser and Donkey Kong figures put the theory into practice, able to work in both the upcoming new Skylanders SuperChargers game and on Nintendo's own Amiibo platform.

The figures will be exclusively available in Skylanders SuperChargers starter packs for Nintendo consoles, the Wii, the Wii U and the 3DS. However, the toys will also work in editions of the game across all platforms.

"Activision's Skylanders games have been very popular on Nintendo platforms, and we hope this collaboration will delight fans of the franchise," said Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo. "We believe this unique approach will help expand the entire category and make it appealing to even more players."

In Skylanders SuperChargers, a new suite of characters will be linked to vehicles, which will need to be deployed in special land, water and sky zones -- areas destroyed by the series' returning big bad Kaos, who is sort of, when you think about it, an inspiring lesson in perseverance.

Bowser and Donkey Kong have been designed with vehicles and attacks that fit their legacies: the Barrel Blaster plane for Donkey Kong and the Clown Cruiser car for Bowser. Donkey Kong's attacks include barrels and bongos, while Bowser can breathe fire and summon Super Mario series regulars, Koopas and warp pipes.

The starter packs will be available when the game is released -- September 20 for the US, September 25 for Australia and the UK.

Nintendo's E3 2015 Event Highlights: Super Mario Maker, Star Fox Zero, Zelda, and More

Nintendo has been somewhat of an anomaly at E3 in recent years. Instead of going up toe to toe against Sony and Microsoft, the Kyoto-based company has been content with hosting its own smaller events across the year dubbed as Nintendo Direct. This year, there was an E3 edition of its Nintendo Direct. While other console makers and game publishers have their E3 conference live, the Nintendo Direct was shot earlier and released to the public today. Here's what was worth checking out from Nintendo's special E3 Nintendo Direct.

                                   

1. Super Mario Maker will let you make your own Mario gamelevels

Level creation tools in games are nothing new. But with Nintendo putting its hat into the ring with Super Mario Maker, you can be assured that gamers will take notice. This Wii U exclusive will let you craft a slew of levels based on the side-scrolling Mario games, ranging from the classic Super Mario Bros. all the way up to New Super Mario Bros. U.

You can adjust the visual style as well as each and every element within a level. It seemed easy enough to use in the demo and Nintendo seems to be serious in its attempt to foster creativity amongst players what with letting you upload your own levels only if you're able to complete them. Super Mario Maker is out on September 11 this year and we can't wait to check it out.

2. Star Fox Zero is being co-developed by PlatinumGames

The latest entry in Nintendo's space shooter series featuring anthropomorphic animals, Star Fox was finally revealed. Called Star Fox Zero, it's being co-developed by PlatinumGames, the studio behind cult classics like Vanquish and Bayonetta. Star Fox Zero will sport both single and multiplayer modes and feature heavy use of the Wii U gamepad, giving you a cockpit view of the action, while your TV will showcase the game from the third person camera we're familiar with.

Also of interest is that the ships you fly can transform into tanks. It's the first new entry in the series in over nine years and looks to be one of the more solid titles in Nintendo's roster. Look out for this in the holiday season of 2015.

3. Xenoblade Chronicles X finally has a release date

Helmed by the team responsible for Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii and 3DS, X seems to be the reason for many to get a Wii U. Nintendo showed off a fantastic trailer replete with giant robots duking it out, varied flora and fauna, as well as a host of different environments. But most of all, the game finally has a release date. You can get your hands on this much anticipated Japanese role-playing game on December 12 this year.

4. Legend of Zelda is still coming, just not on the Wii U

With the long awaited Wii U entry to the Legend of Zelda series missing, fans had to make do with The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes - a co-operative action adventure for up to three players on the 3DS. It's out in Fall 2015. In addition to this, series spin-off Hyrule Warriors sees a release on Nintendo's portable console as Hyrule Warriors Legends in Q1 2016.

5. Animal Crossing should keep fans of The Sims occupied

Nintendo's quirky take on the simulation genre, Animal Crossing (think The Sims but with design sensibilities that are quintessentially Nintendo) saw some love too. The company announced Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for the 3DS. It's out on September 25 in the US and October 2 in Europe. Also announced was Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, a new title coming to Wii U in Holiday 2015.

6. 2016 has a lot of 3DS games and one Wii U game - for now

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, a new entry in the Paper Mario series, will see a Spring 2016 release. Also coming in 2016 is a new Metroid game that seems to feature co-op game modes. It is called Metroid Prime Federation Force. The next entry in the company's Fire Emblem series, Fire Emblem: Fates, which will also hit the West in 2016. All of these are for the 3DS.

