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ROBIN WILLIAMS GETS A FOND FAREWELL FROM 'ALADDIN' CAST ON BROADWAY

(AP / Disney)


Robin Williams has been getting a lot of fond and touching tributes from fans and friends since his death this Monday, August 11th. But one of the most creative comes from the "Aladdin" cast on Broadway.

Williams played Genie in the immensely popular 1992 Disney animated film "Aladdin," so it's only appropriate that the broadway cast would send a little love towards Williams' way. James Monroe Iglehart, who plays Williams' former role on stage, encourages the audience to sing along to "Friend Like Me," and the results are truly touching. 

Tonight the Broadway marquees also dimmed their lights in Williams' memory.

Check the video below for the magical "Aladdin" tribute to Williams.

Just How Likely Is Another World War?

Assessing the similarities and differences between 1914 and 2014

GRAHAM ALLISON

James Vaughan/Flickr

A century ago this month, Europeans stood on the brink of a war so devastating that it forced historians to create a new category: “World War.” None of the leaders at the time could imagine the wasteland they would inhabit four years later. By 1918, each had lost what he cherished most: the kaiser dismissed, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of the flower of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which European leaders had been masters of the globe came to a crashing halt.

What caused this catastrophe? President John F. Kennedy enjoyed needling colleagues with that question. He would then remind them of his favorite answer, quoting German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg: “Ah, if we only knew.” When, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Kennedy found himself “eyeball to eyeball” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, making decisions that he knew could mean quick death to 100 million people, he reflected on the lessons of 1914. At several decision points, he adjusted what he was inclined to do in an effort to avoid repeating those leaders’ mistakes.

As they were choosing to fulfill commitments, or not, to mobilize forces sooner or later, the participants in the First World War were simultaneously seeking to frame public perceptions of the crisis. Each sought to blame its adversary. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, the victors took considerable liberty with the facts to justify punishing the vanquished. The Treaty of Versailles imposed such draconian penalties that it created conditions in which, just two decades later, the Second World War erupted. This larger drama has understandably shaped historians’ accounts of the causes of the war. But as the best of the new books on this conflict, Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers, concludes forthrightly, the available evidence can be marshaled to support an array of competing claims. “The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol,” Clark writes. “There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character.”

In this centennial of what participants named the “Great War,” many have recalled Mark Twain’s observation that while history never repeats itself, it does sometimes rhyme. As a rising China claims islands administered by Japan in the East China Sea, or controlled by neighbors in the South China Sea, many hear echoes of events in the Balkans a century earlier. Could an incident between Chinese and Japanese naval or air forces lead to the sinking of a ship or downing of a plane? If so, would the U.S. meet its treaty commitment to stand with Japan, even if that meant firing on Chinese ships or planes? If it did so, could events escalate to a larger war between the U.S. and China? It seems (and I believe, in fact, is) unlikely. But according to a recent Pew poll, large majorities of citizens in nations throughout Asia believe China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors will lead to war.

Historical analogies like 1914 can be fertile sources of insights about contemporary challenges. One danger, however, is that people can find an analogy so compelling that they conclude that current conditions are “just like” 1914. My late, great colleague Ernest May provided an appropriate antidote. He noted that as a matter of fact, the most common form of analysis used by leaders in crises is historical reasoning from analogies. He urged both analysts and policymakers to be more systematic about the effort. In a legendary course taught at Harvard for many years, he challenged students attracted by a historical analogy to follow a simple procedure: put the analogy as the headline on a sheet of paper; then draw a straight line down the middle of the page and write “similar” at the top of one column and “different” at the top of the other. Under each column, list at least three points that capture similarities and three that note differences between the analog and the current case.

This essay attempts to use the “May Method” to highlight seven salient similarities and seven instructive differences between the challenges confronting Chinese and American leaders today and those facing world leaders in 1914. While most of the similarities make the possibility of conflict today more plausible that it might otherwise seem, and most of the differences make conflict seem less plausible, instructively, some have the opposite effect.

