Briefly: Galaxy Gear lands in NZ, GreenButton, Bing, App Store, Dell

Well-heeled gadget fans may be tempted by Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch. Telecom NZ says it goes on sale here on October 3 with a hefty $450 price tag. Although that’s a lot of money for not much functionality, there are always those who feel they need to own these things.

Telecom has an exclusive on the Gear for the month of October along with the stylus-driven Samsung Note 3 device which sits somewhere between tablets and smartphones. The devices work with each other. Samsung’s Note will sell for $1200 in New Zealand.

• Kiwi cloud specialist GreenButton cuts a deal with America’s Jefferson Audio Video Systems giving its inCus indexing service an entry into the US court market. JAVS records audio and video of court proceedings, adding inCus search makes it easier to find relevant content.
• Users of Microsoft’s Bing search engine will notice a page redesign and a new logo. Although the NZ site was still using the old format at the time of writing. Elsewhere there are reports Microsoft is moving away from the content business and has made a number of redundancies at MSN.
• Nokia has sent media invitations for an October 22 special event in New York. Most observers think this will reveal the six-inch Lumia 1520. The device’s launch was delayed when Microsoft acquired the company. Also waiting in the wings is Nokia’s 10 inch Windows RT tablet, which may surface on the same day.
• Apple is changing its App Store so that owners of older iPhones, iPads or iPod touches now get the option to download the “last compatible version” of apps. The change was first spotted on Reddit when a user found he was offered an older version of Instagram.
• How low can prices go for decent laptops? Dell’s new Inspiron 11 is a tiny Ultrabook style device with an 11 inch screen that has just gone on sale in the US for US$350. Going by the way prices usually translate as kit makes its way to New Zealand, it could sell here for less than $600.