Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Google urges fast adoption of VP9 video compression | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company employees made the case for the royalty-free, open-source technology as a higher-quality alternative to today's dominant video codec, H.264. Moving to VP9 -- available now in testing on Chrome and YouTube -- will save bandwidth costs.
  • One problem is that Google is moving very fast. Software such as Web browsers on PCs can be updated rapidly, but it's harder and slower work to build hardware support into chips so mobile phones can decode video without crushing battery life. The industry barely has started coping with VP9's predecessor, VP8, which has been on the market for three years.
  • Another big issue is that VP9 isn't competing only against H.264, a codec that's about a decade old. It also must reckon with HEVC, aka H.265, a standard that's now complete and that has the potential to spread as widely as H.264.
  • But there's another big part of the VP9 sales pitch: no royalty payments. VP9 is free to use, unlike H.264. HEVC/H.265 also will be free to use once the licensing organization MPEG LA finishes up its patent royalty plans. Google sees that as an unacceptable financial burden for startups, programmers, schools, and others who might want to launch a video project on the Internet

• DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web, not a defeat | Ars Technica

  • The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that orchestrates the development of Web standards, has today published a Working Draft for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a framework that will allow the delivery of DRM-protected media through the browser without the use of plugins such as Flash or Silverlight.
  • Further, the groups argue that the Web is moving away from proprietary, DRM-capable plugins. The EFF writes that "HTML5 was supposed to be better than Flash, and excluding DRM is exactly what would make it better," and the petition claims that "Flash and Silverlight are finally dying off."

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Biggest Thing Since Amazon to Happen To .com

  • I predict that the eBay Global Sales platform will be the biggest thing to happen to online retail since Amazon.com.
     
     What is it? It's a new feature eBay soft opened last month, and it is available for all U.S. sellers.
     
     1. You enable it on eBay with a few clicks
     2. eBay then propagates your listings over their network in 27 countries
     3. When you get an international order, you ship it to eBay in Kentucky
     4. You pay the same fees as you would for any other domestic shipment
     5. eBay then ships it overseas, handling customs, export, and shipment
     6. Did I mention your fees don't change? eBay charges the customer for the international shipment.
     7. eBay removes any negative feedback as to the process from Kentucky forward, were you to receive any
     
     In the click of a mouse, you can now take your business from domestic to worldwide, as simple as shipping your packages to Kentucky.
     
     This is a game changer. For anyone that sells on Amazon, you now know why you have received 5 emails in the last 2 weeks from Amazon talking about you expanding with Amazon to other countries, but Amazon thus far makes it difficult to do so.
     
     I predict that the eBay Global Sales platform will be the biggest thing to happen to online retail since Amazon.com, and create a domino effect that will become the new global standard for international eCommerce.

• White House looks to 3D printing with $200 million plan for military, energy manufacturing | The Verge

  • The White House is looking to 3D printing as a model to revitalize the American manufacturing industry. Oh, and to help design new weapons and equipement for the military. That's the basis of a new $200 million public-private initiative announced by the White House this morning, which will create three new advanced manufacturing centers around the country. The White House is opening a competitive bidding process to universities and companies to host these centers, but all three will be modeled after a 3D printing institute launched in Ohio late last year, also funded by the government.

• New Zealand Government Announces That Software Will No Longer Be Patentable - Forbes

  • New Zealand Government Announces That Software Will No Longer Be Patentable
  • In a bill passed earlier today, the Government of New Zealand announced that software in the country will no longer be patentable.

• Internet Service on Planes: FCC to Consider Using Satellite Airwaves - WSJ.com

  • U.S. airlines have been rolling out Internet service on flights for several years. But the service, which typically uses Earth-based antennas, is often too slow for today's data-guzzling Web apps.

     

      Qualcomm Inc.  QCOM +0.23%  is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to free up airwaves used by the satellite industry. Such a system could be years away, but commissioners are likely to vote Thursday in favor of opening the issue to public comment, agency officials said.

• Say goodbye to the pin: voice recognition takes over at Barclays Wealth - Telegraph

  • Advanced voice recognition will detect whether a customer is who they say they   are after just 30 seconds of normal conversation, the bank claims.  

     

     The system, which is powered by the voice specialists Nuance, who are also   widely known to be behind Apple’s Siri technology, could end the frustration   of customers who struggle to remember passwords.

  • Barclays, is the first financial   services firm to deploy voice biometrics as the primary means to   authenticate customers in their call centres. A verified voiceprint is used   to identify the caller to the system, which will be rolled out across   Barclays in the future.

• 3D printing with metal: The final frontier of additive manufacturing | ExtremeTech

  • Few areas of technology have seen as much development in one year as that of 3D printing. Undoubtedly, the most dramatic and challenging has been printing with metal

• Nordstrom Using Smart Phones To Track Customers Movements « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

  • the retailer is using software to track how much time you spend in specific departments within the store
  • sensors within the store collect information from customer smart phones as they attempt to connect to Wi-Fi service. The sensors can monitor which departments you visit and how much time you spend there.