The USS Arizona returns to New York after escorting Woodrow Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference, in 1918. (Wikimedia Commons)

Similarities

1. “Thucydides’s Trap”: structural stress that inevitably occurs when a rapidly rising power rivals a ruling power. As Thucydides observed about ancient Greece, an ascendant Athens naturally became more ambitious, assertive, arrogant, and even hubristic. Predictably, this instilled fear, anxiety, and defensiveness among the leaders of Sparta.

Accustomed to economic primacy, naval dominance, and an empire on which the sun never set, Britain in 1914 viewed with alarm the unified German Reich that had overtaken it in industrial production and research, that was demanding a greater sphere of influence, and that was expanding its military capability to include a navy that could challenge Britain’s control of the seas. In the decade before the war, this led Britain to abandon a century of “splendid isolation” to tighten entanglements with France and then Russia. During the same period, German military planners watched with alarm as Russia rushed to complete railways that could allow it to move forces rapidly to the borders of Germany and its faltering Austro-Hungarian ally.

In 2014, what for most Americans is our natural, God-given position as “Number One” is being challenged by an emerging China on track to surpass the United States in the next decade as the world’s largest economy. As China has grown more powerful, it has become more active and even aggressive in its neighborhood, particularly in what it believes are the rightly named “China” seas to its east and south. Fearful neighbors from Japan and the Philippines to Vietnam naturally look to the U.S. for support in its role as the guardian of what since World War II has been an American Pax Pacifica.

2. The virtual inconceivability of “total” war.

In 1914, aside from occasional small wars and colonial smackdowns, war was “out of fashion.” The best-selling book of the era by Norman Angell argued that war was a “great illusion,” since the nominal winner would certainly lose more than it could possibly gain.

In 2014, the “long peace” since World War II, reinforced by nuclear weapons and economic globalization, makes all-out war between great powers so obviously self-defeating that it seems unthinkable.

3. Thick interdependence: economic, social, and political.

In 1914, the U.K. and Germany were each other’s major European trading partner and principal foreign investor. King George and Kaiser Wilhelm were first cousins, the latter having sat by the deathbed of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, in 1901, and marched as second only to George at the funeral of George’s father, King Edward VII, in 1910. Elites of both societies studied at each other’s major universities, were partners in business, and socialized together.

In 2014, China is the United States’ second-largest trading partner, the U.S. the largest buyer of Chinese exports, and China the largest foreign holder of American debt. A quarter of a million Chinese students study annually in American universities, including most recently Chinese President Xi Jinping’s only daughter.

4. Rising nationalism that accentuates territorial disputes.

In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire unraveled, Serbian nationalists aspired to create a greater Serbia, and Russia and Austria-Hungary competed for influence among the Ottoman successor states in the Balkans. Meanwhile, resurgent Germans planned for a larger Germany and French patriots dreamed about recapturing Alsace-Lorraine, provinces taken by Germany from France after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.

In 2014, China’s claim to the Senkaku Islands administered by Japan in the last China Sea, and the “9-dash line” by which it asserts ownership of the entire South China Sea, are reflections of ambitions that are defining new facts in the surrounding waters, exciting nationalism among its neighbors and in its own population.

5. Powerful military establishments focused on a primary enemy for the purposes of planning and buying (and justifying defense budgets).

In 1914, Britain and Germany’s militaries viewed each other as major threats, Germany and Russia saw the other as major rivals, and France was focused on the danger posed by Germany.  In 1907, as Germany’s naval expansion approached the point at which it could challenge British naval primacy, the British prime minister asked the leading analyst in the foreign ministry for a memorandum “on the present State of British relations with France and Germany.” That now-famous document written by Eyre Crowe predicted that Germany would not only establish the strongest army on the continent, but also “build as powerful a navy as she can afford.” Germany’s pursuit of what the memorandum called “political hegemony and maritime ascendency” would pose a threat to the “independence of her neighbors and ultimately the existence of England.”

Today, the U.S. Department of Defense plans against something it calls the “Anti-Access/Area Denial threat,” a thinly veiled “you know who” for China. Since its humiliation in 1996, when it was forced to back down from threats to Taiwan after the U.S. sent two aircraft carriers to support Taiwan, China has planned, built, and trained to push U.S. naval forces back beyond Taiwan to the first island chain and eventually to the second.

