Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Apple removes Java from all OS X Web browsers | Ars Technica

  • Apple stopped including pre-installed versions of Java in OS X and instead gives users the option to install the framework. More recently, Apple issued an update that turns off Java in the browser when users haven't used it recently.

• Summary of MGT CAPITAL INVESTMENTS INC - Yahoo! Finance

  • The Company has agreed to register all shares of Common Stock underlying the Preferred Shares and the Warrant under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") pursuant to the registration right agreement attached hereto as Exhibit 10.4 (the "Registration Rights Agreement"). On October 26, 2012, the transaction was approval by the NYSE MKT

• The Markets Are Open: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to remove Java from the Macintosh operating systems

  • Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to remove Java from the Macintosh operating systems 

     

     

     

     

     

     
     

     The newest updates of the Macintosh operating system will make sure that all the versions of Java be removed from the system. Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) made this announcement on Friday. Apple, on the official support site revealed that Java script will be removed from their native operating systems, since experts have recently discovered that the Java bugs help attackers infiltrate the security of the system and get information. This discovery was made in August, when the experts had conducted the experiment by launching attacks through the bugs found in Java. They were successful.

• Apple removing Java from users' Web browsers on security concerns - San Jose Mercury News

  • Apple (AAPL) is removing old versions of Oracle's (ORCL) Java software from Internet browsers on the computers of its customers when they install the latest update to its Mac operating system.

  • Apple is implementing that change in the wake of a Java

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    security scare that prompted some security experts to caution computer users to only use Java on an as-needed basis.

    Security experts in Europe discovered Java bugs in late August that hackers had exploited to launch attacks. It took Oracle several days to release an update to Java to correct those flaws.

    Adam Gowdiak, a researcher with Polish security firm Security Explorations, said on Friday that he has since found two new security bugs in Java that continue to make computers vulnerable to attack.

• DRM on 3D Printers is a Big Deal. Nathan Myhrvold's Patent is Not. | Public Knowledge

  • DRM is a generic term for a suite of technologies that, in theory, allow people to control how others use digital information.  DRM is usually applied to things protected by copyright (like movies on DVD) in the hopes of preventing unauthorized copying.
    
    DRM is problematic for many reasons, but two are particularly relevant to this discussion.  First, almost by definition, DRM cripples the functionality of devices or programs, making them defective by design.  As applied to 3D printing, DRM could transform a general purpose tool capable of making anything into a specialized tool that can only be used to create a handful of pre-approved items.  Such a transition at this point could cripple the growth of consumer 3D printing

• A Bandwidth Breakthrough - Technology Review

  • Academic researchers have improved wireless bandwidth by an order of magnitude—not by adding base stations, tapping more spectrum, or cranking up transmitter wattage, but by using algebra to banish the network-clogging task of resending dropped packets
  • If the technology works in large-scale deployments as expected, it could help forestall a spectrum crunch

• TransTech Systems to Demo Groundbreaking Visualant ChromaID(TM) Technology at ISC East Exhibition - Financial and Business News - MENAFN

  • The new Cyclops 6 demonstrates the power of the Visualant ChromaID(TM) technology, which reads, records and analyzes invisible chromatic identifiers in gases, liquids, solids and surfaces. The technology promises to spawn a new wave of consumer and industrial applications replacing old spectral analysis techniques found in expensive science labs and making them more accessible to people in the field

• TransTech Systems to Demo Groundbreaking Visualant ChromaID(TM) Technology at ISC East Exhibition - Yahoo! Finance

  • technology, which reads, records and analyzes invisible chromatic identifiers in gases, liquids, solids and surfaces. The technology promises to spawn a new wave of consumer and industrial applications replacing old spectral analysis techniques found in expensive science labs and making them more accessible to people in the field

• Jeff Bezos: The Smart People Change Their Minds | TechCrunch

  • The people who are right a lot often change their minds. Bezos said he doesn’t think consistency of thought as a particularly positive trait. It’s better, even healthier in fact, to have an idea that contradicts one you had before.

     

    The smart people constantly revise their understandings of a matter. They reconsider problems they thought they had solved. They are open to new points of view, new information, and challenges to their own ways of thinking.

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Instagram Grows 850% and Tops Twitter in Mobile Users - Techvibes.com

  • Mobile video should continue to prove its worth for platforms like Instagram that won’t have to include any existing company’s video player. There won’t have to be a Vimeo, YouTube, QuickTime, or Windows Media Player for starters

  • Another technology called Clipstream, Destiny’s streaming media technology, enables a single video file to play on all devices. It comes at a 90% lower bandwidth cost and there is no need for a player.

     

    Videos will “just play” in browsers, mobile and Internet alike with no need for player plug-ins. Firefox recently came out with a mobile browser that thus far represents 1% of the marke

• Together, HTML5 and DRM can take out native apps | VentureBeat

  • • For Consumers (all of us): (a) Hope there’s an app for your mobile platform (b) If you have devices operating on different platforms, you need to purchase the app for each platform (c) Hope the app is specifically designed for your phone and tablet.
     

  • The only thing holding back HTML5 from killing native apps is DRM
  • but the ironic thing is that every video delivered through native apps is not Flash-based
  • but you know what’s missing from its current form? Video.
  • few sites outside of YouTube have worked some back-end magic to ensure you can watch what you want when you want it. Ever visit your favorite site on an iPad only to see a black box where you could swear there should be a video? It sucks.
  • • Native Apps fill the Void: Nobody supports Flash on mobile. Not Apple or Microsoft or Android … and soon not even Adobe. Flash on mobile is a dying technology. If you want to watch videos from your favorite places like Hulu, HBO, or even TMZ, then don’t go into the web browser, visit the app store and download the native app.
     

