Last year it seemed as though everyone was certain Amazon would follow up the success of the Kindle Fire with an Amazon branded smartphone to take on the iPhone. Instead, Jeff Bezos unleashed the Kindle Fire HD on the world.

The rumor mill is back with more Amazon smartphone rumors, as a new report claims Amazon is getting close to finishing its smartphone that will launch later this year.

Apple is beginning to close the gap on Samsung over shipments of smart connected devices, which includes computers, smartphones, and tablets. The Cupertino company grabbed 20.3% of the market by the end of 2012, according to IDC, while Samsung just about had the edge with a 21.2% share.

Did you know that Google’s former head of Android worked at Apple for a few years in the early 90s? Andy Rubin was a manufacturing engineer at Apple from 1989-1992. He still has his old business card, and it looks awesome with the retro Apple logo and unofficial title, “Bad Example.”

Since he moved away from Android to work on other stuff at Google, Rubin has been posting a lot more to Facebook, like the scanned version of the above card. It will be interesting to see what “moonshot” projects he works on next.

LG will compete with Apple, Google, and Samsung with a smartwatch of its own that is expected to run Google’s Android operating system. The company is also said to be working on another wearable computing device that will reportedly rival Google Glass.

The Google Glass project has been in the news a fair bit in recent months, but it seems Google may have another wearable gadget in development that’s been flying under the radar. The Financial Times reports that just like Apple and Samsung, the search giant is working on its own smartwatch that will act as an extension to the smartphone.