• Daniel Burrus

  • For example, governments, organizations, corporations, educational institutions, and the military are in the process of installing connected sensors to just about everything, from the concrete in streets, bridges, highways, and buildings, to cars, boats, and everyday products,
  • Heaven must be really small ,because I can see it in my Mom’s eyes

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Citi: The Solar Age Is Dawning - Business Insider

  • The biggest surprise in recent years has been the speed at which the price of solar panels has reduced, resulting in cost parity being achieved in certain areas much more quickly than was ever expected; the key point about the future is that these fast ‘learning rates’ are likely to continue, meaning that the technology just keeps getting cheaper.

• Tiny Device Will Detect Domestic Drones - US News and World Report

  • A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the "Drone Shield," a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone's "acoustic signatures" (sound frequency and spectrum) when it's within range.

• Profits At High, Wages At Low - Business Insider

  • Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before.
  • Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low
  • Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades

• Citi: Disruptive Innovation - Business Insider

  • Disruption 1: 3-D Printing
  • Disruption 2: E-cigarettes
  • Disruption 3: Genomics And Personalized Medicine
  • Disruption 4: Mobile Payments
  • Disruption 5: Energy Exploration Technology
  • Disruption 6: Oil To Gas Switching
  • Disruption 7: Over The Top Content
  • Streaming is already nudging out regular old TV
  • Disruption 8: The SaaS Opportunity
  • Disruption 9: Software Defined Networking
  • Disruption 10: Solar

• Senator Charles Schumer Targets Patent Trolls, Wants USPTO To Review Infringement Suits Before They Head To Court | TechCrunch

  • Today, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is expected to announce legislation that looks to snuff out patent suits brought by these companies in their early stages, by sending the suits to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for vetting before they hit the courts.
  • This could not only help snuff out bogus suits, but it could also highlight which patents may be bogus as well, creating a framework for preventing their use in subsequent suits.
  • the bill proposes a new process by which all patent cases will get vetted by the USPTO — not just the “extortion” (his word) brought by trolls. “This will apple to all patent cases, but if you have a legitimate case it will go forward in a month. It just eliminates all the frivolous suits. We think it’s the best solution.”

• UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now * The Register

  • For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work - the user only needs to perform a "diligent search". But since this is likely to come up with a blank, they can proceed with impunity. The Act states that a user of a work can act as if they are the owner of the work (which should be you) if they're given permission to do so by the Secretary of State.

      

    The Act also fails to prohibit sub-licensing, meaning that once somebody has your work, they can wholesale it. This gives the green light to a new content-scraping industry, an industry that doesn't have to pay the originator a penny. Such is the consequence of "rebalancing copyright", in reality

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Presidential Wheel Turns - WSJ.com

  • This week something changed. George W. Bush is back, for the unveiling of his presidential library. His numbers are dramatically up. You know why? Because he's the farthest thing from Barack Obama.
  • Obama fatigue has opened the way to Bush affection.
  • One thing Mr. Bush didn't think he was was superior. He thought he was luckily born, quick but not deep, and he famously trusted his gut but also his heart. He always seemed moved and grateful to be in the White House.

• Apple's 10-Year-Old iTunes Loses Ground to Streaming - Businessweek

  • “There is nothing on iTunes’ store today that gives anyone the impetus to buy something.”
  • “It’s no longer about individual tracks, it’s about access,”
  • “The concept of buying music at 99¢ a song is becoming irrelevant.”
  • the market for downloads will begin to decline, albeit slowly, within five years. “We are in an interesting transition,” McGuire says. “Download-to-own will persist, but with younger consumers, access through streaming services makes more sense.”

• 22nd Century unit signs overseas deal | WKBW News 7: News, Sports, Weather | Buffalo, NY | Top Stories

  • Dutch Magic cigarettes fall into the "very low nicotine" category, and contain approximately 95 percent less nicotine than typical "ultra light" and "light" cigarettes
  • The new deal with Wilshire marks the first time VLN tobacco products will be available to consumers in Europe

• The economics behind Amazon's possible set-top box gambit | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • Here's his logic: If Apple, Roku, and others can make money on streaming media devices, so too can Amazon. The advantage Amazon has, though, is that it already provides streaming content. So if Amazon decides to give its set-top box customers Amazon Prime subscriptions for, say, one year, the company will be able to offer a better value than rivals even if they charge the same amount for the device.