  • And therein lies the rub: if you want to watch videos on your mobile, download the app. The reason? Within native apps, the video content can be protected. Of course, if you get the app, you’re tied to your device (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.). This is where DRM comes in handy for the ecosystem

  • Yes, there are some who believe DRM in any form goes against the very idea of HTML5. This ideal forces them to make a decision: Either believe that a video-less mobile web world can win or understand that consumers want the good stuff and to get it, it needs to be protected.

     

• MasterCard Selling Your Data Just in Time for the Holidays | Wired Business | Wired.com

  • MasterCard is packaging its transaction data — your transaction data — and selling it to advertisers.
  • When a consumer swipes a credit card in a store, she says MasterCard’s data-packaging division receives information about the date, time, amount and merchant. By aggregating that data and comparing it to its deep well of historical data on spending patterns, Grossman says MasterCard can then divide up consumers into millions of audience “segments

• Amazon's Next Big Business Is Selling You | Wired Business | Wired.com

  • In a digital economy where some of the internet’s biggest companies and the country’s richest people have built their fortunes on the ability to more precisely target ads, one company sits on a trove of data it has barely started to exploit. In internet advertising-speak, visitors to Amazon.com are further down the purchasing funnel than visitors to Google or Facebook. “
  • I think Amazon is just starting to scale the use of shopper data in its advertiser offerings,”

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Triathlon Execution Magic of Riding Steady, Part I: What is Steady? | Endurance Nation

  • Remember that the metabolic cost of watts increases exponentially, not linearly. There is a BIG price to pay, later in the day, for stepping on the gas like this.
  • Also, resistance increases exponentially with wind speed.

• Visualant(TM) and Sumitomo Precision Products Co., Ltd. Unveils Highly-Disruptive Prototypes at JIMA in Japan - Yahoo! Finance

  • expected to spawn a new wave of consumer and industrial applications bringing the benefits of Visualant Spectral Pattern Matching(TM) (SPM) techniques found in expensive science labs to people in the field
  • Visualant's ChromaID(TM) technology, which reads, records and analyzes invisible chromatic identifiers in gases, liquids, solids and surfaces
  • Our vision is to bring the power of science into the hands of people when and where they need them most," said Ron Erickson, Chief Executive Officer of Visualant

• Five Mental Steps to Achieving a Breakthrough Triathlon Performance | Endurance Nation

  • Race day is about how you drive that vehicle the race distance and across the finishline. All the fitness in the world can’t help you if you don’t know how to drive it properly!
  • as race distance increases, the chance of failure on the run increases dramatically
  • the last quarter to third of the distance, as this is when early pacing and other mistakes will begin to express themselves

• Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril - Jennifer Waters's Consumer Confidential - MarketWatch

  • At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.

  • Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because the copyright holder only had control over the first sale.   

     

        Put simply, though Apple Inc.      /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL  -2.13%        has the copyright on the iPhone and Mark Owen has it on the book “No Easy Day,” you can still sell your copies to whomever you please whenever you want without retribution.   

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Let's Play the Digital Music Dating Game | Wired Business | Wired.com

  • Microsoft is probably in talks to buy Rdio, the music streaming service, according to The Next Web. The deal is just a rumor at this point, but one that raises an important point about the future of media: Tech’s biggest players are now deeply interested in streaming music
  • Beyond the purported Microsoft talks, there are older reports about Apple planning an online radio service and Apple and Google talking about buying Spotify, a streaming internet jukebox. After years of ignoring digital music, and years more focused on digital downloads and lockers, it seems the big names in high technology have finally come around to caring about streaming services

• Deezer Has Reportedly Raised $130m - The Next Web

  • French newspaper Le Figaro is reporting that music streaming service Deezer has raised €100m ($130m) in funding from Access Industries, the company that owns Warner Music Group.
  • The news comes at an interesting time for music streaming services. Spotify is growing fast but struggling to make money due to a huge royalties bill, while we’ve heard word that Rdio is in talks to sell to Microsoft.

• Destiny Media Announces Japanese Watermarking Patent - Yahoo! Finance

  • This novel technique embeds an inaudible digital trace or watermark into the content and this trace survives duplication, filtering, down sampling and conversion into other formats, including non digital ones such as an over the air broadcast. Unlike competing watermarking solutions, it is faster to embed or detect and it is extremely robust without affecting audio quality.  The company is not aware of anything similar and believes this technology has strong commercial value and that this technology could be widely licensed directly outside of other Destiny products
  • Destiny also has a patented locking technology, Digital Media Distribution Method and System (7466823) that is compatible with peer to peer networks, but still locks content to only play on authorized computing devices. These patented solutions give the content owner the choice of locking content, so it can't be copied or allowing copies, but protecting those copies with a watermark to identify unauthorized duplication.
  • An advanced pre-release demo is anticipated later this month

• Obama and Romney to face real lie detector during debate | The Daily Caller

  • A spokesman for the group Americans for Limited Government told The Daily Caller on Wednesday they have contracted with a company to use new truth detecting technology to determine whether either candidate is lying during the debate.

     

    “For the first time, within a few hours of a political debate, the American people will know if the candidates are telling the truth, and better be able to judge what promises are real, and which ones are nothing more than political pandering,” Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government said.

