EBay testing buyer loyalty program in Germany

EBay testing buyer loyalty program in Germany

The program, to be offered at an annual fee, will include fast, free shipping and returns for buyers. It could be the start of another potential challenger to Amazon Prime.

The future of eBay may be eBay.eBay

Amazon Prime may be getting a little more competition.

Online retailer eBay plans to test a new buyer loyalty program in Germany called eBay+, starting in the second half of this year. In exchange for an annual membership fee, buyers will get new perks, including fast, free shipping and returns. EBay is currently trying out the program with "a select group of sellers," according to a company webpage.

An eBay representative in Germany on Thursday declined to provide more details on the service, which he described as "a local pilot." There's no indication for now that the program could be expanded beyond Germany.

While eBay+ is only a local project for now, it could be the start of yet another potential challenger for Amazon's own membership service, Prime. Amazon's service, which is $99 annually and includes free two-day shipping and a streaming video library, is a key part of the company's business, providing tens of millions of repeat customers. In addition to eBay's pilot, Walmart last week said it will test out a new unlimited shipping service this summer, pricing it at $50 yearly. Also, startup Jet.com, which hasn't officially launched its site, plans to offer a new marketplace for members.

An Amazon representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

EBay's pilot could also be a way for the company to increase its relevance with customers, especially since it's splitting with its faster-growing mobile-payments business, PayPal, later this year. Still, a fast shipping program from eBay could be tricky, since the company -- unlike Amazon or Walmart -- doesn't have its own warehouses or stores for shipping goods. Independent sellers ship all products purchased on eBay instead.

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Adobe discontinues Photoshop Touch, previews its next generation

Adobe discontinues Photoshop Touch, previews its next generation

Adobe ceases development on its mobile cross-platform image-editing app to make way for a more modern version, but promises Android for more of its apps by the end of the year.

Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET

Thursday Adobe announced that it has bumped off Photoshop Touch, and with it the last of Adobe'soriginal mobile apps have been laid to rest. Despite originally debuting its apps on Android tablets, Adobe has let that platform languish; only a few apps, most notably the last release of Lightroom,supports it.

The good news is we should see at least some of the modern apps available for Android by the end of this year, and the next-generation of the "pro" Photoshop app -- as opposed to the consumer-oreinted Photoshop Express -- will have a lot more in common with Adobe's current apps and mobile strategy than its predecessor when it becomes available later this year.

As with most discontinued apps, PS Touch will continue to work; Adobe will simply cease to update it, and it will no longer be available through the Apple App Store or Google Play after one week from today. Here's more information from Adobe about migration workflow issues.

I think this is the right decision for both Adobe and for its users. Photoshop Touch's interface is clunky by modern standards and I suspect the underlying architecture is too alien to update effectively. The company's acquisition of Aviary and its technology in September 2014 provided the bulk of its Creative SDK (software developer's kit) on which the newer apps are based, and which seems to make a huge difference in app capabilities. (In other news, when I questioned Hughes about the biggest hole in Adobe's portfolio, decent organization tools, he said there's a "renewed focus on Bridge" -- yay! )

For example, Adobe gave me an early preview of the new app, and one of the most notable capabilities is surprisingly fast handling of large files; in the demonstration by Bryan O'Neil Hughes, Adobe's Head of Outreach and Collaboration for Creative Cloud, he loaded up a 50-megapixel file from the Canon EOS 5DS almost faster than my Mac Pro on an iPad Air 2. (Of course the iPad doesn't load the entire file into memory at once. But still.) PS Touch is limited to 12MP files.

The app will have a different set of functions than PS Touch, in part because the compositing and collaging tools of the latter have been incorporated into the newer Photoshop Mix and more in keeping with Adobe's task-based app strategy.

Instead, it will concentrate on nondestructive (infinitely undoable) retouching -- exposure, contrast, saturation, dodge and burn, smooth, heal, paint -- as well as some effects like applying vignettes and Liquify options like Warp, Pucker and Bloat, Twirl and Reconstruct. Correction: Adobe has notpromised Android DNG support.

Of course, Photoshop to-be-named will debut into a far more competitive app environment than Photoshop Touch did. Unlike PS Touch, which cost $5 or $10, depending upon device, the new apps will be free with an Adobe login ID (also free). But it's main competitive advantage over apps likePixelmator and other relatively high-end editing apps is the part that won't be free -- the Creative Cloud integration that should let you pass the layered files to the desktop with the least-destructive structure and share library elements with the rest of your CC apps and applications.

Unsurprisingly, that's how the new app, indeed its entire mobile strategy, feeds into Adobe's larger business: as an on-ramp to or in support of Creative Cloud.

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