• The TV Everywhere Revolution Has Finally Kicked Into High Gear -- AppAdvice

  • Cable’s stranglehold on Hollywood looks less secure than at any time in the history of the medium. The result is that 2013 could finally be the year when TV Everywhere finally becomes a reality, at least in a larger way than before
  • While cable is still the dominant method of TV viewing, streaming is gaining in popularity.
  • the ability to download or stream ad-supported content will be everywhere, no matter the device

• Few cable users aware of TV Everywhere - paidContent

  • Only about a fifth of pay TV subscribers know their cable, satellite or telco service provider offers technology that lets them view video content over the internet on digital devices.

• The Abundance Of "Rich-Hating" | Market Daily News

  • Wealth is no longer seen as a sign of virtue and hard work but as a symbol of exploitation.
  • Mitt Romney was right when he said there exists a mindset of “victimology”. No matter what brilliant entrepreneurs bring to the market, they are demonized simply because they earn much more money than the average Joe. This has lead to a growing sect of businessmen who find it necessary to tell the public that not only do they not support the system that brought them immense wealth, but they support government regulation to make things more equitable.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Broadcasters file Aereo appeal, warn of 'havoc' and 'massive disruption' to TV industry - paidContent

  • Fox and other broadcasters are asking a New York appeals court to reconsider its decision to give a green light to Aereo, a controversial start-up that uses tiny antennas to retransmit over-the-air TV to mobile devices for $8 a month.
  • In the past, other companies have retransmitted TV signals over the internet but broadcasters quickly smashed them for copyright infringement. Aereo, however, has survived two major court challenges thanks to its technology which assigns a mini-antenna (see pic below ) to each subscriber;
  • On a broader level, the legal manœuvreing is part of a great game between Aereo and the broadcasters over the future of TV that could end up at the Supreme Court. In the coming battle, the broadcasters are pinning their hopes on a recent California court case, which shut down an Aereo clone and rejected the theory that a private antenna means a transmission is not “public” under copyright law – a theory accepted by two out three judges on the Second Circuit court.

• Start-Up Lets Users Track Who Tracks Them - NYTimes.com

  • A start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., Disconnect, which helps you track who is tracking you online, this week released its latest tool to help safeguard your browsing history. Its new browser extension works on Chrome and Firefox browsers and is meant to block an invisible network of around 2,000 separate tracking companies

• Netflix plans its move from Microsoft Silverlight to HTML5 video | The Verge

  • The solution is HTML5 video, but that relatively young technology requires further development to meet the needs — and DRM requirements — of a service like Netflix. According to the blog post, Netflix has been collaborating on three W3C initiatives that together will provide the required functionality for streaming video services. Dubbed the "HTML5 Premium Video Extensions," they include an extension that will allow the company to handle its delivery streams via JavaScript, another that will allow DRM encryption (perhaps the biggest obstacle for HTML5 video's broad adoption), and a cryptography extension that will allow Netflix to make sure any communication between its JavaScript code and servers remains secure.

• Card Readers Will Lead Mobile Payments - Business Insider

  • the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets has set the stage for a move away from fixed-point, card-based transactions and toward those completed on mobile. The old dream of the "digital wallet" is coming true in a very particular mobile-led fashion
  • attachable credit card readers and their companion mobile apps would become the most widely adopted mobile payment technologies. The main rival technology is called Near-field Communications (NFC)

• How 'Made in the USA' is Making a Comeback | TIME.com

  • step back and you’ll see a bright spot, perhaps the best economic news the U.S. has witnessed since the rise of Silicon Valley: Made in the USA is making a comeback. Climbing out of the recession, the U.S. has seen its manufacturing growth outpace that of other advanced nations,
  • U.S. factories increasingly have access to cheap energy thanks to oil and gas from the shale boom
  • “The offshoring boom,” Ashworth wrote in a recent report, “does appear to have largely run its course.
  • Many new manufacturing jobs require at least a two-year tech degree to complement artisan skills such as welding or milling. The bar will only get higher:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Computer Sales in Free Fall - WSJ.com

  • The personal computer is in crisis, and getting little help from Microsoft Corp.'s  MSFT +2.21%  Windows 8 software once seen as a possible savior.
  • world-wide shipments of laptops and desktops fell 14% in the first quarter from a year earlier. That is the sharpest drop since IDC began tracking this data in 1994 and marks the fourth straight quarter of declines.
  • not only has Windows 8 failed to attract consumers, but businesses are keeping their distance as well.

• Verizon CEO: 50% of our wireless traffic is video - FierceWireless

  • Video accounts for 50 percent of Verizon Wireless' (NYSE:VZ) network traffic today and by 2017 the carrier estimates video will make up two-thirds of all traffic over the network

• Can you find me now? How carriers sell your location and get away with it | The Verge

  • the second kind of data also includes your location, determined by the nearest cell tower whenever your phone checks in with the network, providing roughly a hundred data points each day. It’s the same data law enforcement uses if they’ve got a warrant out — but it belongs to the carriers, and as long as your "personal" data is stripped out, they’re allowed to sell the anonymized data to whoever they want.

