Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You - WSJ.com

  • Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city
  • The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. That allows them to create portraits of roughly 2 million people's habits as they have gone about their daily lives, traveling from yoga studios to restaurants, to coffee shops, sports stadiums, hotels, and nightclubs.
  • The company's dense network of sensors can track any phone that has Wi-Fi turned on, enabling the company to build profiles of consumers lifestyles.

• Technology and jobs: Coming to an office near you | The Economist

  • The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers.
  • From driverless cars to clever household gadgets (see article), innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.
  • Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information (“big data”), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people.

• Bitcoin a Fool's Gold Standard - NYTimes.com

  • People would learn soon enough why nongovernment money works badly.

     

    Deflation is an obvious issue. Price declines are inevitable when a finite supply of Bitcoin money, a feature of the software, meets an expanding supply of purchased goods and services. That would be uncomfortable. Consumers might delay purchases as they wait for prices to fall, workers might chafe at regular annual wage cuts, and creditors would be even worse off

  • the popular interest in Bitcoin can be interpreted as a sign of ignorance of economic history. More realistically, it is a sad statement of a loss of faith in a monetary system that has not worked as well as promised. Unfortunately, Bitcoin is no more than a high-tech version of an even worse system

• Will the robot 'jobocalypse' make YOU obsolete? 2014 could be the year a droid takes your job, say experts | Mail Online

  • A huge 70% of occupations could become automated over next 30 years
  • I believe we are the inflection point where robotics are going to change everything you know and do,

• Why Bitcoin Matters - NYTimes.com

  • What technology am I talking about? Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and – I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.
  • Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem
  • Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.
  • What kinds of digital property might be transferred in this way? Think about digital signatures, digital contracts, digital keys (to physical locks, or to online lockers), digital ownership of physical assets such as cars and houses, digital stocks and bonds … and digital money
  • All these are exchanged through a distributed network of trust that does not require or rely upon a central intermediary like a bank or broker. And all in a way where only the owner of an asset can send it, only the intended recipient can receive it, the asset can only exist in one place at a time, and everyone can validate transactions and ownership of all assets anytime they want.
  • (including converting dollars from your account into Bitcoin, if you did not own any Bitcoin

• Does your coffee machine need its own domain name? - Tech News and Analysis

  • of The Wireless Registry, a company trying to build the equivalent of a domain name server for the itnernet of things

• Are app developers enabled enough in the Internet of Things era? - The Next Web

  • The world of smart devices is dazzling, the potential is there but what’s holding us back isn’t technology but our ability to know what to do with it.
  • The “Internet of Things” and open source hardware and software is surely going to turn up some ingenius uses of smart devices – and these are going to arise from the next crop of entrepreneurs and niche start-ups.
  • the demand for apps to control the plethora of sensors increases.

• Another day another cloud alliance: This time its VMware and Capgemini - Tech News and Analysis

  • there are three cloud layers. At the base there is infrastructure — provided by the aforementioned AWS, VCHS, Microsoft Windows Azure clouds. Then there’s a middle layer, like the one described above, that lets the customer aggregate base services needed from the infrastructure providers. Then atop that there’s a business application layer that will likewise aggregate Software-as-a-Service applications from many providers — say Salesforce.com for CRM;

• Porn.com's marketing director: 'I definitely believe that porn will be Bitcoin's killer app' - The Next Web

  • Kay believes porn.com’s increase in sales thanks to Bitcoin is the result of more than just hype. Sure, Bitcoin fans are rushing out to support a site that takes their preferred form of payment, but he also argues privacy and confidentiality are “paramount” for the majority of users joining an adult service.
  • Most porn is available for free, but premium services require forking over some dough, almost always accompanied by personal information like your full name and address. Bitcoin circumvents all that, although it doesn’t support recurring payments, which makes it impractical for renewable subscriptions.

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• BT trials white-space system for connecting smart cities - Tech News and Analysis

  • NeulNET is based on the new Weightless standard, which takes unused fragments of radio spectrum and harnesses them to connect smart meters, structural-integrity sensors and other devices without needing dedicated spectrum. Low power is the name of the game – this is all about devices that can run for many years without needing new batteries or other maintenance. Think of this technology as the machine-to-machine connectivity glue for the “smart cities” concept
  • The new system is supposed to give operators everything they need to dive into this new world of connected lampposts and bridges. At the heart of it is the NeulNET Connected Device Platform (CDP), a cloud-based platform for device and service-level management, authentication and billing, for which operators will pay on a “per device, per month” basis.