6. Entangling alliances that create what Henry Kissinger has called a “diplomatic doomsday machine.”

In 1914, a web of complex alliance commitments threatened rapid escalation into Great Power war. After unifying Germany in the late nineteenth century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck constructed a network of alliances that would keep the peace in Europe while isolating Germany’s principal enemy, France. Kaiser Wilhelm wrecked Bismarck’s finely tuned alliance structure by refusing to extend Germany’s alliance with Russia in 1890. Two years later, Russia allied with France. This led Germany to strengthen its ties to Austria-Hungary, and Britain to entertain deeper entanglement with both France and Russia.

In 2014, in East Asia, the United States has many allies, China few. American obligations and operational plans cover a spectrum from the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which obligates the U.S. to regard any attack upon Japan as an attack on the U.S., to agreements with the Philippines and others that require only consultation and support. As an assertive China defines air identification zones, drills for oil and gas in contested areas, excludes other states’ ships from waters around disputed islands, and operates ships and aircraft to redraw “rules of the road,” it becomes easier to imagine scenarios in which mistakes or miscalculation lead to results no one would have chosen.

7. Temptation of a coup de main to radically improve power and prestige.

In 1914, a declining Austria-Hungary faced rising, Russian-backed Pan-Slavism in the Balkans. Seeing Serbia as the epicenter of Pan-Slavism, Emperor Franz Joseph imagined that this menace could be contained by a decisive defeat of Serbia. The assassination of his heir, Franz Ferdinand, provided an opportunity.

In 2014, Shinzo Abe seeks to reverse Japan’s “lost decades.” A quarter-century ago, Japan appeared to be on the threshold of becoming “Number One.” Since then, it has stagnated economically and become almost irrelevant in international politics. Abe’s program for revival thus includes not only “Abenomics,” but also restoration of Japanese influence in the world, including revision of the constitution and expansion of Japan’s military forces to meet what he explicitly calls the “China threat.”

 In sum, those who see reminders of events a century ago in developments today are not deluded. But as Professor May would remind us, on the other hand, there are significant differences as well.  

A Chinese surveillance vessel passes a Japanese Coast Guard ship near the contested Senkakuku Islands (Kyodo/Reuters)

Differences

1. Clash of civilizations: As argued by Samuel Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations, deep differences in values and worldviews between civilizations are a significant systemic factor favoring conflict. On this dimension, 2014 is more dangerous than a century ago.

In 1914, Europe was the epicenter of civilization and its leaders masters of the universe. Most of the crowned heads of Europe—from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean—were blood relatives, with the tsar and the kaiser addressing each other as Nicky and Willy. Nonetheless, as Huntington noted, a fault line between Western Civilization and Eastern Orthodoxy ran right through the Balkans.

In 2014, China and the United States are separated by more than just the Pacific Ocean. Significant differences between values in Beijing and Washington include hierarchical harmony vs. freedom; communal values vs. individualism; and the Communist Party’s monopoly of political power vs. democracy.

2. Financial foundations of hegemonic power.

In 1914, Great Britain was the world’s largest creditor.

In 2014, the United States is the largest debtor in the world. As a result of a combination of low taxes and high spending, Washington has borrowed more than $17 trillion. Much of this comes from foreign lenders, with the largest share held by China. America’s position as both a debtor and as the major market for Chinese products, matched by China’s position as America’s banker and major supplier of consumer goods, create conditions that have been called MADE (Mutual Assured Destruction of Economies).

3. Shared geography.

In 1914, the European competitors had contiguous physical borders. This created incentives for rapid mobilization, accelerating the pace of decision-making in crisis.

In 2014, the U.S. and China are oceans and even hemispheres apart. Nonetheless, as a Pacific power with alliances and bases throughout Asia, the U.S. is a constant presence in the seas adjacent to China. Moreover, as a result of advances in technology, there are no borders in space and cyberspace. In these realms, the possibility that rapid advances could achieve (or be imagined to have achieved) decisive advantages raises the specter of “crisis instability,” reminiscent of Europe in the early twentieth century.

4. Nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

In 1914, the thought that a Pan-European war could be so devastating that it would end a millennium in which European leaders ruled the world was almost inconceivable.