     

    The conservative-leaning group says they hope to release the results from Voice Analysis Technology within three hours of the debate.

• The Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers: Greening Chicago's Skyline With Committed Owners, Innovative Technology and Two Very Smart Guys in the Basement | Rebecca Stanfield's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

  • Ryan and Jim have been working with a company called Telkonet to install motion sensing thermostats in every single one of the 1214 rooms in the hotel.  It’s a simple concept, but it is making a huge energy savings impact at the hotel.   Rather than keeping all of the rooms at a comfortable 72 degrees at all times, why not just heat and cool the rooms that are occupied?  This simple change will lower the hotel’s electric bills by more than $150,000 per year.

  • Here’s how it works.  If a room isn’t even reserved for the day, the system allows the room to go on “deep setback.”  Once a guest checks in, the thermostat automatically resets and the room is comfortable by the time the guest reaches it.  When a guest leaves the room for a meeting or sightseeing, the temperature will be allowed to drift just to the point that it could be brought back to that ideal temperature within 15 minutes.  The system is automatically notified when you check out of the room, so that it can go back into deep setback. 

     

    “It seems so simple, but it’s an enormous improvement in our ability to manage our energy use and costs,” said Egan.   

• The polls show a race that is still up for grabs - Right Turn - The Washington Post

  • So what do we really know? Obama is doing worse, much worse in some cases, in every swing state than he did in 2008. Consider that he won Colorado in 2008 by nine points, Wisconsin by almost 14 points and Nevada by 12.5 percent.. So it’s not 2008. Obama is doing worse than four years ago. Romney is doing much better than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

     

• Rumor: Google Wants To Acquire Facial Recognition Startup Viewdle For $30M | TechCrunch

  • There is clearly a lot of interested in facial recognition startups right now.

• Facebook's new pitch to brand advertisers: forget about clicks | Reuters

  • Fewer than 1 percent of in-store sales tied to brand advertising campaigns on Facebook come from people who clicked on an ad

• Google Passes Microsoft’s Market Value as PC Loses to Web - Bloomberg

  • Google Inc. (GOOG) has surpassed Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to become the world’s second-largest technology company as computing over the Internet reduces demand for software installed on desktop machines.
  • reflects the ascension of the Internet as the delivery channel for more of the software and computing tasks that were once left to the Microsoft-dominated PC industry

• Facebook wants 'Like' button to be exempt from child privacy laws | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • Facebook also argued that a "Like" on the social network is free speech and that eliminating teens' access to the button would be a violation of their constitutional rights
  • COPPA requires Web sites obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children younger than 13.

• 3-D Printer Company Seizes Machine From Desktop Gunsmith | Danger Room | Wired.com

  • desktop-manufacturing company Stratasys pulled the lease on a printer rented out for Wiki Weapon, the internet project lead by Wilson and dedicated to sharing open-source blueprints for 3-D printed guns. Stratasys even sent a team to seize the printer from Wilson’s home.
  • Stratasys’s legal counsel wrote back: “It is the policy of Stratasys not to knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes. Therefore, please be advised that your lease of the Stratasys uPrint SE is cancelled at this time and Stratasys is making arrangements to pick up the printer,” stated the lette

• More Mobile News Consumers Choosing Web Over Apps - Forbes

  • More and more, tablet computer users are choosing browsers over apps for their digital news delivery
  • Nearly three-quarters of those who favor apps are iPad users
  • that disparity suggests that momentum will continue to swing in favor of the browser

• Internet-Media Employment Fuels Digital Job Growth | Media - Advertising Age

  • Internet media this year became the media industry's second-largest employment sector, according to Ad Age DataCenter's analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data

  • Employment at U.S. internet-media businesses in July passed staffing in broadcast TV. Internet-media employment earlier passed magazines, radio and cable TV. 

     The only U.S. media sector with more employees: newspapers

• New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates - WSJ.com

  • The rise of license-plate tracking is a case study in how storing and studying people's everyday activities, even the seemingly mundane, has become the default rather than the exception. Cellphone-location data, online searches, credit-card purchases, social-network comments and more are gathered, mixed-and-matched, and stored in vast databases.
  • License-plate databases contain revealing information about people's locations. Police can generally obtain it without a judge's approval. By comparison, prosecutors typically get a court order to install GPS trackers on people's cars or to track people's location via cellphone
  • a professor at George Mason University, did a study in 2010 estimating that about 37% of large police departments were using plate readers. "It's one of the most rapidly diffusing technologies that I've ever seen

• Romney's Challenge: He Is Already the Incumbent

  • The nation will face a fiscal cliff on January 1, and Obama’s plan if he wins is to force tax hikes that may cover some of the gap in the short term but will hurt everyone in the long term through slow economic growth.
  • A Romney loss also means America will have accepted persistent high unemployment and slow growth as the new normal, creating a lost generation and destroying both our entitlement system and our future prosperity. It means Israel will likely be forced to go to war, and likely on its own, against Iran. It means the Supreme Court will be liberal, for at least a generation, as the far-left fulfills its wish to transform our “living Constitution.

• Drop in Ohio voter registration, especially in Dem strongholds, mirrors nationwide trend | Fox News

  • An August study by the left-leaning think tank Third Way showed that the Democratic voter registration decline in eight key swing states outnumbered the Republican decline by a 10-to-one ratio

• Facebook: Federal online privacy rules would violate free speech rights - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

  • Facebook is warning the Federal Trade Commission that its proposed update to children's online privacy rules would infringe constitutionally protected free speech rights.