• Report: Sprint to offer Wi-Fi calling - Tech News and Analysis

  • Wi-Fi calling is a significant feature because it allows you to place and receive calls and text messages over Wi-Fi instead of your cellular network.

• Software investment hit record levels in 2013 (report) | VentureBeat | Deals | by Rebecca Grant

  • According to MoneyTree’s annual report, the software sector captured 37% of total venture capital for the year, which is the highest percentage recorded since MoneyTree’s inception in 1995.

• The White Ghetto | National Review Online

  • America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency.
  • There is no cure for poverty, because there is no cause of poverty — poverty is the natural condition of the human animal.
  • The government gives people checks, but nobody teaches them how to live

• XtremIO co-founder dives back into flash storage pool with Elastifile - Tech News and Analysis

  • Our vision is that the storage market is facing a transition from hardware-based primary storage coming from the big guys like NetApp, EMC and Dell to a much more flexible, elastic software-based primary storage,”

• Au revoir NFC? Carrier Bouygues reportedly cools on contactless payments - Tech News and Analysis

  • France’s Bouygues Telecom has effectively abandoned its program for using mobile phones as contactless payment devices
  • NFC is still not a sure thing when it comes to handsets – indeed, outside of a couple of countries it’s barely taken off for users of contactless payment cards. Part of this is down to manufacturer enthusiasm; Apple, for example, still doesn’t build NFC into its iOS device

• Welcome To The Net Neutrality Nightmare Scenario

  • We may be entering the era of sponsored data — the era of an internet that we don’t directly pay for, but that we also don’t control. It’s the old net neutrality nightmare, in other words, disguised as a gift.
  • an assurance that internet providers can’t favor one kind of traffic over another, or charge for access to certain parts of the internet. All traffic, according to the rules, was to be treated equally
  • This ruling means there is no one who can protect us from ISPs that block or discriminate against websites, applications or services,” says a statement from the organization. Tell the FCC to start treating broadband like a communications service, and to restore its Net Neutrality rules.”

• Court strikes down FCC's net neutrality rules, agency may appeal - Tech News and Analysis

  • n plain English, this means that they have had to behave in a similar way to phone companies and not give special preference to one type of call (or traffic) over another.
  • The upshot of Tuesday’s ruling is that it could open the door for internet giants like Verizon and Time Warner to cut deals with large content providers — say Disney or Netflix — to ensure that their web content was delivered faster and more reliably than other sites.

• Court Strikes Down Net Neutrality - NationalJournal.com

  • If the decision stands, it could mean that Internet providers could soon start charging websites like Google, Facebook and Netflix to reach users.

• When Google closes the Nest deal, privacy issues for the internet of things will hit the big time - Tech News and Analysis

  • when a company like Google — which has had numerous run-ins over privacy in the U.S. and abroad — plans to buy a company that makes products equipped with motion detectors that track what’s happening inside the home, it’s time that conversation about privacy and the internet of things takes a step forward

• Spectrum Sharing Drives Mobile Market Growth

  • The continued growth of the mobile ecosystem depends on unimpeded access to data. New radio technologies that enable spectrum sharing and better public policies will ensure that wireless innovation continues without disruption.
  • As growing numbers of devices consume more capacity, carriers are being compelled to make billions of dollars in capital investments for additional spectrum resources
  • Why is this spending spree even necessary? In large part, it is the result of ill-conceived government policies, such as auctions, that have created artificial spectrum scarcity. Much spectrum sits idle at any given time due to spectrum auctions, which give service providers control over large swaths of our wireless infrastructure. That encourages inefficiency and underuse of spectrum. It also costs carriers billions and keeps new competitors and technologies out of the market.

  • Vint Cerf, one of the creators of the Internet, recently said that radio spectrum isn’t being used effectively due to regulatory constraints that make sharing spectrum more difficult. Continuing the practice of doling out precious spectrum resources through auctions won’t help carriers to adequately meet consumer demand, but the government is still allocating significant spectrum resources to individual carriers.

     

    Think of it this way: The government is allowing private companies to build highways that only green cars can drive on — even when adjacent roads are backed up for miles with traffic jams. Apple or Google could provide additional capacity for their services if more spectrum was available for shared use. Even carriers could expand their device and service offerings. Instead, service providers need to recover their auction investments from the customer.