In 2014, nuclear weapons have a “crystal-ball effect” that allows leaders to see clearly that escalation to a nuclear war could erase their nations from the map.

5. Military balance.

In 1914, the balance of military power among the major states of Europe was fragile. The U.K. had the world’s greatest navy, Germany had the strongest army, and the capabilities of Russia and France were significant. Moreover, all of the states were active participants in a delicate game of power-balancing.

In 2014, the U.S. military is without equal. After two decades in which it spent more on defense than all other countries combined, America has by far the best-trained and best-armed fighting forces on earth. For the foreseeable future, no rational Chinese military planner could present a war plan to defeat the U.S. military on the battlefield, even in East Asia. On the other hand, after more than a decade of what two-thirds of Americans now judge to have been misguided wars, the U.S. is war-weary and war-wary. Assessing the will and capabilities of the U.S. today, China could be tempted to take excessive risks.

6. Technology and transparency.

In 1914, Russia and France feared that Germany could mobilize in secret. Uncertainty about mutual mobilization timetables and troop movements contributed mightily to the dynamics of escalation. Governments sent cables to ambassadors who transmitted messages to foreign offices, increasing the chances of miscommunication.

In 2014, intelligence systems provide near-real-time information on movements of ships, aircraft, and troops. This information equips leaders with significantly more and better information to make decisions in a crisis. Moreover, they can talk directly to one another by telephone and video teleconference.

7. Structure of world politics.

In 1914, global politics were clearly multi-polar, making delicate balancing essential, and miscalculation difficult to avoid.

In 2014, the U.S. remains the sole superpower in a world that is, on current trendlines, evolving toward polarity: bi-polarity with China, or even multi-polarity if Europe becomes a player, India rises to the ranks of a great power, and Russia is able to sustain its new assertiveness. Chinese or Russian miscalculations about the relative balance of power pose potential risks.

***

So which are more salient: the similarities or differences? Weighing the array on both sides, would a Martian strategist comparing conditions in January 1914 with those at the beginning of 2014 judge the likelihood today of great-power war significantly higher or lower? For the “complacent” who live in what Gore Vidal labeled the “United States of Amnesia,” the similarities should serve as a vivid reminder that many of the reasons currently given for discounting threats of war did not prevent World War I. In particular, the fact that war would be irrational does not make it unthinkable. For “alarmists” who extrapolate from the past to predict imminent disaster, the May Method provides a salutary correction. For myself, this exercise in historical analysis leads me to conclude that the probability of war between the U.S. and China in the decade ahead is higher than I imagined before examining the analogy—but still unlikely. If statesmen in both the U.S. and China reflect on what happened a century ago, perspective and insights from this past can be applied now to make risks of war even lower.

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How to use Android Wear and customer loyalty cards to buy stuff with your smartwatch

With a little bit of trickery, you can have bar codes for retailer loyalty cards pop up automatically on your Android Wear smartwatch.

By Jared Newman

 Android Wear doesn't yet have a built-in mobile payments system, but with a few cool hacks you can turn it into a real-time, location-aware display for your customer loyalty card programs.
Imagine walking into a Starbucks and having your loyalty card pop up automatically, letting you buy a coffee with flick of the wrist. Or, imagine replacing your key chain or wallet full of rarely used cards, and having them all available on your Samsung Gear Live or LG G Watch.
There aren't a lot of apps that offer this kind of capability right now, but with a little extra effort, you can roll your own digital key chain with Android Wear. 
You're going to need three apps: Google Wallet to create the bar codes, Aviary to crop them, and Google Keep to create alerts and display the bar codes. All three apps are free.
Not every store has the means to scan on-screen bar codes, so your mileage may vary. We've confirmed that it at least works at Starbucks, CVS, and Jersey Mike's. When it does work, it's a great way to lighten your wallet while showing off your geek skills to the world.
Here's how to turn an Android Wear smartwatch into a card-holding, coffee-buying machine.
Scanning loyalty card program bar codes
Start by converting your physical loyalty cards into digital form using Google Wallet. Open the app, press the My Wallet button in the top-left corner and select Loyalty Programs from the side menu.
From here, you can add loyalty cards by pressing the + button at the top-right, then choosing Add your loyalty program. You can then use your phone's camera to scan a bar code, or enter the card number manually. Google Wallet may even recognize the name of the loyalty program from the bar code without you having to enter it.