• CBS joins Fox in considering subscription-only model | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • Another television network has joined the broadcaster backlash following last week's court decision upholding Internet TV company Aereo's right to stream broadcast TV without paying retransmission fees
  • Last week, a federal appeals court in New York upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Aereo, which uses tiny antennas to pick up over-the-air broadcast signals that it then streams over the Internet to its subscribers' Internet-connected devices. Broadcasters, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox filed two lawsuits against Aereo for infringing on their copyrights by streaming their broadcast content without paying retransmission fees.

• Next to Use 3-D Printing: Your Surgeon - WSJ.com

  • Surgeons are finding industrial 3-D printers to be a lifesaver on the operating table. This technology, also known as additive manufacturing, has long produced prototypes of jewelry, electronics and car parts. But now these industrial printers are able to construct personalized copies of livers and kidneys, one ultrathin layer at a time.

• Shodan: The scariest search engine on the Internet - Apr. 8, 2013

  • Unlike Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), which crawls the Web looking for websites, Shodan navigates the Internet's back channels. It's a kind of "dark" Google, looking for the servers, webcams, printers, routers and all the other stuff that is connected to and makes up the Internet.

  • hodan runs 24/7 and collects information on about 500 million connected devices and services each month.   

       

      It's stunning what can be found with a simple search on Shodan. Countless traffic lights, security cameras, home automation devices and heating systems are connected to the Internet and easy to spot.   

       

      Shodan searchers have found control systems for a water park, a gas station, a hotel wine cooler and a crematorium. Cybersecurity researchers have even located command and control systems for nuclear power plants and a particle-accelerating cyclotron by using Shodan

• Move Over, Apple and Google: Apperating Systems Are Taking Over Your Phones | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

  • Facebook Home makes its own big changes to the default Android experience. Most significantly, it buries most Android apps several clicks away from the home screen, meaning they are less likely to be used — or even discovered — by consumers. Facebook content and advertisements, meanwhile, will get top billing, appearing even when a user has the phone or tablet locked
  • These system tweaks could mean a big loss of revenue for Google

• Fingerprint Scanners, Voice Unlock Coming to Your Smartphone? - Mobile Phones / Smartphones - Technologist

  • Strengthening smartphone security using biometric devices might just be the next big innovation for manufacturers.
  • According to the Telegraph, Apple could be adding fingerprint recognition to the circular Home button on their phones on either the iPhone 5s or the iPhone 6.

• YouTube Won't Put Your Video Back Up, Even If It's Fair Use, If It Contains Content From Universal Music | Techdirt

  • YouTube now admits that, when it comes to some videos that contain content from certain "partner" companies, it won't repost those videos, even if the video uploaders file a counternotice and show that they're relying on fair use. YouTube claims that it will still keep some of those videos blocked due to "contractual" obligations:
  • Universal Music made a strange claim that it had some sort of contractual agreement that allowed it take down videos like Megaupload's. YouTube quickly came out with a statement denying this, but the situations described in McKay's post certainly raise serious questions about this, and clearly suggest that YouTube has made at least some deals that effectively wipe out fair use for some users. I assume it will surprise next to no one that the key example that led McKay to discover this situation... also involved Universal Music

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Traffic: Palm Beach County testing new technology to ease traffic woes - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

  • Based in Palm Beach County's Intelligent Transportation System Center, a combination of traffic cameras, computer programs and devices that detect travel times and speed are giving traffic engineers quick access to data that allows them to make immediate changes to traffic signal timing to break up traffic jams.

    Since October, they've been using Bluetooth readers to determine how long it takes motorists to travel along those corridors. The readers pick up signals emitted by Bluetooth-enabled devices. The wireless signal can be turned off on smartphones, but is on all the time in cars

• Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy - Tech News and Analysis

  • Facebook Home should put privacy advocates on alert, for this application erodes any idea of privacy. If you install this, then it is very likely that Facebook is going to be able to track your every move, and every little action
  • But there is a bigger worry. The phone’s GPS can send constant information back to the Facebook servers, telling it your whereabouts at any time.
  • This future is going to happen – and it is too late to debate. However, the problem is that Facebook is going to use all this data — not to improve our lives — but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us. Zuckerberg made no bones about the fact that Facebook will be pushing ads on Home.

• People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels | Zero Hedge

  • Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work.