  • There is now a consensus among regulators that neither the spectrum availability nor inefficiency problems have been solvable with existing technical and regulatory approaches. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has responded by c

• VMware poaches top Citrix desktop virtualization talent: it just got real in here. - Tech News and Analysis

  • VMware leads the world in server virtualization but has struggled in its desktop virtualization efforts where it lags Citrix’ XenDesktop.
  • The year of desktop virtualization:

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Most In-Demand Tech Skills: Why Java And The Classics Ruled 2013 - ReadWrite

  • Java’s popularity may indicate employers’ rising interest in mobile development. But due to the language’s wide number of development uses
  • employers listed Java as the number-one developer skill they’d be seeking out over the course of 2013. Likewise, ReadWrite also predicted that Java would be one of the seven most in-demand technology skills for the upcoming year
  • What should job seeking developers take from this? Trendy skills and languages may come and go, but employers are still boosting for the classics. 

• What mattered at CES 2014 -- Day 1 | CES In Depth - CNET Blogs

  • Sony also (sort of) unveiled an upcoming cloud-based video service, through which customers will be able to watch TV and movies whenever they want and on whatever device they want, including, yes, game consoles, but also devices such as the  iPad and smartphones. No name or launch date were given.

• Verizon cloud will let you buy your Oracle by the hour - Tech News and Analysis

  • Oracle and Verizon are teaming up so that Oracle shops can run their databases and Fusion middleware on the Verizon Enterprise Cloud and pay for all that by the hour
  • This is a pretty important enterprise software deal for Verizon which is billing its new cloud as a safe, secure, highly-available home for enterprise applications
  • What Verizon is doing is help those Oracle customers move some or all of their work off of physical CPUS and let them run Oracle across a spectrum from managed services to the existing Verizon Terremark enterprise cloud to the new super-duper Verizon cloud,

• TiVo Moves Storage Of TV Shows Into The Cloud With New Network DVR Service | TechCrunch

  • DVR manufacturer TiVo has spent most of the last 15 years building hardware that would allow consumers to record their favorite TV shows and watch them later. Now the company is working toward building products that would let consumers save their favorite shows not on a hard drive in a box, but up in the cloud.
  • With the network DVR, TiVo will be able to deliver the same consistent UI to users without having to have a hard drive in its set-top boxes. That will dramatically lower the cost of producing hardware, and it offers all sorts of new pricing and business models on top of its service.

• 25 Game-Changing Hard Trends That Will Create Both Disruption and Opportunity on a Global Level | Flash Foresights from Daniel Burrus | Big Think

  • Big Data as-a-Service (BDaaS) will emerge this year as cloud providers offer midsize and smaller organizations access to much larger streams of relevant data they could not tap into otherwise
  • this represents a major shift in how organizations obtain and maintain software, hardware, and computing capacity.
  • As individuals increasingly use personal mobile clouds, we will see a shift to services and less of a focus on the devices we use to access our services. This shift will also help us address the three limiting factors of mobility: battery life, memory, and processors.
  • Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) is increasingly joining Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), creating what some have called “IT as a service.” The rapid growth of Collaboration-as-a-Service (CaaS), Security-as-a-Service (SaaS), Networking as-a-Service (NaaS), and many more are all giving birth to Everything as-a-Service (XaaS).
  • These services will help companies cut costs as they provide access to powerful software programs and the latest technology without having the expense of a large IT staff and time-consuming, expensive upgrades.
  • continue to see the virtualization of processing power, allowing mobile devices to access supercomputer capabilities and apply it to processes such as purchasing and logistics
  • Intelligent Electronic Agents
  • This is the year we will see sales organizations using this to enhance communication and collaboration, gaining new competitive advantages.
  • Geo-Spatial Visualization combines geographic information systems (GIS) with location-aware data, RFID (radio frequency identification), and other location-aware sensors (including the current location of users from the use of their mobile devices) to create new insights and competitive advantage
  • By 2020, there will be well over a billion machines talking to each other,

• T-Mobile to buy unused Verizon spectrum in deal worth over $3 billion | The Verge

