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- 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.
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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
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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."
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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."
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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
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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.
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'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.
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- 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
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Destiny Media Announces Public Prototype of Disruptive Streaming Video Technology - MarketWatch
- By contrast, Clipstream® content is only encoded once, eliminating transcoding altogethe
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- 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
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- 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.
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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.
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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
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- 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.
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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
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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,
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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?
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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,
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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.
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- 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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Saturday, August 25, 2012
Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)
Monday, August 20, 2012
Groupon Investors Flee..Are Facebook Investors Next?
In June of last year, BEFORE they went public, I predicted:
Prediction: Groupon will not only the fastest company to generate $1b in revenues, but also to hit $1b in sales and go bankrupt.
Today the Wall Street Journal reports that Groupon investors are running for the hills.
Some of the early backers of Groupon Inc., including Silicon Valley veteran Marc Andreessen, are heading for the exits, joining investors who have lost faith in companies that had been expected to drive a new Internet boom.
The verdict is out on Facebook. They still haven figured out how to monetize all of those 900 million users yet.
I think they could be sitting on the next big thing but havent taken advantage of it yet.
They still have to get around that pesky "like" lawsuit first.
The newsletter that spots investing waves and the companies in them. How To Find Big Stocks Newsletter
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)
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- Under the deal, which would have settled a year-old lawsuit, Facebook agreed to give its adult users the right to “limit” how the social-networking site uses their faces in ads under Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” program. Minors have the ability to completely opt out.
Sponsored stories basically turns the act of pressing the Facebook “Like” button into a potential commercial endorsement. If a Facebook user clicks the “Like’ button for a product or service with a Facebook page, that user’s profile picture and name may be automatically used in advertisements for that product or service that appear in the their friends’ Facebook pages. Facebook also reserves the right to show such ads on sites other than Facebook.
We reported last month that the deal provides a glimpse into the dark side of large class-action settlements: The plaintiff’s lawyers get rich, class members get little and non-profit groups often reap millions by urging judges to approve the deal regardless of its merits.
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- Bright Lights is Wall Street's only disruptive technology conference, focusing exclusively on companies MDB believes can transform their industries with game changing technology.
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A federal appeals court on Thursday revived its decision to uphold Myriad Genetics Inc's patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer, after the U.S. Supreme Court told it to take another look at the hotly contested case.
A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. upheld the biotechnology company's right to patent "isolated" DNA molecules, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, while denying its effort to patent methods directed to "comparing" or "analyzing" DNA sequences
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- NFC in general, meanwhile, is placed firmly in the Trough of Disillusionment with a time to plateau of two to five years
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- Examination of a proxy statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Authentec, linked to Apple's recent bid to acquire the firm for US$356m, has led to renewed speculation that the next iPhone will include an NFC-enabled version of the Apple Passbook mobile wallet app announced in June.
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- Dunkin Donuts is following in the footsteps of rival Starbucks with the launch of its first mobile app, allowing users to pay for coffee and donuts with their smartphone. The app, available for iOS and Android, creates a virtual Dunkin Donuts card, which can be filled by transferring the value of an existing physical Dunkin Donuts Card or it can funded through a credit card or PayPal transaction in the app.
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- “Perceptive media” is video or audio content that customizes itself based on data collected about the person or people experiencing it, one way in which we could see Hyper-Personalization
- Possible uses for the technology include a TV set that would automatically identify a viewer and deliver relevant content, and radio and TV shows that tailor music to individual preferences.
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- a few stand out as tipping point technologies including natural-language question answering and NFC
- This scenario envisions a cashless world in which every transaction is an electronic one. This will provide enterprises with efficiency and traceability, and consumers with convenience and security. The technologies on the 2012 Hype Cycle that will enable parts of this scenario include NFC payment, mobile over the air (OTA) payment and biometric authentication methods.
Related technologies will also impact the payment landscape, albeit more indirectly. These include the Internet of Things, mobile application stores and automatic content recognition. The tipping point will be surpassed when NFC payment and mobile OTA payment technologies mature. - Analysts predict that 3D printing will take more than five years to mature beyond the niche market
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- Bring your own device (BYOD), 3D printing and social analytics are some of the technologies identified at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in this year's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle
- On the 2012 Hype Cycle, Gartner has included autonomous vehicles, mobile robots, Internet of Things, big data, wireless power, complex-event processing, Internet TV, activity streams, machine-to-machine communication services, mesh networks: sensor, home health monitoring and consumer telematics. The technologies and trends that are the tipping points to success include machine-to-machine communication services, mesh networks: sensor, big data, complex-event processing and activity streams
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- Now we’re entering Web 3.0, which is mobile, and we are in the thick of it. The Mobile Web 3.0 has elements that build upon prior eras, but it also has several distinct and different elements from what’s come before. Some of these distinct elements of the Mobile Web 3.0 era include:
- real-time
- ubiquitous (always connected, always with you)
- location aware
- sensors
- tailored, smaller screen
- high quality camera and audio
- Web 2.0 ushered in the social wave.
