HTC introduced a new incentive to buy one of its new smartphones, up to $300 in "trade up" value for customer's used but functional devices.

HTC has a bumpy past in hardware manufacturing. Previously criticized for releasing too many smartphones under confusing product names, the Taiwanese company tried to start anew with its One line. But despite its speedy internals, inclusion of Beats Audio, and stellar build quality, as well as its unified branding, HTC’s current flagship, the One X, hasn’t been able to generate the same excitement as fellow Android juggernaut, the Samsung Galaxy S III.

But HTC hasn’t given up on the game quite yet, it has thrown too many resources at Android to quite now. After all, the original Nexus was an HTC device. It recently announced a pair of Windows Phone 8 devices — candy-colored phones reminiscent of Nokia’s Lumia line — and the HTC One X+ is reportedly right around the corner. In a rather aggressive move, HTC will offer potential buyers a monetary incentive to commit.

In exchange for your used smartphone, HTC will award you with up to $300 (but we were given a $324 quote for a 32GB Galaxy S III) if you purchase one of its new devices. To put it simply, HTC judges the value of your device and pays you to exchange it for a fresh one. However, rather than subtracting the trade-in value directly from your total, you’ll have to pay full price before receiving the rebate.

The funny thing about HTC’s “trade up” program though is that there are many other companies ready to pay for your used smartphone. Gazelle and Amazon both have services in place to exchange money for functional devices. On the positive side, HTC’s new site has a great layout, it’s easy to use, and your quote is generated instantly.

Of course, none of this matters if the prices offered by HTC aren’t competitive when compared with other services. We decided to do some of the legwork for you using a fully-functioning, 16GB Samsung Galaxy S III on Verizon as our standard. Gazelle quoted $245 for a “flawless” S III, whereas HTC quoted $265 for the same device. It seems like HTC did its research in terms of pricing, but ultimately it’s up to you whether you want cash-in-hand or a smartphone from HTC.

Is this the break you’ve been waiting for? Will you be sending in your old smartphone for a discounted HTC device? Or would you rather get cash for an alternate service?

We've have plenty of unpacking to do this week, what with the iPhone 5 and everything new in iOS 6 - including Passbook, the digital wallet with high potential but little payoff... so far.

There are a lot of great (and not-so-great) things about iOS 6, and Passbook falls somewhere in between. Apple first introduced us to its digital wallet back at WWDC, a clean, unified payment system on your iPhone that kept track of your various loyalty cards and respective balances. The image showed off accounts with Target, Fandago, Starbucks, Amtrak, United, among others. It looked simple, easy, obvious.

And it would be – or rather, will be – once brands get on board. But consider the stock image Apple keeps showing off with Passbook something of a wish list for the time being.

When iOS 6 officially dropped this week, the native Passbook app showed up on the home page, and I hope I’m not the only one to experience the disappointment of selecting the icon only to be bounced to the App Store where I was given a choice of four apps I could add to the wallet. On Wednesday, the only options were Fandango, Live Nation, Lufthansa, and MLB.com At Bat. Not exactly a stellar lineup for launch day.

But things are already getting better: Open your Passbook, hit the App Store prompt, and you’ll find a much better variety at your disposal. Now, American Airlines, Sephora, Belly Card, Target, United Airlines, American Express, and Walgreens are all now working with Passbook to bring you digital payment and account handling services – that’s a pretty impressive bump since opening day, and the list is continuing to grow. A number of other outlets have announced they’ll be hitting Passbook soon, including Starbucks (within weeks) and a variety of theme parks. A few b2b brands, like Tello, have also announced they’ll be building tools to help brands manage their Passbook integration 

You have to give Apple its due on filling out the selection as quickly as possible – however, there are some other significant kinks, and they mostly boil down to a huge lack of instruction on how this thing works. After you’re bounced to the App Store and it’s made (at best) moderately clear these are the Passbook-friendly apps, you download a few. Then you’d expect upon re-opening Passbook that they would be there, right? Wrong. Oh, so wrong. They simply are installed on your screen, like any other app, with no indication on the iPhone’s part how you get them into your new, iOS digital wallet.

In order for these apps to sit in your Passbook a la that pretty little stock image we keep seeing from Apple, it appears you have to use them first. But nowhere is this made explicitly clear in Passbook or the participating apps. There’s currently no way to be in Passbook and immediately load apps into the wallet – which seems like the most obvious way to create a seamless, easy user experience.

And then there’s this problem:

Occasionally when you hit the App Store prompt from Passbook, you’ll get the above message. When you exit out of Passbook and shut it down, however, you’ll be able to get into the App Store on it’s own. Frustrating? You bet. Macworld found a fix you can check out here, but that’s just a glitch a finished product shouldn’t have.