  • Licenses for the spectrum were last purchased by Verizon for $2.4 billion, but the airwaves sat unused. Verizon CFO Frank Shammo indicated the carrier was willing to sell the license to the spectrum for a reasonable price, with both AT&T and T-Mobile reportedly looking into bids.
  • The company will use the new low-band airwaves to support its aggressive rollout of LTE services across the US. Although it's reportedly vulnerable to interference from TV operators, the spectrum offers better building penetration and rural coverage than many other bands

• Companies, Shifting Production, Expand to Accommodate Robots - NYTimes.com

  • hey shift more production to robotics. Many are expanding their commercial footprint with a new addition or in some cases, excavating for a lower floor to accommodate the recent influx of extremely heavy live-in machines

• Always On Real-Time Access

  • As we peer into 2014, we will see the total number of cellular subscriptions eclipsing humans on the planet for the first time
  • The inefficiencies of a middlemen can be overcome by algorithms. The concept is not new but society expects more each year to narrow the gap between the thought and task execution.

• Happy New Year? Here's What 33 CEOs are Worrying About in 2014 - Corporate Intelligence - WSJ

  • There are two issues in the wireless industry today that need to be decisively and transparently addressed. Beyond aging infrastructure and a rising demand for spectrum, the issues of data security and data collection are critical to protecting the safety and peace of mind of consumers when using their mobile devices
  • The sustainability of the economic recovery, particularly as it relates to employment and the % of workforce participation.

• Should Governments Mandate Videoconferencing?

  • should take the next step and mandate videoconferencing in lieu of travel for employees.
  • However, a bill introduced in the House of Representatives this summer, H.R. 2643 (also known as the "Cut the Waste, Stay in Place Act of 2013” bill) takes it a step further, by mandating the reduction of the federal government's travel expenditures by 50 percent in 2017. The U.S. federal government spends about $15 billion each year in travel expenses
  • While videoconferencing and telecommunications technologies save money on travel expenditures, there are other costs to consider. Security and bandwidth requirements are the top of the list, and government official will need to spend money to ensure their networks will meet the increased demand.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Andreessen: Tech Bubble Believers 'Don't Know What They're Talking About' - WSJ.com

  • In a 2011 essay in The Wall Street Journal, venture capitalist and Internet pioneer                                    Marc Andreessen                               predicted that software companies are "eating the world" by replacing old industries with new services that are smarter, faster and cheaper.

    If anything, Andreessen's prophecy is unfolding ahead of schedule

  • Mr. Andreessen: The costs of building an Internet company today are far lower than they were in the late '90s. In the '90s

• NanoTech Entertainment, Inc. (NTEK): So what. Everyone doesn't need to watch something

  • There was a bigger case for 3D than there is for 4K

• Google, Apple Forge Auto Ties - WSJ.com

  • they are working together to develop in-car entertainment and information systems that are based on Google's Android software, people familiar with the matter said
  • "The car is becoming the ultimate mobile device

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Meanings of the Selfie - NYTimes.com

  • attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking. In this age of too much information at a click of a button, the power to attract viewers amid the sea of things to read and watch is power indeed.

• A New Twist in International Relations: The Corporate Keep-My-Data-Out-of-the-U.S. Clause - Bloomberg

  • Some companies are apparently so concerned about the NSA snooping on their data that they're requiring - in writing - that their technology suppliers store their data outside the U.S.
  • the language began appearing in contracts over the past couple weeks, and could be an early indicator of things to come as businesses adapt to a landscape altered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks. Documents leaked by Snowden indicate that the NSA has tapped fiber-optic cables abroad, circumvented or cracked encryption and is massively collecting telephone records and Internet traffic.
  • U.S.-based technology companies face a serious threat.

• The Year Megaplatforms Ruled The Internet

  • 2013 was the year that a major, decade-long internet cycle neared its completion. 2014, at best, will be the very beginning of the next one.

• Do We Want an Erasable Internet? - WSJ.com

  • If the Snapchat model takes off—if other sites and services began to promote the idea of erasability as a competitive feature—the Internet would look very different from the Internet of today. It would be a more private network, one without the constant worry of every ill-considered picture or thought being held up for ridicule by the whole world, forever. But it also might be a less useful Internet, a network on which you couldn't look up an old photo every time you felt nostalgic, or where computers wouldn't always feed you suggestions based on your history, since your history wouldn't be complete.