- With Mobile Web 3.0, the user experience opens the door for another level of innovation in advertising and promotion. Now technology services have the ability to leverage not just the social graph data from Facebook, but even more real-time / real-world information
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- Downloads and streaming music services such as PANDORA and SPOTIFY are set to pass CD's as the music industry's biggest U.S. revenue source, finds a study from STRATEGY ANALYTICS INC
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- Retail giant Target may consider using bar codes and/or the "near field communication" (NFC) that enables radio communication between phones and other devices that are in close proximity, says Terry Scully, Target's president of financial and retail services
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- t sounds like consumers who utilize the MCX wallet will be able to use it at all the merchant partners, though we’ll have to hear more details to be sure. So far, there is little information about how the actual system will be deployed and how it will work with the current hardware in use with the retailers
- Google, for example, is trying to get at the purchase data through Google Wallet. But no merchants want to willingly give that up that information.
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- The Police Department itself, for example, just last week unveiled a new “domain awareness” system, developed with Microsoft, that links 3,000 cameras, 2,600 radiation detectors and dozens of license plate readers in six locations and mounted on cars. If officers spot a suspicious package in range of a video camera, for example, they will be able to quickly track who put it there. If a terrorist suspect’s tag number is known, the network will scan passing cars to find it.
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- Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, Best Buy, Publix, Sears, Shell and Sunoco are amongst a dozen major merchants that have formed a new company called Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) that will provide an alternative to services like Isis and Google Wallet.
- the founders see MCX becoming a full competitor to mobile payments services like Isis and Google Wallet.
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- the Company continues to explore all strategic alternatives with respect to its majority interest in Medicsight Limited, including the sale or licensing of its global patent portfolio.
- The Company is also analyzing potential acquisition opportunities in healthcare marketing and technology, as well as various intellectual property assets.
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- Wired magazine says it represents no less than “the next Industrial Revolution.”
The Economist says it will “disrupt every field in touches.”
Business Insider calls it “the next trillion-dollar industry.”
And I personally think it will put an end to seeing so many “Made in China” labels...
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- As a testament to how seriously Bezos takes 3D printing, Bezos, along with two other venture capital groups, helped MakerBot, a seller of consumer 3D printers and the accompanying necessary materials, raise $10 million
- Users will be able to download a Computer Animated Drawing (CAD) file and print the desired product in their home, or maybe print the product at a regional center kitted with more heavy duty printers capable of printing more complicated objects.
- The first step would probably be to buy up companies such as Shapeways which are already allowing users to upload designs and customers to then print these designs. Amazon can also create in-house 3D printing and tools on its site to embellish conventional products using its in-house 3D printing.
- So my advice: buy stock in Amazon. Not only did its CEO redefine the book industry; he is also heavily involved in the privatized space industry. When it comes to 3D printing, which has been hailed the next trillion dollar industry, I would not be surprised if Bezos has already pounced.
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- Nielsen: More Teens Now Listen To Music Through YouTube Than Any Other Source
- Google’s YouTube is now a more important source of music than radio (54%), iTunes (53%) and CDs (50%)
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- The plaintiffs will seek to prove in court that Hulu violated their privacy by letting third-party companies track their movements across the Internet without their consent. To do so, Hulu allowed an analytics company, KISSmetrics, to place a “cookie” or code on their computers that included names, location preferences and programs watched. That information was in turn conveyed to other companies, from advertising networks to analytics companies to Facebook. “As to Facebook, Hulu included their Facebook IDs, connecting the video content information to Facebook’s personally identifiable user registration information
- The case could have repercussions for other video streaming services. For instance, Netflix, which allows users to stream movies online, wants to team up with Facebook to allow its users to share what movies they watch with their Facebook friends. Both companies have acknowledged that the Video Privacy Protection Act presents a hurdle. Both are lobbying to overturn the law
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- Big Data is a shorthand label that typically means applying the tools of artificial intelligence, like machine learning, to vast new troves of data beyond that captured in standard databases. The new data sources include Web-browsing data trails, social network communications, sensor data and surveillance data.
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- For concerts, Samsung is working on a system that will let concert goers access shows and events using NFC instead of traditional paper tickets.
In the auto industry, BMW has built an NFC-enabled car key that can not only unlock an automobile, but also eventually help you book and access hotels room while you're traveling.
NFC may be an emerging technology, but it is emerging at a rapid pace. Over the next five years, expect NFC to transform the way we travel, purchase goods and communicate with each other.
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- users with NFC phones can quickly wave their devices over NFC-enabled flyers, advertisements, billboards or movie posters to instantly collect additional information on products or service.
Businesses can place NFC tags in the entrances to their stores so users can check-in automatically on social networks like foursquare or Facebook, or share details or "Likes" with friends - NFC can also be used as a short-range technology to beam files and other content between devices that are close to each other. The functionality could be great for collaboration in corporate environments when sharing documents or for multiplayer gaming.