• Microsoft threatened as smartphones and tablets rise, Gartner warns | Technology | guardian.co.uk

  • PC market begins to slip and tablets will outsell desktops and laptops combined by 2015, as Android ascendancy means challenge to relevance of Microsoft, research group warns
  • a huge and disruptive shift is underway, in which more and more people will use a tablet as their main computing device
  • also see shipments of Android devices dwarf those of Windows PCs and phones by 2017
  • "the interesting thing is that this shift in device preference is coming from a shift in user behaviour. Some people think that it's just like the shift when people moved from desktops to laptops [a process that began in the early 2000s]. But that's wrong. The laptop was more mobile than the desktop, but with the tablet and smartphone, there's a bigger embrace of the cloud for sharing and for access to content. It's also more biased towards consumption of content rather than production

• Gimmick or a breakthrough? - The Hindu

  • Technology forums say the technology that has been on the sidelines for several years might finally be taking centre stage now.
  • Though some enthusiasts would like the world to believe that the technologically superior NFC would spell death for the QR Code,

• Intel to Offer Multichannel TV Service, Takes on Pay-TV Cable Business | Variety

  • Intel intended to invade the pay-TV business with a nationwide multichannel TV service of its own.
  • his vow that Intel would start selling a device that would deliver video to TVs via broadband by the end of the year

• Obamacare to pay 'navigators' $20 to $48 an hour, provide free translators | WashingtonExaminer.com

  • Tens of thousands of health care professionals, union workers and community activists hired as "navigators" to help Americans choose Obamacare options starting Oct. 1 will be paid up to $48 an hour, more than six times the federal minimum wage of $7.25
  • The rules allow navigators to come from the ranks of unions, health providers and community action groups such as ACORN and Planned Parenthood. They are required to provide unbiased advice

• 22nd Century Group Announces U.S. Patent Issues for MPO Nicotine Biosynthesis Gene - Yahoo! Finance

  • a company that has developed groundbreaking technology for tobacco harm   reduction products
  • The MPO gene encodes a protein involved in a key step of nicotine   biosynthesis. Scientists have attempted to clone the MPO gene for   decades
  • MPO expression can be either down-regulated or up-regulated to   produce tobacco plant varieties and tobacco products with a wide range   of nicotine levels (from very low to high), or altered ratios of   nicotine and other nicotinic alkaloids such as anatabine and   nornicotin

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Future Role of the Car and the Rise of New Mobility Business Models - PR Newswire - The Sacramento Bee

  • The world is currently witnessing a paradigm shift in mobility. Car companies are increasingly labelling themselves as mobility service providers, getting into new business models such as car sharing and providing on-demand solutions.
  • technological advancements lead to increasingly smart, integrated, intelligent transport networks, aimed at reducing emissions, accidents, and congestion in particular, while the automotive industry witnesses considerable growth regarding the connectivity of cars

• Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America | Planet Money

  • In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled.
  • There's no diagnosis called disability.
  • back pain, mental illness -- are among the fastest growing causes of disability.
  • Part of the reason our unemployment rates have been low, until recently, is that a lot of people who would have trouble finding jobs are on a different program."
  • Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work
  • Two-thirds of all kids on the program today have been diagnosed with mental or intellectual problems
  • Daytime TV in many places is full of ads from lawyers who promise to fight the government and win the disability benefits you deserve
  • Somewhere around 30 years ago, the economy started changing in some fundamental ways. There are now millions of Americans who do not have the skills or education to make it in this country.

• Govt. Spends More on Disability than Food Stamps, Welfare Combined

  • The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it does on food stamps and welfare combined; America’s two largest disability programs, including health care for disabled workers, costs taxpayers $260 billion a year
  • As of 2011, 33.8% of newly diagnosed disabled workers cited “back pain and other musculoskeletal problems” as their reason for being unable to work.  In 1961, the top reason for being disabled was “heart disease, stroke”
  • Joffe-Walt says disability has “become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills.”

• The real breakthrough of Google Glass: controlling the internet of things - The Washington Post

  • his week the folks at Engadget dug up a patent around Google Glass using wireless connectivity to control connected devices in your home. The glasses could use any number of wireless methods — from RFID, to infrared, to Bluetooth to QR codes — to identify a connected device that could be manipulated, and then, presumably, to manipulate it
  • Essentially you’d just be moving the control function from the cell phone touch screen and your fingertips to the screen in front of your eye and either a facial gesture or hand movement

• What, exactly, WiFiSLAM is, and why Apple acquired it - The Next Web

  • The typical accuracy of GPS when it’s performing well is around 10 meters, points out Huang. This means almost nothing when it comes to traveling down a road in a car, but 10 meters vertically in a building could mean a difference of 6 floors.
  • WiFiSLAM uses a combination of various methods to get better indoor locations. Obviously, WiFi and cell tower trilateration doesn’t work indoors. Instead, WiFi signals can be measured by any device to get an approximate location. In order for that location to be accurate, though, you have to use WiFi fingerprinting to get an idea of what the materials and construction of a particular building are going to do to WiFi signals. Enough scans in one place and you’ll have an accurate profile of a building that can be used to make a map.
  • The SLAM acronym? That stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This encompasses WiFiSLAM’s way of gathering location and mapping information without recording any data at all and pairing with more traditional methods. To do this they record ‘trajectories’ from sensors on the phone including the accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers.