For now, a single Wii U game has been announced for 2016, and that's the much vaunted cross-over title, Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem that has characters from both series sharing the stage in an RPG extravaganza.

7. Dinosaurs and tennis round off Nintendo's Wii U announcements

Perhaps the most charming game of the event was Yoshi's Woolly World. It has you controlling Yoshi, a green dinosaur made of wool across a host of environments knitted together from yarn. In addition to its unique looks it also has a release date; this adorable platformer hits the Wii U on October 16.

Also out this holiday season on the Wii U is Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, which as the name implies, has characters from the Mario universe battling it out on the tennis courts.

8. Skylanders and Amiibos now have a common game in Skylanders Superchargers

Further fuelling the craze of merging toys and video games, Nintendo announced that Skylanders Super Chargers, a role-playing platform game published by Activision for the Wii U, will support both the series' Skylander toy figures as well as specific Amiibo hybrid figures. Turbo Charged Donkey Kong and Hammer Slam Bowser will be the first figures that can be used in both Skylanders and Amiibo-supported games.

THE BUBBLE BOY

THE BUBBLE BOY

The Bubble  Boy - Free fun Game  for windows app store!!

https://www.windowsphone.com/en-au/store/app/the-bubble-boy/919c53e2-92c5-4734-8092-5990382dc000

o  The Bubble  Boy - Free fun Game  for Google play store!!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.PixotriTechnologies.bubbleBoy&hl=en

·       The Bubble Boy is an entertaining game for kids and all age groups.

·       

·      * Pop the maximum amount of bubbles without losing lives.

·       *Soothing visuals and engaging sounds for immersive game play.

·       *Choose between two difficulty settings. Easy and Hard.

·   *   Pop the power up bubbles to earn additional points.

·     *  Beware of the naughty bubble. If popped you will lose a life.

·   *  No Ads while playing.

Photographer: Pau Barrena/Bloomberg One Tiny Number Can Reveal Big Problems at a Global Smartphone Maker

Tucked away in a corporate earnings report—past the data on profit margins and revenue growth, hidden deep inside a balance sheet—is a number that can tell you a lot about a mobile phone maker's health. In the global smartphone war, brands are routinely measured by market share, revenue, profit, and the coolness of their ads. But one line item called finished goods inventory, which refers to the percentage of materials that were manufactured into phones but went unsold, can give insight into whether a company's fortunes are changing.

The latest company to let phones pile up in warehouses and on store shelves is HTC. The Taiwanese company's stock just fell to its lowest point in a decade after lowering its sales forecast on June 5 and announcing a NT$2.9 billion ($93 million) writedown, though it's recovered some of that loss amid speculation the decline could make it a buyout target. HTC's finished goods inventory had climbed to a record high 2.35 percent of total assets at the end of last quarter. During the company's heyday, that figure rarely nudged above 1 percent.

“The rise in finished goods inventory could be a sign that HTC's latest high-end phone, the M9, is not selling as well as expected,” says John Butler, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The phone has received rather negative reviews from tech critics and may not be faring well against some very competitive, feature-rich phones on the market from rivals like Samsung with the S6 and Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.”

Inventory, sometimes used by data divers to peek into the bowels of a company, is generally divided into three types: raw materials, which are the bits and pieces that get fed into the production line; unfinished goods, the stuff still in production; and finished goods, the devices sitting in warehouses, on trucks, or even on store shelves. The distinctions are important. Having a ton of materials or unfinished goods isn't necessarily a disaster. Many materials can be switched around between products, so even if one incarnation of a smartphone faces low demand, the components can be swapped into another product pretty easily.

Leaving unsold products lying around, however, is an especially bad sin in the consumer electronics industry. Once a smartphone is assembled and leaves the production line, the clock starts ticking. In the high-paced technology business, consumer devices lose their luster fast, which makes the chance of actually selling the product decline with each passing day as newer models come onto the market. Steve Jobs saw this when he returned to Apple in 1997—at a time, he had said, when it was near bankruptcy—to find that finished goods inventory had climbed to 7.7 percent of assets. Jobs hired an operations guru from IBM named Tim Cook to clean up the mess. A year later, in June 1998, the number had dropped to 1.7 percent—and hasn't crossed 0.9 percent in the past few years.

When Motorola got into trouble at the end of 2008, its finished goods inventory peaked at 6.1 percent. That same quarter, it posted a record $3.6 billion loss that precipitated large-scale layoffs and the eventual breakup of the 80-year-old company. Having lots of unsold stock isn’t always a bad sign, though. Nokia's figure climbed above 14 percent in 1995 before it kicked off a decade of exploding sales—creating, for a time, the world's biggest mobile phone maker. But HTC isn't seeing explosive growth, which makes its record inventory figure a red flag for investors. HTC declined to comment.