     The company said that because the proposal would restrict the ability of children to "like," comment on or recommend websites, it would violate the First Amendment

  • The proposal would also ban ads on children's websites from installing tracking files, known as cookies, on users' computers. Advertisers install cookies to track users' browsing history and display targeted ads to them.

     The update would allow sites that are aimed at children and adults to create a log-in page for users to reveal whether they are older than 13. Users younger than 13 would still be able to access the sites, but the sites would face restrictions on the use of the children's information.

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Instagram Beats Twitter In Daily Mobile Users for the First Time - Mike Isaac - Social - AllThingsD

  • Pictures beat words: In August, U.S. smartphone owners visited Instagram from their smartphones more frequently and for longer periods of time than they visited Twitter.
  • While Twitter may have had a greater number of smartphone users visiting its site (via the mobile Web and via Twitter apps), Instagram’s users appear to be returning to the site on a more frequent basis, and spending longer on the site each time they return.
  • Above all else, it speaks to the ongoing mobile issues of Facebook, now the parent company of Instagram. The massive shift in user traffic to mobile devices is a real thing, and Facebook seems to now hold an asset in the highly popular Instagram. The trick now, however, is to figure out a way to effectively monetize Instagram and the Facebook mobile experience.

• Apple’s new Passbook isn’t quite ready for prime time — Apple News, Tips and Reviews

  • o be clear, using the app for what it’s advertised for — scanning barcodes — works as intended. But getting to that point was more complex than expected. In all, the app feels incomplete and perhaps rushed. In other words, it doesn’t feel like an Apple product yet.

• Jenkins: TV Will Be Apple's Undoing - WSJ.com

  • the map mess demonstrates why circumstances are turning against Apple's current business model. Simply, content is king again. However much it might benefit Apple's business model to force users to patronize its own maps app, the company won't get far in trying to deny them Google's far superior app. Apple for a while managed to tame the power of content and make it subservient, but that day is coming to an end.
  • there is no solution to TV that will let Apple keep doing what it has been doing
  • Apple's fans imagine the company can do for TV what it did for music: breaking up the existing distribution model. Forget about it. Television is about to demonstrate the inadequacy of Apple's own business model.
  • Video-content owners aren't looking for a savior and ultimately won't be satisfied with anything less than an open ecosystem accessible by any device
  • To maintain its position, the company will have to focus more on giving its devices superb access to content it doesn't control and hasn't approved.

• More Web Video Watched on TVs Than PCs - Peter Kafka - Media - AllThingsD

  • Consumer tracking service NPD says TV sets are now the most popular way to watch streaming video.
  • 45 percent of consumers report that TV is now their primary Web video screen, up from 33 percent last year

• Fact Check: Is Romney's tax rate really lower than yours? | Fox News

• Microsoft demos Windows Phone 8 mobile wallet - NFC World

  • he software giant's new NFC-enabled wallet at the NFC World Congress last week
  • "Is there a huge amount of money in this?", he asked, regarding Microsoft's adoption of NFC. "Probably not. But think about it in terms of getting consumers and developers interested.

• Romney: Obama misleading voters on auto bailout | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com

  • 'there's nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success.' And the auto industry, in particular General Motors, was so successful for so long that it didn't recognize the need to innovate, to become more productive, to become more efficient, or it would ultimately be vulnerable to foreign competition.

• Iran readies domestic Internet system, blocks Google | Reuters

  • Iran plans to switch its citizens onto a domestic Internet network in what officials say is a bid to improve cyber security but which many Iranians fear is the latest way to control their access to the web.

• Facebook raises fears with ad tracking - CNN.com

  • Facebook is working with a controversial data company called Datalogix that can track whether people who see ads on the social networking site end up buying those products in stores.
  • Facebook is gradually wading into new techniques for tracking and using data about users that raise concerns among privacy advocates
  • Datalogix has purchasing data from about 70m American households largely drawn from loyalty cards and programmes at more than 1,000 retailers, including grocers and drug stores. By matching email addresses or other identifying information associated with those cards against emails or information used to establish Facebook accounts, Datalogix can track whether people bought a product in a store after seeing an ad on Facebook.
  • Facebook users are automatically included in the advertising studies conducted with Datalogix, and cannot directly opt out through their Facebook account. Instead, they must go to the Datalogix website, for which Facebook has a link posted in its help centre

• Shazam Already Helps You Discover Music, Now It Wants To Help You Discover TV Advertising | Fast Company

  • Starting today, you can Shazam any TV show on any channel. And advertisers hope you'll soon be doing the same for commercials.
  • Shazam is aiming to make the second-screen experience so compelling, you'll start Shazaming commercials as you would shows or songs. For its 140 brand partners, which include companies such as Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, and Pillsbury, Shazam is offering access to engaged users and minimizing friction between advertisers and their potential consumers.
  • Shazam has the unique advantage of well-established relationships with all the major TV networks, as well as massive reach, which means massive amounts of invaluable user data. Shazam is adding 2 million users a week and logging 10 million content tags a day. Combine those numbers with information users can choose to share with Shazam and you get a gold mine of data that reflects when those users are Shazaming commercials, what kind of content they interact with the most, and what really gets them to engage with a brand. And all of that means new revenue streams for Shazam, who can neatly feed that data back to networks and advertisers to help them make more informed choices about the content they produce.

