Movie Tickets, Real Estate and a New Widget for Google Now

The Android app that tries to anticipate your needs gets more versatile.
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Fandango Says 2012 Ticket Sales Highest Ever

Online movie ticketing had a good ending.
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Does Apple’s Passbook App Make Cents?

This week, people jumped to the conclusion that Apple wants to be a payments provider, but will it be able to create a game changer?
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Amazon Job Descriptions Hint at More Perks Coming to Prime

First, Amazon Prime offered free two-day shipping for $79. Then it started offering add-on services for no additional cost, like streaming videos and Kindle books. What’s next?
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News Byte

Online Audiences Are Famished for “The Hunger Games” (Though Vampires Still Rule!)

As of yesterday morning, the movie version of the popular teen novel “The Hunger Games,” which comes out Friday, accounted for 92 percent of total ticket sales on Fandango. That includes 1,200 showtimes sold-out on the online ticketing service, which recently signed various deals with AMC Theatres, Facebook and, earlier this week, Yahoo Movies. Still, the kids-fight-to-the-death film has not yet topped the online advance sales for the three “Twilight” movies or the last two in the “Harry Potter” franchise.

Visa Places Bet on New Approach to Payments With Rare Investment in TrialPay

Visa, Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and others are pouring $40 million into TrialPay, which helps companies like Facebook, Gap and Fandango increase sales through the use of incentives.
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Online Sales Play Role in Helping Harry Potter Break Box-Office Records

Harry Potter’s final installment of the massively popular film franchise is on its way to breaking all kinds of records, assisted by nearly magical online and mobile presales that took place in the 45 days leading up to its debut.
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Nuance’s Dragon Go Is a Voice-Powered Search App That Knows Where to Look

Voice-powered search is a crowded field dominated by the search giants — Google and Bing — but Nuance hopes to earn its place with Dragon Go, an app that not only recognizes what someone is saying, but also knows which services should be queried for results.
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Voices

The M-Commerce Tipping Point Is Now

With the age of the PC declared officially over–smartphones outsold PCs for the first time in 4Q 2010–American retailers are all asking the same question: When will the m-commerce tipping point arrive? The answer is, it’s happening now.

Three Cool iPad Ads

Apple: 1 Million 3GS Handsets Sold

HP Announces PC-Free Printer

Rubinstein and McNamee: Remaking Palm