• Christmas Lights? Electricity Price Index at All-Time High in U.S. | CNS News

  • he seasonally adjusted electricity price index hit an all-time high in the United States in November,

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Power Assure and RagingWire Schedule Demo of Software Defined Power at Gartner Data Center Conference 2013 - HispanicBusiness.com

  • The demonstration will show how, once configured with the service level and other application requirements, Software Defined Power continuously and automatically optimizes resource levels, the companies said, both within and between data centers.

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Friday Charts: The Death Of TV, Annoying Politicians And The Most Unexpected Economic Stimulus Plan - Seeking Alpha

  • every penny of lower gas prices per gallon yields $1 billion in economic stimulus, according to Deutsche Bank's Joe LaVorgna.
  • Meanwhile, the 800-pound gorilla in the online streaming industry,
  • So for every one American who ditched cable TV, almost two signed up for Netflix. The investment implications couldn't be clearer: Go short cable television and long video streaming.

• 10 Trends for 2014 and Beyond | JWT Intelligence

  • ● Executive Summary
     ● Immersive Experiences
     ● Do You Speak Visual?
     ● The Age of Impatience
     ● Mobile As a Gateway to Opportunity
     ● Telepathic Technology
     ● The End of Anonymity
     ● Raging Against the Machine
     ● Remixing Tradition
     ● Proudly Imperfect
     ● Mindful Living

• Evolve or Die: 5 New Service Areas You Should Be Looking At - Technibble

  • Evolve or Die: 5 New Service Areas You Should Be Looking At

• Wipro - Press Releases > 'Hybrid Cloud is the New Normal', says Wipro-Cisco Joint Study

  • IT decision-makers report great interest in using IaaS in a hybrid cloud approach to complement on premises capacity, rather than replace it, and are planning for the impact that it will have on network operations and spending. While a hybrid approach promises cost savings and significant gains in IT and business flexibility, some concerns remain around how to manage and integrate on-premises infrastructure with cloud services in a hybrid cloud architecture.

     

    The study notes that 60% of the respondents believe virtualization will be the primary technology over the next 12 months. Banking, financial services and insurance companies strongly recognize the link between virtualization and private/hybrid cloud enablement with 97% of those surveyed highlighting this aspect.

• Richard Bernstein's 10 Themes For 2014 - Business Insider

  • RICH BERNSTEIN: These 10 Themes Will Be The Big Market Stories Of 2014

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• E-cigarettes just more smoke and mirrors, doctors say | Fox News

  • A top concern is the nicotine delivery rate, Leone said. With nicotine patches and gum, the nicotine delivery is regulated, with small amounts of nicotine released slowly into the bloodstream. But with traditional cigarettes and now e-cigarettes, heat creates a freebase form of nicotine that is more addictive or what smokers would call more satisfying. The nicotine goes right into the lungs, where it is quickly channeled into the heart and then pumped into the brain.

      

    Once addicted, the body will crave nicotine. And although nicotine isn't the most dangerous toxin in tobacco's arsenal, this chemical nevertheless is a cancer-promoting agent, and is associated with birth defects and developmental disorders.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• BYOD As We Know It Is Dead - Forbes

  • If BYOD 1.0 has been responding to the needs of the employee, BYOD 2.0 efforts will focus more on the needs of where the enterprise and the employee intersect. Perhaps the most valuable key attribute of BYOD 2.0 will be to provide right- time experience (user interface + user experience) to the systems, solutions and points of collaboration that are mutually relevant to the company and to the employee.

• BYOD As We Know It Is Dead - Forbes

  • 90%+ of BYOD activities are email, calendar, personal banking, news, family life coordination, Twitter and Facebook Facebook, but little else.
  • If BYOD 1.0 is about employees, what might a BYOD 2.0 look like?
  • how do we move from this Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) paradigm into BYOD 2.0, which you talk about as more of a “Use Your Own Device” mentality?

• Tech Trend for 2014: The Risk in BYOD Offices | Entrepreneur.com

  • 60 percent of businesses allow employees to access company networks via their personal devices under a strategy known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
  • "The problem I have with BYOD is security," Hussain says

• Guest Post: Is Obamacare The Final Nail In The Coffin Of The Middle Class? | Zero Hedge

  • If there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them.
  • Obamacare is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, it is causing health insurance premiums to explode to absolutely ridiculous levels, and it is systematically killing jobs even though the employer mandate has been delayed for a while.