Add loyalty cards to Google Wallet by tapping Loyalty programs followed by the plus (+) sign. 

Once you've scanned all your bar codes, open each card you want to use and take a screenshot. On most Android phones, you can do this by pressing and holding power and volume down, or power and the home button. Your phone should make a sound and show a notification if you've taken the screenshot successfully.
Cropping down to smartwatch size
Next, you need to crop each screenshot so the loyalty card displays properly on the smartwatch. This requires some precision, so this is where Aviary comes in.
With your screenshot open in Aviary, hit the Crop button at the bottom of the screen, and then hit Square. Drag the corners of the cropping tool so it spans the entire width of the screenshot.
Here's the important part: Look closely at the cropping tool, and you'll see that it shows a 3-by-3 grid, divided by gray lines. Position the tool so the second gray line from the top lines up with the bottom of the bar code. This will insure that the bar code appears without obstruction on your smartwatch screen. Tap Apply in the top-right corner, and then tap Done to save the image.

Use Aviary's square crop tool to create an image for Google Keep that will fill the square Android Wear screen. Be sure to keep the bar code in the top one-third of the crop area.

We've only tested these cropping techniques with Samsung's Gear Live and LG's G Watch so far. It's possible that other upcoming watches, like Motorola's round-faced Moto 360, may require some tweaks.
Now you're ready to load the image into Google Keep. From the main section of the Keep app, press the camera icon, tap Choose image and select the cropped bar code you just created. For the title of the note, enter the name of the business. You can leave the body of the note blank.
Finally, go to the bottom of the note and tap the Remind me button. By default, Keep creates a time-based reminder, but you'll want to change it to a location-based reminder so the card pops up automatically when you arrive. Press the clock icon, and select Location reminder.

By making a location-based reminder in Keep, an alert will pop up whenever you are near the retailer in question.

Google Keep will prompt you to type a location. You can enter the exact address, or you can write the name of the business along with the neighborhood or street name, as Keep is usually smart enough to suggest the correct location. Your reminder will be saved as soon as you exit the note or the app.
You'll have to repeat this process for each loyalty card you want to use. Because each Keep note can only remind you at a single location, you'll also have to create multiple location-based notes for the same business if you regularly visit different branches.
Scanning at the store
Once you've set things up, using your loyalty cards requires hardly any effort. Just go to the place of business, and you should feel your wrist vibrate by the time you get to the entrance. The name of the business should appear as a notification at the bottom of your smartwatch screen, and from here you can swipe up to bring the loyalty card into view. You may also want to set the watch's brightness level to a high level to make sure the card scanner can read the screen.

Swipe the notification up to see the image note with the barcode. If the vendor has the capability, you can have the cashier scan the bar code on your smartwatch screen to receive loyalty benefits.

There's just one other thing to remember: After you've scanned your card and left the store, swipe to the left on the notification, and hit the Next Time button. This will ensure that the card will appear again on your next visit.

When you're done using the bar code, don't forget to tell Keep to remind you again.

If you neglect this step or dismiss the note prematurely, you can always open the Keep app on your phone, and tap on the Reminded text at the bottom of the note. This will reset the location reminder so you'll get it again next time.
With any luck, this trick will eventually become obsolete as apps like Wallet and Starbucks include their own Android Wear integration. As well as this trick works, the whole point of Android Wear is that it doesn't need a lot of setup. Until that happens, you can at least pretend that your watch performed a magic trick—and impress bewildered store clerks and baristas.

Google Wallet vs. Amazon Wallet: Which mobile payment app deserves to manage your money?

Credit: Derek Walter

By Derek Walter

 Google aims to make carrying a physical wallet obsolete with its Google Wallet app. By connecting a card or bank account, you can use the app to pay for anything at a retailer that supports Near Field Communication (NFC) payments, just by touching the payment terminal with a smartphone that has an NFC chip.

Yet Amazon is not content to sit by and let Google conquer the burgeoning mobile payment market. Last week the company launched Amazon Wallet Beta. It is available now in Google Play and comes pre-installed on the Amazon Fire Phone.