• Shazam for TV finally brings content identification to mobile | Broadcast Engineering Blog

  • The concept is not entirely new. Anyone following the mobile landscape for the past year has seen the progress of the second screen, the ability to tie in your handheld mobile device or tablet and have it provide information about the current programming you may be watching on your big screen. Advertisers are especially enamored by the concept because as consumers are whizzing by commercials on their DVRs, they often have their portable devices in their hands or at least close by. Several other apps have used sound recognition to accurately discover what show is currently playing and then load up relevant information, along with a dose of content-specific advertising. Want to buy the dress that the star of the sitcom is wearing? Here’s a quick link to a sale at JCPenney. Watching the game and looking for team jerseys? It’s now a click away via your mobile device on game day, during the game. While various apps have had some success, none have really broke out of the pack. The key point with Shazam is that it opens the gates to new second-screen technology to a huge base of users, most of which may never go hunting around for a content recognition app but may indeed use one if the software they already have includes it.  
  • Shazam makes things easier because really all you have to do is hold the device up in the air, and the app will quickly capture the information from the entertainment you are now consuming. 

• Meet Double Down's Lone Investor: Ron Erickson Talks Online Gambling | Xconomy

• Facebook Is Worth $15 - Barrons.com

  • The rapid shift in Facebook's user base to mobile platforms—more than half of users now access the site on smartphones and tablets—appears to have caught the company by surprise
  • Facebook (ticker: FB) founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg must find a way to monetize its mobile traffic because usage on traditional PCs, where the company makes virtually all of its money, is declining in its large and established markets. That trend isn't likely to change.
  • Anyone who owns Facebook should be exceptionally troubled that they're still trying to 'figure out' mobile monetization and had to lay out $1 billion for Instagram because some start-up had figured out mobile pictures better than Facebook
  • we're a completely new kind of marketing. We're not TV. We're not search. We're a third medium."
  • Most of those mobile-only users probably are under 25, and it's within that group that Facebook is seeing reduced usage on PCs.
  • the declines were sharpest among users aged 12 to 17 and 18 to 24, which saw drops of 42% and 25%, respectively. Time spent on Facebook by PC users aged 55 and older was up sharply.
  • "The paradigm shift to the app model is unequivocally bad for Facebook

• AmEx, Starbucks announce plans for Passbook integration: both live by end of the month -- Engadget

  • According to Venture Beat, AmEx is launching integration with Passbook later today.

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Why the iPhone 5 Does Not Have N.F.C. — It Can't - NYTimes.com

  • “N.F.C. employs lower-frequency operation than cellular, requiring a longer antenna,” Mr. Strauss said. “That antenna is often wrapped around the battery in some cellphones, but a metal back shields any radio waves from reaching a nearby data terminal. Only plastic, Kevlar or similar backings will allow the radio connection for mobile payments. Clearly, Apple chose beauty over functionality with its aluminum back.

• George Magnus Explains Why China Is Lagging - Business Insider

  • 
    • Interesting macro philosophy
  • The modern consequence, he says, is a society that discourages curiosity, critique, challenge, commercialisation and collaborative technology
  • But there’s a strong view that China’s innovation and technology shortcomings are rooted in a socio-cultural system, and an incentive system that emphasises incremental over radical change, and quantity over quality and uniqueness
  • China’s technological cutting edge may forever lag behind that of its western competitors and rivals

• Facebook still plans to lead the charge on the mobile web, HTML5 slurs aside | VentureBeat

  • Facebook has for most of 2012 been leading a hard-and-heavy campaign advocating for the mobile web. For developers, the company has said the platform-agnostic approach can lead to huge distribution benefits.
  • No one company can fix all of these, but we are very keen to work with the industry, browser vendors, OEMs, carriers, and developers themselves to smooth away those challenges,” said Facebooker James Pearce earlier this year.

  • The obvious enhancements went over well with iPhone users, who praised the new app for its functionality. But some early reviewers said the development choice “proves write-once-run-anywhere is and always will be impossible.”

     

• Why Facebook is taking the long view on HTML5 mobile development — Tech News and Analysis

  • And with Zuckerberg wanting Facebook to reach “everyone in the world,” the company said it’s not going to be native iOS apps or a speedy, HTML5 web app — it will have to be both.

• Facebook Exchange Partners Open Up | Adweek

  • A major reason FBX has thus far proved so successful is that Facebook is arguably the best site on which to retarget users. “Users are always on Facebook and always keep the Facebook page open,” Coelius said. In essence, Facebook is the anchor of peoples' online browsing habits: A user sees on Facebook that a friend is on vacation, opens a new tab to see where they might like to travel to, returns to the Facebook tab to see which friends might live there, opens another tab to check airfares and another to find a new swimsuit.

• In the Wake of Instagram’s Emergence, Video Sharing Sites are Poised to Pounce | Business 2 Community

  • Just this past April, Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg announced that the world’s most visited social networking site had purchased wildly popular photo-sharing app Instagram for a measly $1 billion. Facebook finalized the purchase for the photo-sharing app this past week for roughly $715 million.

    It’s a not-too-shabby cash-in for Instagram, a 2-year-old startup with zero revenue that garnered its impressive status by enabling users a simple way to take photos, apply filters and share them with friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

    Gigaom’s Om Malik says Instagram “has created a platform built on emotion. It created not a social network, but instead built a beautiful social platform of shared experiences.” Instagram continued its growth and, shortly after Facebook’s acquisition, surpassed 50 million users while adding five million more each week.