• New lithium-ion battery design that's 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster | ExtremeTech

  • According to the researchers, this is not simply an evolutionary step in battery tech, “It’s a new enabling technology… it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It’s allowing us to do different, new things.”

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Patent Properties Announces Third Quarter 2013 Results - WSJ.com

  • In addition, we remain on schedule to launch an entirely new patent licensing solution for the mass market in the second half of 2014. We believe our new licensing platform, once built, will address significant inefficiencies in the multi-billion dollar patent licensing market

• How Silicon Valley turned on President Obama

  • Executives at Google, which issued a polite denial when the first revelations about PRISM came out, were publicly furious over the new revelations (which the NSA denied): "We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, told The Verge. This is the same company that in October 2012 gave $342,409 to Democrats and only $37,250 to Republicans, according to data from OpenSecrets.
  • "There's a strong libertarian streak that dampens support for the Obama administration... Entrepreneurs don't like the government telling them what they can or can't do with their bodies or their wallets," says Craig Montuori, a Caltech aerospace engineer

• Little-Known Tax Funding Obamacare - My9 New Jersey

  • If you are single with an adjusted gross income of $200,000 or file jointly with an income of $250,000 or more, you may be impacted. Once you sell your home, any profits over the first $500,000 are already subject to a capital gains tax. And now those profits will have an additional 3.8% tax to fund Obamacare.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Report: MEMS sensors and hands-free UI will revolutionize mobile | TG Daily

  • Accelerometers, gyroscopes, NFC, and gesture recognition are predicted to be the big winners in mobile devices. These mobile technologies are projected to make the greatest penetration gains over the coming years, according to a recent study by analysts at ABI Research.
  • Hands-free operation or gesture recognition is soon going to become a key differentiator in high-end flagship smartphones, media tablets, and smart glasses,

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• HHS brings in Verizon to help HealthCare.gov

  • HHS office said Sunday the department would reach outside its government contractors to civilian companies that might be able to solve HealthCare.gov's problems more quickly

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Obamacare's broken website cost more than LinkedIn, Spotify combined | Digital Trends

  • The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal.  The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.
  • Government has a long history of spending money unnecessarily. But in an age when the U.S is home to the world’s largest, most successful Internet companies, how is it possible that we can’t even manage to build a functional website without blowing through hundreds of millions of dollars?
  • What I cannot stand is a nation that has vast technological resources in its citizenry spending $600 million of our collective money to slap together a product that, thus far, has only managed to waste people’s precious minutes. So the next time our government comes up with any bright idea that relies upon a massive website, let’s all be sure to ask how they plan to build it.

• Ann Coulter - October 9, 2013 - DEMOCRATS TO AMERICA: WE OWN THE GOVERNMENT!

  • Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates
  • No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare
  • Obamacare is turning America into a part-time nation

• Amazon’s ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’ Service Challenges PayPal For The Web’s Payment Business | TechCrunch

  • Amazon launched a service called Login and Pay with Amazon today at Money 2020 that lets partner sites enable a payments button that will compete with PayPal

• visualant_s1a3-15716.htm

  • We expect that we will need additional financing to implement our business plan and to service our ongoing operations and pay our current debts
  • Although the Company recently secured financing as a result of its private placement with Special Situations Fund and other investors, the funds received by the Company in that transaction may not cover all debts and other obligations due in the coming months. We may need additional financing within the next six months. If we raise additional capital through borrowing or other debt financing, we will incur substantial interest expense. Sales of additional equity securities will dilute on a pro rata basis the percentage ownership of all holders of common stock. When we raise more equity capital in the future, it will result in substantial dilution to our current stockholders
  • Some of the present shareholders have acquired shares at prices as low as $0.001 per share,

• Disability, USA - CBS News

  • It's been called a "secret welfare system" with it's own "disability industrial complex," a system ravaged by waste and fraud.
  • Go read the statute. If there's any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability. That's pretty clear. So, where'd all those disabled people come from?
  • If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits
  • In 1971, fewer than 20 percent of claimants were represented. Now, over 80 percent of claimants are represented by attorneys or representatives.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Need health care coverage? Just dial 1-800-F**KYO to reach Obamacare's national hotline | The Daily Caller

  • Need health insurance? The Obama administration has you covered. Simply dial 1-800-FUCKYO to reach the next available health-care provider.