• Apple's first quarter of negative income growth since 2003 - Apple 2.0 -Fortune Tech

  • for the first time in a decade Apple (AAPL) will report that its income this quarter was lower than the same quarter the year before
  • it's what analysts call a "tough compare" in terms of gross margins -- a measure of the efficiency with which a company turns revenue into profits.

• U.S. Senate Approves Proposed Internet Sales Tax | TechCrunch

  • An Internet sales tax is inching its way closer to being the law of the land: The U.S. Senate supported a non-binding vote of approval, 75-to-24, for a law that would allow states to collect taxes from Internet retailers. If enacted as is, it would allow states to levy taxes on some online retail purchases from businesses with over $1 million in gross receipts.

• Steve Jobs Was Wrong -- Consumers Want To Rent Their Music, Not Own It - Forbes

  • worth noting that Vevo, an on-demand music video site, is the top video publisher on the web behind YouTube and Facebook
  • The record companies did not yet have systems in place to reliably distribute digital music files and metadata
  • The buzz is that Apple will soon introduce an on-demand music streaming service as will Google and other major media and electronics companies

• Apple can now track you indoors | Fox News

  • Apple is looking to beef up the iPhone’s indoor location capabilities by acquiring WiFiSlam.
  • Using Wi-Fi signals, WiFiSlam determines a user’s location within buildings, which has implications for shopping, advertising and social networking. According to WiFiSlam, its technology can pinpoint a smartphone with 2.5 accuracy

• Oracle Sparks The Next Wave Of M&A -- Who Will Be Acquired? - Seeking Alpha

  • Oracle is among the world's most savvy acquirers. Its 2005 takeout of PeopleSoft was the first in a wave of financially-motivated deals focused on recurring revenue.
  • we expect the other tech giants to begin accelerating their M&A activities. Accordingly, we believe the time has come for investors to reset their sights on attractive candidates.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Device Under Skin Tells Doc You're OK (or Not) : Discovery News

  • Thanks to a tiny new medical implant, doctors of the future might be just fine with that.

     

    A team of scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne(EPFL) have developed a miniature electronic device that can be implanted under the skin to provide immediate analysis of substances found in blood.

• The Future of Retail: How Mobile Payments Are Changing the Retail Experience

  • NFC is available on only a few dozen phones—meaning it is in few consumer hands—and it is not on iPhone," reports MainStreet.com. "Nor is it, as far as anyone knows, on the iPhone roadmap for near-term deployment. Merchant adoption of NFC readers also has lagged, with only a handful of national retailers (and few local stores) offering the capability. Even if you have an NFC phone, there is nowhere to use it to pay." This prompted Doug Aamoth of TIME to suggest "the true power of NFC lies in its ability to unlock doors without using traditional keys
  • All of a sudden the mobile phone is about to be transformed beyond a spy in your pocket to your bank, your mortgage lender and your landlord,"
  • In a way, it's kind of a privacy tipping point, because one single device knows wherever you go, your geographic history, your social media connections and your financial behaviors,

• Sarah Silverman, Ben Stiller, Michael Cera, And The Rebels Saving Hollywood | Fast Company

• Apple's Rumored iPhone 5s Could Jump Start Mobile Payments - Forbes

  • half  of the Harris poll respondents said they don’t want to store sensitive information on their phone, and 40% don’t want to transmit sensitive information to a merchant’s device. One preferred solution among consumers is using a PIN or password.
  • the chatter that the new iPhone model would include fingerprint recognition technology that Apple acquired when it bought AuthenTec last year. If that turns out to be true, Apple would be able to leverage it’s growing Passbook ecosystem along with its more than 500 million iTunes account that have a credit card on file to jumpstart the mobile payments in an easy to use and secure way.

  • Odds are if Apple does introduce an iPhone model that includes fingerprint recognition technology either as a general security function, for mobile payment safety or both, others will follow suit.

     

    Apple is not the only company that recognizes the use of fingerprint and biometric interfaces in device security and mobile payments. Several weeks ago, 3G, 4G and LTE licensing and technology company InterDigital (IDCC) entered into a R&D collaboration agreement with BIO-key International (BKYI), a leader in fingerprint biometric identification solutions and advanced mobile credentialing and identity verification technologies.