  • Conceivably, video sharing apps should be right on the horizon, perhaps ready to flex their muscles and become the Instagram of Video.  S

• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gives Facebook stock a bump - latimes.com

  • Zuckerberg also signaled that Facebook might get into the search business, a move that would ratchet up competition with rival Google. He said that Facebook already processes about 1 billion search queries a day without “even trying.”

• Facebook Usage Declining - Business Insider

  • Zuckerberg also didn't comment on another ominous Facebook trend: The usage declines are most pronounced among those who were once Facebook's most devoted users: Young people.

  • Anecdotally, one of the services kids are flocking to at Facebook's expense is the new mobile photo network Instagram. Instagram was founded only a few years ago, and it's usage has already exploded to 100 million registered users (one-tenth of Facebook's global users). Instagram has yet to be "monetized," but given its emphasis on visual images, it's not hard to imagine that it could eventually be an effective advertising medium.

     

• Phil Schiller on New iPhone Connector, Lack of NFC, Wireless Charging - Ina Fried - Mobile - AllThingsD

  • Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller said that Passbook alone does what most customers want and works without existing merchant payment systems.

• Video: Dr. James Hayward on Military Security, UAlbany NanoCollege Partnerhip, Nanochip Anti-Counterfeiting Program, $APDN - Michael Sweeney - Seeking Alpha

  • The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany and Long Island-based Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. (OTCBB: APDN) have come to an agreement on a partnership to enable nanotechnology-driven innovations that would play a critical role in preventing the counterfeiting of computer chips -- a collaboration in the groundbreaking area of "nanosecurity" that initially targets the $20 billion defense industry chip market and has the potential to impact nanoelectronics and aerospace markets well in excess of $300 billion.

• With the rise of texting and chat apps, voice-mail use is waning. – USATODAY.com

  • With the rise of texting, instant chat and transcription apps, more people are ditching the venerable tool that once revolutionized the telephone business, displaced armies of secretaries and allowed us to eat dinner more or less in peace.

    The behavioral shift is occurring in tandem with the irreversible fading of voice calls in general, prompting more wireless carriers to offer unlimited voice minutes

• Will 3-D printing lead to a new wave of piracy? — Tech News and Analysis

  • In a must-read story, the Economist explains how cheap 3-D printers could one day let knock-off artists crank out shoes, gadgets, watches and any type of prized design. While counterfeiting is already wide-spread, it could increase dramatically with the machines:

     

    But while the [traditional] pirates’ labour rates and material costs may be far lower, the tools they use to make fakes are essentially the same as those used by the original manufacturers. Equipment costs alone have therefore limited the spread of the counterfeiting industry. But give every sweatshop around the world a cheap 3D printer coupled to a laser scanner, and pirated goods could well proliferate

  • It’s early days yet and, for now, the objects being replicated are dumb pieces of plastic. This means that, in the immediate future, it may only be firms like Lego or Oakley (not Apple or Porsche) that may have to worry.

     

    But if the “print-me-anything” devices take off as predicted, we will eventually be able to copy most things around us. When that happens,  the debates over copyright and the DMCA will look like a tea party

• http://www.circuitsassembly.com/cms/news/13220-us-defense-dept-using-dna-to-combat-counterfeits

  • The US Defense Logistics Agency is confronting the counterfeit problem by implementing genetics-based validation
  • Contractors shall obtain the DNA marking material from Applied DNA sciences or an authorized licensee, and may contact them at   militarymark@adnas.com
  • The DNA marking can be applied with an invisible DNA mark on the part, or the contractor’s ink utilized for part marking can be mixed with the DNA marking material. The authentication DNA used shall be unique to the contractor. Contractors will be required to retain traceability documentation that demonstrates the items provided under the contract have been marked with DNA material produced by Applied DNA Sciences or an authorized licensee, and that the DNA marking is unique to the contractor.

• Applied DNA creates new currency ink | Long Island Business News

  • Applied DNA Sciences of Stony Brook unveiled its latest product Aug. 26, entitled Cashield.  Following up on its AZ Sure product, the new technology is designed to permanently stain cash that is stolen from ATMs or other systems that dispense money. Unlike AZ Sure, however, which only stained cash with a blue ink,

• Investorideas.com - Applied DNA Sciences (OTCBB: APDN) Incorporate Next Generation Security Platform for Passport Coatings

  • Applied DNA Sciences and Holliston are developing and testing DNA-coatings that essentially cannot be copied, and provide a means for customs and law enforcement

• Google To Discontinue Its Prepaid Cards In Google Wallet On October 17 | TechCrunch

  • why did Google finally decide to pull the plug on the longstanding program? According to the official email, Google is sunsetting the prepaid program because it “recently launched the ability to use any debit or credit card in Google Wallet.

• Amid Outage, GoDaddy Moves DNS to Competitor VeriSign | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

  • Following a day-long Domain Name Service server outage, web hosting provider GoDaddy is letting its competitor, VeriSign, host its DNS servers

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• If you see a carrier trumpet their decision to resell MSFT Office 365, short the stock., by Grace Schroeder | NBT Equities Research - Emerging Growth Stocks That Work

  • Hope is not a strategy.

• Applied DNA Sciences Inc. (APDN): All of you know by now that SMT,

  • ALTERA CORPORATION, a world class chip manufacturer, focused on: Automotive, Broadcast, Computer and Storage, Consumer, Industrial, Medical, Military, Test & Measurement, Wireless and Wireline chips and components was also very much part of the DLA research, and worked hand in hand with SMT and APDN during that period.