     

    Far from being a mistype, that’s the official number that Health and Human Services wants Americans to dial when seeking health care. Obamacare’s national call center really did list its number as 1-800-318-2596, helpfully spelling out President Barack Obama’s tendency to blatantly flip the bird in plain view.

• Researchers claim many jobs at risk for automation. Here's what they missed.

  • 47 percent of U.S. jobs are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years.

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Are Robots Killing The Middle Class? | The Federalist

  • A few years back, President Barack Obama claimed that America was experiencing “structural issues with our economy.” It wasn’t simply that inflexible Republicans were standing in the way of prosperity but that “a lot of businesses” had become more efficient. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM,” he went on, “you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”
  • A few years back, President Barack Obama claimed that America was experiencing “structural issues with our economy.” It wasn’t simply that inflexible Republicans were standing in the way of prosperity but that “a lot of businesses” had become more efficient. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM,” he went on, “you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”
  • “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.”

• Day traders, angels and venture capital: The internet changes everything, including money - Tech News and Analysis

  • Fast forward to 2013 and we are seeing history repeat itself with new financial innovation dropping regulatory barriers, lower costs, and driving much wider participation in a previously closed market. The club-like closed ecosystem of startup investing is about to be pried open, thanks to new rules from the Securities & Exchange Commission, which has approved many reforms as part of the Jump Start our Business Startups (JOBS) Act
  • During the day-trading revolution, the biggest beneficiary was Island/Datek Online, a day trading platform started by Joshua Levine and Jeffrey Citron. The analogy in the startup world is AngelList, a startup funding platform co-founded by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• IW 500 Lessons: Endless Projects To Consumerization Myths - Network

  • Dish Network Service, the satellite TV company, provides a typical example of the tablet and smartphone innovation we saw this year. Dish gave 15,000 field technicians Samsung Galaxy Note "phablets" on which they do all their work. Each device replaces three: a tablet PC, push-to-talk phone and in-vehicle GPS. The consumerization payoff comes from having a dramatically cheaper tech platform (several million dollars in savings the past year, the company says) and doing less training because the interface is familiar and easy to use.

• Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1% - Forbes

  • All proper human interactions are win-win; that’s why the parties decide to engage in them. It’s not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. It’s the Al Capones and Bernie Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both parties gain.
  • It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa

• With iBeacon, Apple is going to dump on NFC and embrace the internet of things - Tech News and Analysis

  • For a couple of reasons: it opens a door to new set of applications such as indoor maps and in-store marketing, it makes the internet of things a realty and it might kill NFC (near-field communications), the wireless technology most linked with mobile payments
  • Using Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE), iBeacon opens up a new whole dimension by creating a beacon around regions so your app can be alerted when users enter them. Beacons are a small wireless sensors placed inside any physical space that transmit data to your iPhone using Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth 4.0 and Bluetooth Smart)
  • Just like NFC, iBeacons even allow you to pay the bill using your smart phone. The best part? iBeacon can run for up to two years on a single coin battery and it comes with accelerometer, flash memory, a powerful ARM processor and Bluetooth connectivity
  • On the other hand, iBeacons are a little expensive compared to NFC chips, but iBeacons range is up to 50 meters. Not all phones have NFC chips, but almost all have Bluetooth capability.

• Obama administration urges FCC to require carriers to unlock mobile devices - The Washington Post

  • Several months after calling for legislation to unlock cellphones, the White House filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices so that users can easily switch between carriers.

• Investors Must Be Careful in the Hot New E-Cig Market (LO, RAI, VPCO.OB)

  • With so many competitors in such a relatively small but rapidly growing market, it is highly likely that price wars will soon start to ripple across the market. Rising competition means smaller margins, which will inevitably push some smaller competitors out of the market.
  • All of these factors point to one conclusion: Big tobacco has the ability to lock out smaller competitors.
  • All in all, e-cigs may be one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive technologies to hit the market this year. With so much competition now hitting the market, however, it could be wise to stand back and only back the winners -- when they emerge

• Student Loan Debt Could Cause The Next Financial Crisis | Market Daily News

  • Student debt in the U.S. economy is taking the shape of a bubble
  • The U.S. government has effectively become the biggest creditor to students. It has gotten to a point where it is forcing the big banks to move away from issuing student debt

• Seen At 11: 'Pulse Passwords' Could Soon Replace Pin Numbers « CBS New York

  • Soon, your heart and your body might be used to keep track of just about everything if new technology is able to unlock “pulse passwords”.

