Weekend Wrap-up: Amazon Prime Gets a Price Hike; Google Changes the Look of Search Results
Thanks for dropping by for this week’s edition of the Weekend Wrap-up. Are you ready to catch up on the biggest tech stories from the past week? If so, watch the video below or continue down further to read our recaps.
Amazon Raises the Price of Prime
We all knew it was coming at some point. Even Amazon admitted that it could raise the price of Amazon Prime at some point. This past week, it finally happened, though the increase wasn’t as bad as many suspected. Some thought Amazon could raise the price of Prime by as much as $40, if not more, but the service will only jump $20 more dollars to come in at $99 per year. It’s still a heck of a deal at that price, but will Amazon feel compelled to add additional value to the service now that the price has gone up? Maybe we should keep an eye on those streaming music ambitions…
Google Search Results Pages Look a Bit Different
If you’ve performed a Google search in the past week, you may have noticed a change up in the design of the search results pages. Underlined hyperlinks have gone the way of the dodo. Fonts are also a bit larger. And that sort of tan background used to separate ads from non-ad results? That’s gone. Now there is a small yellow box that says “Ad” next to advertisements. It looks like these changes are here to stay, so give the new-look Google a try if you haven’t already.
Here Are a Few Things We Could See in iOS 8
It feels like there are always Apple rumors in the news, doesn’t it? This time, supposed leaked photos and reports are cluing us in on what we could see in iOS 8. The operating system won’t get a dramatic visual overhaul — we just got one in iOS 7 — but we may see some improvements to apps like Maps, some new apps like the rumored Healthbook, and we could see iOS open itself up a bit more to allow better cross-app communication. We’ll likely know for sure what’s coming when WWDC happens in June.
Pirate Video App Popcorn Time Launches, Gets Lots of Press and then Disappears
An app called Popcorn Time “popped” up this past week, promising to make the act of streaming BitTorrent movies as easy as using Netflix. The app was good looking and functioned just as promised; unfortunately, it got a lot of the wrong attention due to the fact that it enabled piracy. Just as quickly as the app made headlines, it was pulled by its creators (though we’re sure you can find it somewhere if you’re smart enough).