• When Will Your Smartphone Really Replace Your Wallet? | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

  • Per a push from credit card companies like Visa, U.S. merchants are starting to  upgrade their old POS systems to ones that support contactless payments.  (Technically, they’re EMV  chip compatible models.) The project is supposed to take three to  five years, though Gartner analyst Mark Hung says a decade is more realistic
  • Additionally, the banks and all the new hardware and software makers inserting  themselves into the financial system will have to work out how to divvy up  processing fees for purchases
  • In terms of using the smartphone to replace your government-issued IDs, the  technology is already available,” Hung said. But it’ll probably be, yes, at  least 10 years before the government warms up to accepting purely digital forms  of identification.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Google lands patent for automatic object recognition in videos, leaves no stone untagged -- Engadget

  • Google has already been working on patents that could pick out faces and song melodies in our YouTube clips. Now, it might just have the ultimate tool: the technique in a just-granted patent could pick out objects in a video, whether they're living or not. Instead of asking the creator to label objects every time, Google proposes using a database of "feature vectors" such as color, movement, shape and texture to automatically identify subjects in the frame through their common traits -- a cat's ears and fast movement would separate it from the ball of yarn it's attacking, for example. Movie makers themselves could provide a lot of the underlying material just by naming and tagging enough of their clips, with the more accurate labels helping to separate the wheat from the chaff if an automated visual ranking system falls short. The one mystery is what Google plans to do with its newfound observational skills, if anything, although the most logical step would be to fill in YouTube keywords without any user intervention -- a potential time-saver when we're uploading that twelfth consecutive pet video.

• The Next Battle for Internet Freedom Could Be Over 3D Printing | TechCrunch

  • unless federal agencies monitor every CAD file sent to a printer, whether or not it is harmless. Monitoring of every file sent to a printer means that federal agencies would need access to every home and office network.
  • you can expect that a time will come when perhaps well-meaning politicians will attempt to prevent guns and synthetic drugs from being created using 3D printers. If passed, the resulting laws would be draconian in their invasion of privacy while simultaneously ineffectual in preventing the creation of the products they seek to prohibit

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Legendary Guitar Maker C. F. Martin & Co. Expands DNA Marking to Guitar Strings and Protects Brand With Botanical DNA - Yahoo! Finance

  • Botanical DNA can also be used in combination with wireless tracking technologies such as RFID as a way to ensure that those devices are not copied or tampered with. As guitars are botanically DNA-marked in quantity, forensic authentication by our labs, both as a quality control measure and also testing of products already in the field, can prove in time to be a strong anti-counterfeiting platform.

• Reader

  • In a blog post, Robert Scoble said while Samsung will take a big PR hit and lose $1 billion, it was worth it to copy Apple because it vaulted the company ahead of other smartphone rivals. Samsung also sells an array of products that Apple doesn’t and setting up the comparison with Apple worked out well for the entire company, Scoble said.

     

    “It only cost $1 billion to become the #2 most profitable mobile company. Remember how much Microsoft paid for Skype? $8 billion. So, for 1/8th of a Skype Samsung took RIM’s place and kicked HTC’s behind…I bet that RIM wishes it had copied the iPhone a lot sooner than it did. So does Nokia, I bet. Samsung is a much healthier company than any of those BECAUSE it copied the iPhone,” he wrote.

     

  • “The PR upside is that now people associate Samsung’s phone at the same competitive set as Apple’s. I just did a Google search for “Apple phone” and there are multiple Samsung links on the second half of the page. PR win: Any phone Samsung launches will be super hyped — and compared to Apple,” he wrote

• Samsung to fight court ruling in Apple patent dispute - CNN.com

  • Samsung said the verdict should be viewed "as a loss for the American consumer."

  • It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices," the company said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.

     

    "Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple's claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer."

• Calypso Wireless (fka CLYW): New Fed Court Info. NOTICE of Hearing:Markman Hearing

  • New Fed Court Info. NOTICE of Hearing:Markman Hearing RESET for 9/10/2012 09:00 AM in Mag Ctrm (Marshall) before Magistrate Judge Roy S Payne. (jml) (Entered: 08/24/2012)So we're back to 9am. still same date

• Mitt Romney: What I Learned at Bain Capital - WSJ.com

  • My presidency would make it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the investment dollars they need to grow, by reducing and simplifying taxes; replacing Obamacare with real health-care reform that contains costs and improves care; and by stemming the flood of new regulations that are tying small businesses in knots
  • Bain Capital helped build a new steel company, Steel Dynamics, which has grown into one of the largest steel producers in America today, holding its own against Chinese producers. The key to its success? State-of-the-art new technology.
  • Here are two lessons from the Steel Dynamics story: First, innovation is essential to the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. We are the most innovative, entrepreneurial nation in the world. To maintain that lead, we must give people the skills to succeed.

• 'Wiki Weapon Project' Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home - Forbes

  • Earlier this month, Wilson and a small group of friends who call themselves “Defense Distributed” launched an initiative they’ve dubbed the “ Wiki Weapon Project.” They’re seeking to raise $20,000 to design and release blueprints for a plastic gun anyone can create with an open-source 3D printer known as the RepRap that can be bought for less than $1,000.