     

    Your heartbeat reveals more about you than your health, Bionym chief executive officer Karl Martin explained.

  • Our heartbeats are as unique to us as our fingerprints and now they are being used to replace passwords, key cards, and bank cards,
  • The new technology could pose considerable roadblocks for hackers because heartbeats cannot be replicated.

• Apple's Fingerprint ID May Mean You Can't 'Take the Fifth' | Wired Opinion | Wired.com

  • Because the constitutional protection of the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that “no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” may not apply when it comes to biometric-based fingerprints (things that reflect who we are) as opposed to memory-based passwords and PINs (things we need to know and remember).
  • The privilege against self-incrimination is an important check on the government’s ability to collect evidence directly from a witness. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Fifth Amendment broadly applies not only during a criminal prosecution, but also to any other proceeding “civil or criminal, formal or informal,” where answers might tend to incriminate us.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Everywhere I Go I See Jobs That Will Be Replaced By Robots - Business Insider

  • regardless of whether you believe automation is good or bad it is inevitable.
  • The bigger point is that we’re on the cusp of an era of accelerated automation of our workforce
  • This automation will happen at a speed that will mean people won’t simply be able to retrain into another role as has happened in the past
  • This will be one of the biggest challenges to mankind as it needs to reshape mindsets developed for thousands of years.

• 20 Great Ideas To Steal In 2013 - Network Computing

  • Two common themes this year are the use of Web-based collaboration tools and mobile apps that take up arms against bloated software and workflow complexity

• Virtualization: A Way To Do Much More With Much Less and With Greater Agility | Flash Foresights from Daniel Burrus | Big Think

  • Virtualization and cloud computing go hand-in-hand, and virtualizing servers is just the tip of the iceberg. The trend to virtualize everything from servers to processing power to software offerings actually started years ago in the personal sector.
  • Cloud computing, which refers to companies using remote servers that can store data and allow users to access information from anywhere, takes three different evolutionary forms
  • The second form of cloud computing, which is a private cloud, is growing rapidly. A private cloud exists when a company wants added security with cloud computing, yet they still want their people to have access to their bigger files and bigger databases from any device anywhere. Since it’s private, it’s secure and the public does not have access to it. Companies of all sizes are now establishing private clouds.
  • In February 2011, the TV game show Jeopardy featured IBM’s supercomputer Watson against human contestants. Watson beat the humans at Jeopardy quite well because it knew what it was good at and it focused on those categories. With virtualized processing power, you’re basically getting a Watson on your phone. That means you and your employees can make informed decisions about many things, very quickly

• The Cloud Era Begins for Enterprise Tech - NYTimes.com

  • The world now passing away consisted of business systems dominated by computer servers and personal computers. The new one subsumes these into cloud computing and devices like smartphones and tablets
  • One way to do that is to become the unifying agent for all the data that companies are spreading across their servers and cloud services.

• The Four Disruptive Technology Forces that Will Change the World | LinkedIn

  • 1. The internet of things
    A world where everyone and everything is connected. Sensors in everyday objects and devices will be capable of automatically transmitting data over high-speed networks. Those previously 'dumb' objects will then become 'smart' objects capable of automated machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
    
    2. 3D printing
    This technology opens up amazing possibilities for individuals and businesses, with fully working parts able to be created at the touch of a button and for a fraction of the cost of doing it previously. Already 3D printers have been used to create everything from toys and parts for NASA's Mars explorer to medical implants.
    
    3. Graphene
    The development of the super strong and highly conductive graphene has huge implications for the traditionally silicon-dependant technology industry. Potential applications include flexible display screens, electric circuits, solar cells and use in medical, chemical and industrial processes.
    
    4. Connectivity
    Ubiquitous connectivity through a combination of superfast mobile broadband, fibre optic fixed line broadband and wi-fi will drive massive changes in consumer activity and also the way we live and work, especially with faster, lighter and smarter mobile devices.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Was Mitt Romney Right About Everything

  • I look at things happening and I say, you know what? Mitt was actually right when he talked about Russia, and he was actually right when he talked about how hard it was going to be to implement Obamacare, and he was actually right when he talked about the economy. I think there are a lot of everyday Americans who are now feeling the effects of what [Romney] said was going to happen, unfortunately

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