Reviews about how it actually works have been varied. Given the fact that compatible apps are still being introduced, the Passbook testing has been timid. For the most part, however, early users found the process complicated and buggy.  

Passbook could be great, and it’s almost certain that bug fixes are on the way. But right now, veteran mobile wallet Lemon’s quick and easy camera capture for card storage is far superior, as is PassSource, where you can log in via desktop for set up purposes. Passbook assume that we can go all-digital, all at once, but did so without partners totally in place of a unified system. Oh, and also, we still have physical wallets full of cards that we need to do something about. It’s messy, it’s buggy, it’s broken – in short, Passbook has big dreams and decent potential, but right now it’s simply an unfinished product on Apple’s part, and the nicest thing anyone can say about it is that it’s a work in progress. 

[Additional reporting by Francis Bea]

Apple Maps haven't taken over yet, seems like it's still sending traffic to Google's system.

As if Apple needed any more negative press around its iOS 6 mapping system, TechCrunch has uncovered another oddity in the application. Apparently, rather than diverting attention away from Google Maps as planned, Apple Maps is sending users into Google’s open arms.

The quirk is as follows: when an Apple user shares their location the link redirects to Google Maps if it is opened on a desktop, Android, or any phone not running iOS 6. This most recent slip up is even more proof that Apple let this particular product out of the bag much too soon.

Seemingly stemming from Apple’s lack of an actual online home for its maps, links shared from an iDevice lead only to Google. The problem isn’t linked to any particular social network either. Apple Maps locations shared through Facebook and Twitter both open up the address in Google Maps when on desktop, even though the URL wrapper is listed as maps.apple.com. Since Google Maps was, and still is, the default application in iOS 5 and prior versions, this issue seems to only apply to iOS 6 users.

It gets even weirder too, the people at TechCrunch found that Twitter shares from iOS 6 lead to Apple Maps on mobile, but the same link opened in Facebook redirects to Google Maps. And if you try to share your location using email or iMessage, Apple sends a VCard along with a maps.apple.com web address. The same URL is embedded within the VCard and on iOS 6 it opens Apple Maps, but using anything else you’ll get Google once again.

There’s more to report as well, a location shared with an Android device via text or email includes the same VCard and Apple URL, but still sends the user to Google Maps. We dare you to solve that logic.

And all of this comes after a huge amount of bugs and defects in Apple Maps were spread around the web with more being snapped every day. Our own Molly McHugh put together a list of Apple’s “wrong turns” in its maps endeavor. For instance, there is no public transit option in the new application. Clicking the bus icon simply sends you to the app store and suggests a replacement. Simple searches for Canada, Mexico, and Australia yield no results. Street view most definitely trumps 3D-flyover and Apple just can’t compete with Google’s level of detail.

Have you had experience with iOS 6? Any glaring shortcomings you’ve noticed or are you happy with Apple’s offering? If you really hate it you can always use an alternative map app.

Evernote uses its terms of service and privacy policy to put users in charge of their data and information security.

Check out the full Terms & Conditions archive.

Launched in 2008, Evernote started as a “productivity tool.” But it has since grown into something much more — a virtual extension of your brain. For those of you not yet in the know, Evernote allows you to store nearly anything you want to remember — photos, receipts, Web pages, recipes, voice recordings, you-name-it — and access those “memories” through a mobile app or on the Web. You can also share “notebooks” with whomever you like. It’s quite handy, especially if you live a busy, active life, with plenty of stuff you want to remember.

But using a service that literally mimics your memory means putting a lot of trust in Evernote not to misuse or abuse the vast amounts of inherently personal data users upload to its servers. And to do that properly, you’re going to need to understand Evernote’s sweeping terms of service and privacy policy. Let’s boil things down to the most important bits.

Terms of Service

Evernote has already done the job of summarizing its terms of service into three main bullet points, which is extremely helpful. These points are:

• Your Data is Yours
• Your Data is Protected
• Your Data is Portable

To learn more about what exactly Evernote means about all this, you can read this extremely explicit, clear, and downright encouraging blog post from Evernote CEO Phil Libin.

While helpful, these points don’t quite tell the whole story. Here’s the rest of what you should know about Evernote’s ToS.

Intruder alert!

Evernote kicks off its ToS with a “Use of Service” section, a dense paragraph that basically says that if you discover any “unauthorized use” of your account, you have to tell Evernote about it. And if you don’t, the company is not responsible if someone steals or deletes your data.