• How Big Is Facebook’s Data? 2.5 Billion Pieces Of Content And 500+ Terabytes Ingested Every Day | TechCrunch

  • Facebook revealed some big, big stats on big data to a few reporters at its HQ today, including that its system processes 2.5 billion pieces of content and 500+ terabytes of data each day. It’s pulling in 2.7 billion Like actions and 300 million photos per day, and it scans roughly 105 terabytes of data each half hour.
  • VP of Engineering Jay Parikh explained why this is so important to Facebook: “Big data really is about having insights and making an impact on your business. If you aren’t taking advantage of the data you’re collecting, then you just have a pile of data, you don’t have big data.” By processing data within minutes, Facebook can rollout out new products, understand user reactions, and modify designs in near real-time

• Destiny Media Announces Public Prototype of Disruptive Streaming Video Technology - MarketWatch

  • By contrast, Clipstream® content is only  encoded once, eliminating transcoding altogethe

• PayPal Trumps Square's Deal With Starbucks by Partnering With Discover - Tricia Duryee - Commerce - AllThingsD

  • Under a new partnership being announced with Discover, PayPal is super-sizing the number of U.S. merchant locations it will be accepted at — more than seven million.
  • In ranking the two deals, Ken Paterson, VP of Research at Mercator Advisory Group, says he would guess that PayPal’s deal is potentially larger. ”It could bring PayPal to the majority of card-accepting merchants across the country

• Intellectual Ventures spins out satellite broadband antenna company, with Bill Gates as investor - GeekWire

  • Bill Gates is among the investors putting a total of $12 million into a new Seattle-area company, Kymeta, that plans to produce high-tech antennas to make it easier to establish a broadband connection between satellites and moving vehicles such as cars, airplanes and boats.

• Destiny Media Announces Public Prototype of Disruptive Streaming Video Technology - Yahoo! Finance

  • new disruptive video technology is available to view at http://www.dsny.com/g2 .
  • Clipstream® G2 is a new cross platform streaming video format which will play directly, without a player plug-in, on smart phones, desktop and laptop computers, tablets, e-readers and any other device with a standards compliant browser.  Once encoded into G2, the files and web page code are uploaded onto any brand of web server. This simple, standards based approach makes it easier to protect and secure content, enables nearly 100% of the viewers to stream the video and reaches many times as many viewers with the same infrastructure and bandwidth as other solutions
  • By contrast, Clipstream® content is only encoded once, eliminating transcoding altogether.
  • This recycling of streams can have a tremendous impact on cost and reliability.  In 2012, Accustream research estimated that $3 billion per year is spent on outsourcing hosting to content delivery networks. 

• HTML5: Don't Believe the Hype Cycle

  • Every company that makes a browser has been hard at work to support HTML5 capabilities. That includes Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox as well as smaller browser makers like Dolphin and Opera. Facebook has become a big supporter of HTML5

• Mobile phone companies can predict future movements of users by building a profile of their lifestyle | Mail Online

  • Scientists have found a way of predicting an individual's future movements by analysing information their mobile phone
  • They compared data from one individual and their closest social network to  predict a person’s future location based on places and areas visited in  the past and the frequency of contact between those studied,
  • In terms of marketing it means that advertising agencies will be able to target individuals with personalised advertisements using information about where the person has been and where he or she might be going.

• Market Currents - Real-time stock market news updates - Seeking Alpha

  •   Doctors might soon be "prescribing" smartphone apps as well as pills, with insurance companies already demonstrating a willingness to pick up the tab. A handful of apps even have FDA approval as medical devices, including DiabetesManager system from WellDoc and an ultrasound product from MobiSante

• Disruptions: The Next Wave for the Wristwatch - NYTimes.com

  • Companies like Apple, Nike and Sony, along with dozens of start-ups, hope to strap a device on your wrist.
  • The new wrist devices won’t replace smartphones, but rather connect to them. Most will continue the basic task of telling the time, while eliminating the need to dig a smartphone out of your pocket or purse.
  • It is the extension of the phone that is appealing. “The wrist becomes a remote screen where you now have the ability to control your phone with a number of different applications,

• Niall Ferguson on Why Barack Obama Needs to Go - Newsweek and The Daily Beast

  • Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed
  • Only in the Obama Administration......can we have the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
  • Which begs the question...are YOU a Maker or a Taker?

• Merchants and Shoppers Sour on Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon - NYTimes.com

  • In the last six months of 2011, 798 daily deal sites shut down, according to Daily Deal Media, which researches the industry
  • It devalues your product,

• Payment Data Is More Valuable Than Payment Fees | TechCrunch

  • But a broader opportunity exists: using the data of payments to build a more valuable, more defensible business model, one not dependent on fees. The result will revolutionize offline commerce and online advertising.
  • But basic “acceptance of credit cards” is becoming a commodity where prices will keep going down
  • It comes down to something rather simple: Connecting the bank accounts of buyers and sellers will never be as valuable nor defensible as connecting buyers and sellers.
  • In an increasingly cashless society, the answer is pretty clear: the payment infrastructure. Tracking that purchase back to the originating source (Google? Yelp? Patch? etc) is known as “closing the loop” and will revolutionize offline commerce and advertising alike.

• Google Files New Patent Lawsuit Against Apple, Seeks To Block iPhone, iPad & Mac Imports To U.S. | TechCrunch

  • Google’s Motorola unit just filed a new patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington. According to this report, Motorola’s complaint seeks to block Apple from importing the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and “various Apple computers.

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