Tech Briefs: What’s new in tech news?
Finger-lickin’ good phone?
Just when you thought you’ve seen everything in a smartphone! Fast food chain KFC is celebrating its 30th anniversary in China with a KFC-branded Huawei Android phone, complete with an image of Colonel Sanders on the back side of the phone.
The KFC phone comes loaded with a K-Music app that plays music over the speakers in KFC restaurants. But don’t expect to see this finger-lickin’ good phone in the U.S. anytime soon. It’s (thankfully?) only available in China.
7 billion hours of streaming shows
Techies have long been a fan of the Roku streaming device. Apparently so have a lot of other people!
Roku recently announced it hit 15 million monthly active accounts, a 43 percent increase from last year. Roku’s users streamed nearly 7 billion hours of content in just the first half of this year. That’s a 61 percent increase from the same time period last year. Shop for your own Roku on Amazon
Hopefully explosion-free this time
Samsung is expected to announce the next generation of its Note series, dubbed the Note 8, on August 23. The Note 8 is expected to be available for purchase in early September.
Samsung will have its work cut out for them to get users to buy into their next generation Note phone after the previous model, the Note 7, was plagued with a recall from overheating batteries.
Did you get in on Amazon’s Prime Day?
Amazon celebrated Prime Day on Tuesday, July 11. And once again, they broke their single-day sales record. In fact they shattered it. Amazon said the following day that overall sales grew by 60 percent from last year and that more new members joined Prime than on any other day in Amazon history.
The best-selling item? The Amazon Echo Dot, which was discounted from $50 down to $35.
Medical history on your wrist
How much would you pay for emergency personnel to have instant access to your medical history?
Well, if Wrixo has its way, the cost will be right around $19. That will get you a Wrixo wristband which includes a printed QR code and a Near Field Communication (NFC) wireless chip, either of which can be used to access your medical history stored in the cloud.
What can you store in the cloud? Blood type, insurance, X-ray records, lab reports and even MRI results are all fair game. The Wrixo is HIPAA-compliant but it’s unclear at this point how the Wrixo prevents non-qualified people from accessing your medical history.