Legal shmeagle

One curious portion of the “Use” section is that you must be “of legal age to form a binding contract” to use Evernote, which in the U.S. means you technically have to be 18-years-old to sign up. Google also has this provision in its terms, meaning anyone under 18 can’t use any Google products. In reality, of course, no company pays much attention to this rule. And Evernote later explains that you can use the service if you’re over 13-years-old. So don’t fret, teens. You may be breaking the law by using Evernote, but nobody cares.

Own it

Evernote has the fantastic policy that you own the rights to everything you upload to its service, and the company promises not to use your stuff to make money. Further, if you decided to ditch Evernote, you can take all of your data with you.

That said, you are on your own if you upload (and share) copyrighted content and get served with a lawsuit — Evernote will not help you in any way.

Contact at your own risk

If you contact Evernote with some ingenious way to improve the product, Evernote may (or may not) use the information you provide however it sees fit, be it for marketing material, or to tell the world about what dumb ideas you have. (Kidding!) It also automatically owns that idea. So if you come up with something brilliant, don’t just email it to the company willy nilly.

Avoid the following

Evernote lists a bunch of stuff you can’t do, but nothing that surprising. All of it simmers down to these forbidden activities. Don’t use Evernote to:

• Make money
• Scam people
• Spam people
• Abuse, stalk, or harass people
• Share copyrighted content that you don’t own
• Spread viruses
• Do anything else that’s illegal
• Spread naked pictures or porn (even homemade stuff) publicly, though you can upload whatever you want to your private notebooks

If you find anyone doing any of these activities listed above, you can rat them out to Evernote.

Nuts & bolts

Most of the second half of Evernote’s ToS include a bunch of basic explanations of things that don’t really need explaining. So let’s just sum up the potentially important bits:

• Evernote uses some other third-party institutions to do business (like server providers, banks, etc), and your account information may be passed on for general business purposes.
• Evernote may make changes to its services at anytime, so don’t freak out like a Facebook user if that happens.
• Evernote may serve you ads sometimes. If you click them, any data you provide is between you and the advertiser.

Evernote might send you marketing material or other emails from time to time. If you want to opt-out of marketing emails, visit Evernote.com and click: Settings > Personal Settings > Contact Preferences, uncheck all the boxes, and click “Save Changes.”

Privacy policy

Privacy and security are of the utmost importance to Evernote, as is evidenced by their privacy policy and other corporate explanations of their practices. As such, there’s not much here you need to worry about, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.

Collect yo’self

Like all digital services, some personal information is collected by Evernote. But it’s really just the bare minimum to provide the service. Here’s what you can expect Evernote to know about you, either because you provided the information by signing up, or through cookies and tracking pixels:

• Name
• Email address
• Billing information (if you pay for a premium account)
• IP address
• Demographic data (like occupation)
• Location information
• Device data (whether you’re using a mobile phone, Mac, PC, etc, to access Evernote)
• What stuff you click on while visiting Evernote’s website
• Whether or not you’ve opened an email from Evernote

Feeling used

Of course, the information above is collected for a reason. The company may use or share it in a number of ways, which include:

• To contact you about offers (unless you opt-out)
• To obey the law (e.g. if served a judicial subpoena for your data by a U.S. court)
• To investigate possible illegal activity from your account
• If you sign up for Evernote through the website of a third-party affiliate

Maximum security

Seeing as Evernote can be (and often is) used to store things like passwords, financial data, and credit card numbers, the company’s security practices are probably the most important part of the whole business. (After all, we wouldn’t use Evernote if we thought it be easy for our personal stuff to get into the hands of hackers.) Here’s what Evernote does to protect your info:

• All passwords are encrypted, and are not directly stored on Evernote’s servers
• All the stuff you upload is encrypted over SSL (the Internet’s standard)
• Servers are physically protected, and only a select number of approved employees have access to those servers (a very important part of data security that many average Web users fail to take into consideration)
• Your data is never observed by Evernote, or used for data mining, or to provide targeted advertising, which limits the possibility of a security breach
• Evernote’s PC and Mac desktop clients allow you to further encrypt your extra-sensitive notebooks and protect them with a password that is never transmitted to Evernote (further limited the chance of a hacker snagging it)

Here’s a video about how that last bit works:

Conclusion

Overall, Evernote’s terms of service and privacy policy are straightforward, and provide little surprises. However, despite the helpful bullet points listed at the top, the terms of service is particularly long and dense. So I doubt many (read: any) users have actually read them. (I certainly wouldn’t if it weren’t my job.) As the company’s user base grows, however, I would love to see Evernote move in the direct of companies like Tumblr and Microsoft, both of which have made a serious effort to dumb-down their legalese for us non-attorney types.

I reached out to Evernote for comment on this story, but they were not able to get back to me straight away. I will update this space as soon as I hear back. 