I recently took both apps for a spin to gauge their relative strengths and weaknesses. To be fair, Amazon is still in Beta and Google Wallet has been around for a few years. Both apps sport some strong conveniences and some weak points.

Amazon Wallet focuses on gift and loyalty cards

Amazon Wallet handles its current slate of features fairly well. You can add a gift or loyalty card by scanning the barcode or typing in the account number. Taking a picture of both sides of the card also serves as a visual reference and gives you a digital copy so you can leave the plastic behind (it almost certainly also adds it to Amazon’s data collection).

Amazon Wallet can have all your gift and loyalty cards at the ready so they can be left at home.

When it comes time to redeem the card, Amazon Wallet creates a QR code or barcode so it can be scanned by the retailer. Its utility is a little hampered by the fact many retailers do not have the ability to scan a QR code, so you may be stuck reading off the numbers anyway.

The other issue in this arrangement is that many stores and restaurants now accept your phone number as the method for crediting your loyalty account. While Amazon Wallet provides a good way to de-clutter a wallet full of loyalty cards, most stores have already done this for me by allowing me to just give out my mobile number. But having my IKEA card scanned into my Amazon Wallet helped me recently, as the Swedish furniture king requires an account number.

Amazon Wallet puts a barcode or QR code front and center for the retailer to scan. However, some stores may not yet have the software to scan a QR code.

Made for the Fire Phone

Amazon Wallet is, not surprisingly, more deeply integrated into the Fire Phone. Amazon Wallet utilizes the “Magic Window” for scanning bar codes and will place frequently used cards in the carousel. Also, visiting amazon.com/wallet shows you which cards are entered into the app, including any debit or credit cards stored in Amazon.

All this indicates that mobile payments is likely on Amazon’s mind, if for no other reason than using Wallet to make on-the-fly Amazon purchases that much easier. If you live much of your digital shopping life in Amazon’s cloud or are contemplating the Fire Phone, Amazon Wallet could be a wise choice. The company is very likely to build up its feature set and more tightly integrate it with Amazon apps, services, and hardware.

Google Wallet has large ambitions

As is often the case with a Google product, the app seeks to be an all-in-one solution. Not only does Google Wallet support tap-to-pay functionality, it also shows any saved Google Offers (the company’s Groupon competitor), payment history, gift/reward cards and balances, and the ability to send and request money from others.

Google Wallet offers far more than just mobile payments, supporting services such as loyalty club balances and sending money to others.

Using Google Wallet is a hit-and-miss experience. Not all retailers support NFC payments, and if your store doesn't, the app is rendered useless. When I recently used Google Wallet at Jamba Juice, the payment needed some extra think-time before going through. Other times it has been very rapid, drawing raised eyebrows from other customers who clearly had not seen anyone pay with their phone before.

With Google Wallet just tap with your phone to pay for that smoothie.

Google has sought to remedy the lack of NFC payment options by offering aphysical debit card tied to your Wallet account. It functions as a MasterCard that debits from your Google Wallet balance. The downside is that you must first move money into your Google Wallet from a linked bank account or debit/credit card prior to using it, or transactions will fail.

Google’s data power gives it an advantage

While both Amazon Wallet and Google Wallet act as storage for various gift and loyalty cards, Google Wallet’s solution is currently more powerful. When you add a supported rewards service, Google’s servers talk to the account in the cloud and can provide real-time account information.

For example, when adding an American Eagle rewards account, Amazon Wallet took the information and stored it in the app, complete with a company icon. However, Google Wallet alerted me there was an error in that the information did not match American Eagle’s records. Sure enough, my rewards account had an old address. Once I changed it online, the account took.

Google Wallet offers the security edge

Both apps have a security feature where access can be locked with a four-digit PIN. Amazon’s PIN will lock users out of specific cards, while Google Wallet requires the PIN just to access the app after 15 minutes (the timeout can be changed to one day or disabled completely).

Neither app has reached the point where you can ditch your wallet. Google Wallet shows more promise, even as retail outlets have been slow to embrace NFC. Amazon Wallet is still in its beta stages, but given Amazon’s tremendous ambitions, look for the app to power up soon.