• And That, Google, Is How You Lose The Influencers - Forbes

  • the Google Reader decision is going to cause ripples down the line. The number of influencers online is not a huge number and their support of a new project can be vital to a start-up launching a new app or to an existing company with a new product to promote

• As Smartphone Growth Slows, Carriers Turn To The Connected Car - Forbes

  • 2013 is shaping up to be an inflection point in the smartphone space
  • But 2013 is not just a tipping point for smartphones. It’s also one for the Connected Car, a part of the machine to machine or M2M space being targeted by mobile carriers
  • it can turn the car into a 4G LTE hot spot for tablets, smartphones and other devices
  • Connecting the dots among these relationships — GM, AT&T and Apple for example — make for solid prospects for the Connected Car in the coming years, just in time as smartphone shipment grow starts to really slowdown

• Music Streaming will be Apple, Google and Amazon's next big thing | Firstpost

• Music Streaming will be Apple, Google and Amazon's next big thing | Firstpost

  • All of them see a viable music streaming and subscription service as crucial to growing their presence in an exploding mobile environment. For Google and Apple, it is critical in ensuring users remain loyal to their mobile products.
  • Now, as smartphones and tablets supplant PCs and virtual storage replaces songs on devices, mobile players from handset makers to social networks realize they must stake out a place or risk ceding control of one of the largest components of mobile device usage.

• New Study Confirms Correlation Between Twitter and TV Ratings

  • By analyzing Tweets about live TV, the study confirmed a relationship between Twitter and TV ratings. It also identified Twitter as one of three statistically significant variables (in addition to prior-year rating and advertising spend) to align with TV ratings
  • How well does Twitter align with TV program ratings? The recent Nielsen/SocialGuide study confirmed that increases in Twitter volume correlate to increases in TV ratings for varying age groups, revealing a stronger correlation for younger audiences.
  • The TV industry is dynamic and it was important for us to analyze multiple variables to truly understand Twitter’s impact on TV ratings,

• Amazon in talks with record labels about subscription music service | The Verge

  • The signs point to an arms race among online music services

• This Is the Scariest Statistic About the Newspaper Business Today - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

  • Here it is: In 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads. And it's getting worse, according to a new report by Pew. In 2011, the ratio was just 10-to-1.
  • Since 2003, print ads have fallen from $45 billion to $19 billion. Online ads have only grown from $1.2 to $3.3 billion.
  • Who killed newspapers? The classic response is the classifieds,

• ABC Works on an App for Live Streaming Shows to Mobile Devices - NYTimes.com

  • The app will live stream ABC programming to the phones and tablets of cable and satellite subscribers, allowing those subscribers to watch “Good Morning America” on a tablet while standing in line at Starbucks, for instance, or watch “Nashville” on a smartphone while riding a bus home from work
  • With the app, ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, will become the first of the American broadcasters to provide a live Internet stream of national and local programming to people who pay for cable or satellite. The subscriber-only arrangement, sometimes called TV Everywhere in industry circles, preserves the cable business model that is crucial to the bottom lines of broadcasters, while giving subscribers more of what they seem to want — mobile access to TV shows. The arrangement could extend the reach of ads that appear on ABC as well.

• Liquidity of corporate US at record level - FT.com

  • The swelling cash reserves of Apple and a handful of other technology companies have raised the overall liquidity of corporate America to record levels, data revealed on Monday.

     

    Around $6 out of every $10 added to the corporate sector’s cash mountain over the past three years has come from tech companies,

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Zero-TV Doesn't Mean Zero Video

  • This small group of video enthusiasts is tuning out traditional TV—and the trend is growing. This “Zero-TV” group, which makes up less than 5 percent of U.S. households, has bucked tradition by opting to get the information they need and want from non-traditional TV devices and services
  • According to Nielsen’s Fourth-Quarter 2012 Cross-Platform Report, the U.S. had more than five million Zero-TV households in 2013, up from just over 2 million in 2007

• 5 Trends That Will Drive The Future Of Technology - Forbes

  • 5 Trends That Will Drive The Future Of Technology

• Samsung Galaxy S4 features Mobeam, a way to beam barcodes using pulses of infrared light | The Verge

  • Samsung's new Galaxy S4 is one feature that emulates some decidedly old-school technology: the bar code. Thanks to "light-based communications" technology from a company called Mobeam, the Galaxy S4 uses pulses of infrared light to essentially fool traditional scanners into thinking the light represents a barocde. While the utility of such a feature might feel limited at first, Mobeam is convinced its technology will help smartphones interact with the millions of point-of-sale systems around the country that use traditional barcode scanners. At its core, it seem Mobeam is just the latest in a long line of attempts to make smartphones useful at the cash register — with NFC-based payment systems not exactly widespread, alternate tools like Apple's Passbook and now Mobeam are getting more of a shot.
  • The real draw for Mobeam over something like Passbook is the fact that no new equipment is needed — the Galaxy S4 will be able to beam coupons, tickets, or anything else with a barcode to the estimated 165 million standard scanners around the world.

• Darpa's Flu Fighters Ramp Up Veggie-Based Vaccines | Danger Room | Wired.com

  • Plant-based vaccines, however, are developed using “virus-like particles,” which consist solely of protein and are non-infectious. They can’t spread between people, and they help produce anti-viral antibodies. To produce the particles, scientists synthesize the DNA of the flu virus, combine the flu DNA with bacteria, and then soak the plants with it. After soaking for a few minutes, the plants then start producing the flu-fighting particles. The DNA stays in the plant. The protein is then extracted and becomes the basis for a vaccine.