When Halo 4 is released in November 6, fans can expect a new feel to the familiar multiplayer. We talk details with the War Games lead designer, Kevin Franklin.

Microsoft is gearing up for gold with Halo 4, which launches worldwide on November 6. While the campaign mode has always been an integral part of the Halo franchise, it’s the multiplayer that has helped propel these games to the top of the Xbox Live online rankings. 343 Industries is well aware of the importance of multiplayer. The developer is blowing out the multiplayer experience with War Games (traditional multiplayer) and Spartan Ops (co-op multiplayer). 343 invited us to its studio in Kirkland to play some exclusive new multiplayer levels. Kevin Franklin, lead designer on

War Games, talks about what’s new in this exclusive interview – conducted while he was playing the game.

Can you walk us through how you’ve improved multiplayer experience with War Games?

This is Infinity Slayer on Exile, which is one of our new maps in Halo 4. It’s a big vehicle map that’s shaped like a large donut. It really focuses on vehicles and team-based, big team combat. We’re playing Infinity Slayer, which is the all new version of Slayer for Halo 4. It was a real challenge for us as we basically re-invented the Slayer experience.

The biggest new edition is that the scoring system is completely different, so you’ll be earning points not just for your team, but also for yourself. And you can run ordinance, which is a reward drop from the UNSC Infinity. It’s the first team to 60 kills or 600 team points. The new weapon I’m using here is the Promethean Bolt Shot pistol. You can charge it up and unleash a one-hit kill or you can feather for faster.

The reward drops that come in are a mix of Covenant, Forerunner and UNSC weapons, plus the power-up system. You’ll notice when you’re playing the game that reward drops, or weapon drops, are now called out on the HUD. When a new weapon comes in, which happens about every two minutes or so, everyone can see them. It removes a little bit of that map knowledge edge that was required before. And it makes them much more meaningful objectives that really drive the flow of the match.

What do you guys call the new Warthog?

That’s a Gauss Warthog. It’s a normal Warthog that has a very fast firing chain gun on the back, almost like a rail gun or a pulse gun. The weapon is great for puncturing vehicles. It was a big decision that we made early on with how does each vehicle interact not only with players, but with other vehicles.

How many players can play?

We’re going up to eight-on-eight in our big Team Infinity Slayer story playlist, but in the regular playlist it’s four-on-four with a 12-minute time limit. I’d say 99 percent of our matches end on points, instead of time, which is exactly where we’d like it.

What are some examples of ordinance available in the game?

With each ordinance you have three choices, which are randomized but they’re also different for each map. The system randomizes what picks are the most intelligent ones for a map. The three choices here are the Fuel Rod Cannon, which is a big comeback from Halo 3; our new Binary Rifle, which is a Forerunner sniper rifle; and the Overshield, which is making a big comeback along with speed boost and damage boost. Once I pick an item – I’ll get the Fuel Rod Cannon — the system will automatically choose an intelligent location around me to call it in. Oh, I got killed by that Banshee truck, which are back again and improved.

Once you get killed do you lose your ordinance?

I lose it, but I can go back and pick it up. And if an enemy were to steal my ordinance, I’ll get extra points if I go kill him and get it back, so you can recoup some of your investment. You’ll notice that player is glowing red. He has damage boost on, which is a power up here to the Infinity ordinance system. That lets him increase his damage for about 20 to 30 seconds as a reward for helping your teammates, getting kills or killing with style. And those rewards are based on medals. I just earned 15 points for getting that kill — 10 of those points were for the melee kill and five were for the revenge. That bumped my ordinance meter on the left closer to getting a new reward from the Infinity. There’s my Fuel Rod Cannon right there, so it wasn’t too hard for me to go get it back again because I knew where it was. We’ve updated the radar, so it’s a little bit faster and more precise. It will also identify vehicles, weapons, ordinance and all sorts of things a little bit differently. It’s a little bit more intelligent at detecting the height of weapons.

What do the Promethean weapons add to the gameplay?

We have the new Forerunner and Pulse Grenades, which are our third grenade type in Halo 4. It drains the player’s energy if they get caught in the midst of the big blast, so it’s a really unique grenade. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

What’s the process been like in developing this multiplayer?

There really are a lot of new sandbox editions to this gameplay, but I think one of the testaments to our sandbox team is how good a job they did of really making them feel and all work together. That only came through with just hundreds of thousands of hours of play testing. The weapons and vehicles have all been re-tuned for this game. Fans always ask us if this is like the Halo 2 version of this, or is it like the Halo 3 version. What we’ve realized is it’s all like the Halo 4 version because the sandbox is so new. Everything has been re-balanced to fit with the ones being brought back and re-done for Halo 4.