Too low a stockpile, coupled with insufficient production capacity, can also be a problem. Qualcomm ran into this three years ago, forcing various smartphone makers to push back their product launches due to a lack of available chips. HTC faced a shortage of components in 2011—when it was topping even Apple in the U.S.—prompting the company to sign long-term supply contracts to secure supply and favorable pricing. In an expensive display of irony, this month's writedown was a response to some of those 2011 supply contracts. None of it was for unfinished goods. Yet.

5 Personalization Tips to Grow Your Ecommerce Business

We all know that personalization and customization can go a long way toward building a relationship with potential buyers. The thing is, personalization is so much more than just greeting the customer by name when they visit your website. That’s a great first step, but it’s not the only benefit you can get out of gathering information about your customers. Want to know what else you can do? Here are some tips.

Offer Custom Content

No matter what you sell on your ecommerce site, we’re sure that you haven’t shared all the possible information about every single product. The things you can’t fit on your website don’t have to languish forever. Instead, create helpful guides, ebooks, white papers, case studies, checklists, how-to instructions, tutorials, and anything else you can think of to get that information into the hands of your buyers.

When you have information that buyers are searching for specific products, offer them the applicable content to help them make up their minds. After they make a purchase, provide them with the tutorials and instructions they need to make the most of their products.

Sell scarves? Offer an ebook with ten different ways to wear that new scarf. Sell lawnmowers? Give a spec sheet that compares the various mowers each customer researches. There really will be something for everyone at any point in the buying journey.

Move Buyers Through the Journey

Speaking of the buyer's journey, personalization helps you guide those buyers through every point from awareness to delight. The ultimate faux pas after meeting someone is to introduce yourself again the next time you see him or her as if you’ve never met before. If only you had some way to remember who you’d met before, how many times you’d met, how interested they were in what you had to offer, and how close they were to making a purchase.

With personalization options on your ecommerce website, you can track each and every customer through every step of the buying process. You’ll know when to start greeting them by name, when to send them more information about the products that interest them, and which products to recommend. 

Provide Better Product Recommendations

Oh, the product recommendations! Most ecommerce businesses attempt upselling and cross-selling with product recommendations. What are those recommendations usually based on? In many cases, they’re based on what previous buyers purchased. Since not every buyer is created equally—and sometimes people just buy really weird stuff—the recommendations aren’t always relevant.

By using the information you gather on each and every buyer, you can craft much more relevant recommendations. For instance, if someone is searching for lawnmowers, you could show them various mowers with similar specs. It wouldn’t be way off base to show them a weed trimmer, either. If, however, you threw in a patio table umbrella just because the last person who bought a mower also bought an umbrella, you’d only succeed in confusing your current customer.

Improve Segmentation

Because consumers aren’t all created alike, you’ll need to work hard and often on segmenting your buyers according the wants, wishes, tastes, income, and any other descriptor you can think of. Absolutely every segmentation you can think of will apply.

For instance, Molly and Sue may both be female, between age thirty and thirty-five, and have roughly the same income. Does that mean they’re always lumped together? Of course not. Molly is married with kids and lives in the Midwest. Sue is single and ready to mingle and living in Manhattan. The amount of income they have to spend on online purchases, the types of items they’ll buy, the weather where they live—all of these things are different, and they’ll affect the marketing messages they react to.

Use Segmentation to Your Benefit 

When you can segment your buyers with every bit of information you know about them, you have the ability to use that information at any given time. For instance, what if you had a pop-up message for all buyers experiencing sunny weather offering a discount on your best sunscreen moisturizers just for that day? Those who have rain and humidity would probably appreciate a frizz-control hair product ad instead.

You can use segmenting a million different ways, and all of those ways will help you build strong relationships with loyal customers. It’s yet another way you can surprise and delight consumers so they stick around for more and bigger purchases.

Only AdWords Editor 11 Will Be Supported At End Of June

If you’ve been holding out on using the latest version of AdWords Editor, your time with version 10 is coming to an end.

As of June 30, versions 10.6 and older of AdWords Editor will no longer be supported. To continue using AdWords Editor, you’ll need to start using version 11 (now on 11.1), launched in December 2014.

You can download the most recent version here.

To learn more about version 11, read our past coverage here:

*Google Overhauls AdWords Editor: Version 11 Released Globally

*Google Releases Update To AdWords Editor Version 11 With CTR Bug Fix

*AdWords Editor 11 Adds Support For Labels, Call-Only Ads, Ugraded URLs & More