     

    The most popular plant? Tobacco, as it grows relatively fast. The U.S. is also estimated to produce a heaping 450 metric tons of tobacco per year. And the whole process of turning tobacco into vaccines only takes a matter of weeks to complete. On a large enough scale, plant-based vaccines could be conceivably produced at 100 million vaccines a month. Egg-based vaccines, though, can take months just to develop.

• Get Involved, Internet: Help stop patent trolls | Comedy | Great Job, Internet! | The A.V. Club

  • Apple and Google spend more money on patent acquisition and defense now than they do on research and development.

• NTRR: $1.7 Billion Medical Marijuana Market Set to Explode as 'Green Rush' Gathers Steam - Yahoo! Finance

  • The incredible growth of the $142 billion global nutraceuticals industry   has been driven by any number of medicinal herbs over the years, and   that trend appears to be continuing in 2013
  • the biggest story in nutraceuticals this year will stem   from one of the world’s most popular medicinal herbs: Cannabis.
  • Medical marijuana is already big business. Prescription cannabis is now   available in 18 states and Washington, D.C., with 11 more states   considering legislation to legalize the drug for medical use. Currently,   the medical marijuana market in the U.S. is worth $1.7 billion, with   that figure expected to rise as more and more markets open up across the   country
  • nutraceutical companies, the changing laws represent   a huge opportunity
  • New technologies capable of extracting medically useful Cannabidoil   (CBD) from cannabis and hemp are the future of nutraceuticals,

• Can anyone turn streaming music into a real business? | The Verge

  • Spotify has more than five million paying subscribers, proving that customers will pay rather than pirate every month for a rich library of music if it's inexpensive and available everywhere
  • The growth of ad-supported and subscription services alone simply hasn't been enough to change the fundamentals of the business.
  • Everyone wants streaming music to be cheap or free for listeners, offer every song ever recorded, be made available on every device, be consistently lucrative for the industry, and give new and established artists robust support for new music.
  • online music distribution will be controlled by a small number of corporate powerhouses that will use songs as a loss leader, the way that Wal-Mart stores once did for CDs
  • They don't care if they make money," Pakman said, "because they make a bunch of money elsewhere on music

• News from The Associated Press

  • The junior league of smartphone operating systems is getting more competitive. Phones from yet another contender - Tizen - will go on sale this year with a view to eventually competing with the industry leaders, Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

    For now, Tizen will compete with another newcomer, Firefox OS, as well as Microsoft's Windows Phone and a revamped BlackBerry operating system.

    Most of the impetus behind Tizen comes from cellphone carriers, which want a successful counterweight to the clout of Google and Apple. Samsung has become the world's largest maker of smartphones in large part through its embrace of Android.

    Tizen has a powerful backer in Samsung Electronics Co.

• 46,609,072 People on Food Stamps in 2012; Record 47,791,996 in December | The Weekly Standard

  • Over the weekend, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that the Obama administration is encouraging growth in the food stamps program as a way to stimulate the economy
  • We spend a trillion dollars each year on federal poverty programs. That’s more than the budget for Social Security or Defense. But poverty seems only to increase. Something is wrong.

• New drug being developed using compound found in red wine 'could help humans live until they are 150' | Mail Online

  • Drugs that could combat ageing and help people to live to 150-years-old may be available within five years, following landmark research.

    The new drugs are synthetic versions of resveratrol which is found in red wine and is believed to have an anti-ageing effect as it boosts activity of a protein called SIRT1.
    

    Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has been testing the medications on patients suffering with medical conditions including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

  • The target enzyme, SIRT1, is switched on naturally by calorie restriction and exercise, but it can also be enhanced through activators.

    The most common naturally-occurring activator is resveratrol, which is found in small quantities in red wine, but synthetic activators with much stronger activity are already being developed.

• Cheaper Low-Tar Cigarettes Seen As Aid to Quit Smoking... | Stuff.co.nz

  • a health advocate is asking Parliament to consider another pioneering initiative - non-addictive cigarettes. 

      

       Murray Laugesen, chairman of End Smoking New Zealand, said cheap tobacco with very low nicotine content could provide an alternative to smokers over normal-strength brands

  • Laugesen said very low nicotine cigarettes, currently unavailable here but sold in the United States

  • smokers will find it easier and more will successfully kick the habit. 

      

       Laugesen said a body of research, done in New Zealand and abroad, proved just that

  • It's one that's difficult for health people to get their head around - the idea that we should be allowing people to continue smoking, but they're already smoking the addictive cigarettes like crazy
  • He also believed lower levels of nicotine in products on the market could defer or prevent new smokers from forming a habit

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.