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- NFC technology could let bus travelers pay for their commutes to work with their mobile devices. Commuters who drive to work could access parking lots and pay for parking with their smartphones. And city residents could get access to public facilities, such as swimming pools or libraries, with a tap of a tablet.
- a combination of wireless coupons, loyalty cards and payment options
- NFC tags placed on product shelves will enable consumers to access more personalized information about products when scanning them with an app that integrates their personal profile; for example, if you're allergic to nuts, the product scan could automatically detect if the product contained nuts and alert you...Tap-for-information, tap-to-add-to-basket, tap-for-coupons, and other new usage scenarios will have an increasing impact on the retail industry
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- Here's a look at Forrester's predicted NFC uses along with examples of current, real-world ways that's NFC is already employed by enterprises, governments, academic organizations, marketers, retailers and consumers
- NFC is currently being tested by a variety of organizations who want to use smartphones as next-generation access cards, which would be an ideal use of the technology in the enterprise
- Employees could also use NFC-enabled smartphones and other devices to access staff parking areas or cafeterias and pay for services, Forrester says. NFC tags could be placed inside meeting or conference rooms, and attendees could tap their compatible devices to silence them or to turn on Wi-F
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Chinese companies pull out of US stock markets
Chinese firms leave US stock markets amid complaints about price, accounting scrutiny
- "Probably all these companies have some questionable accounting, so they may prefer to move out of the U.S., not to come under too much scrutiny," said Marc Faber, managing director of Hong Kong fund management company Marc Faber Ltd.
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- Aside from tracking the spread of web rumors, the team also successfully tested the algorithm against a cholera outbreak in South Africa (analyzing its spread across both water and human networks) and the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Both times, it was able to identify the sources (among a small list of possibilities, at least) using only a fraction of the publicly available data on those events. Thankfully for Vanilla Ice and others concerned with the spread of information over the web, Pinto’s system has an easier time with that type of data because it’s usually time-stamped, which makes it easier to figure out who was “infected” first.
- That’s because Pinto and his colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed an algorithm for finding the source of such rumors, as well as viruses (physical and digital) and other maladies, even across highly complex networks.
Their method, according to an abstract of a paper just published in Physical Review Letters, is ideal for situations where there is relatively little data to work with, and is “based on the principles used by telecommunication towers to pinpoint cell phone users.” Essentially, the algorithm starts by looking at a small collection of points within a network and working back from there to determine the origin, kind of like how investigators can zero in on a cell phone’s location using triangulation. The more connections, or observers, a particular point has, the fewer that are needed to track down the source point.
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- Google Beefs Up Patent Portfolio with Wireless Patents from Proxim
- Google acquired 58 patents from Proxim Wireless Corporation in an assignment noted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as having been executed on July 9th, 2012, and recorded on August 7th, 2012. The USPTO doesn’t include any of the financial details of the transaction. Proxim Wireless still has a number of patents left in their portfolio, and the Proxim Wireless website is still online.
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- The Romney/Ryan plan does not raise taxes on anyone, let alone 95 percent of the country
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- Some say 3D printing will be “bigger than the Internet” and this is probably true. Transportation, parts manufacturers, and a host of other industries will need to adapt, and quickly. Maybe one day auto parts stores will simply be able to print many of the parts you need. This of course leads into the realms of copyrights and patents. How can a manufacturer of an object protect their patents if the object can scanned then printed? What will governments think about the very real possibility of insurgents or terrorists printing special weapons designed for specific situations?
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- a concrete-style material could be used to "print" structures and walls three times stronger than standard concrete in a process he calls Contour Crafting.
- costly, slow and labour intensive construction processes will become a thing of the past
- Printing" concrete works in much the same way as household 3D printers print shapes out of plastic: a pool of raw material is layered into shapes by a "print head", allowed to set quickly, then another layer applied
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- The application of NFC technology with the smartphone will be limitless in the near future. The medical, automotive, military and aerospace industries will benefit greatly,
- the rectenna can harness power directly from radio waves given off by a mobile phone, converting AC into DC
- The big advantage over QR codes is is that the tags contain a small computer chip or digital information, operated by DC power
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- The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast.
- The government still holds 500 million shares of GM stock and needs to sell them for about $53 each to recover its entire $49.5 billion bailout.
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- Even if the Chinese automate their factories with AI-powered robots and manufacture 3D printers, it will no longer make sense to ship raw materials all the way to China to have them assembled into finished products and shipped back to the U.S. Manufacturing will once again become a local industry with products being manufactured near raw materials or markets.
- In the future manufacturing will thus be relocated to the demand or resource point
- Cash-strapped and floundering, manufacturers are faced with two real options: embrace China’s new position as a low-cost manufacturing leader and move production lines of superior goods there, and thus improve profitability — or, give in to fully automated production lines which undercut production costs almost everywhere else
- Low-cost production techniques could soon become so advanced and so low cost — thanks to developments like 3D printing — that even the tiniest salaries in Africa will not make it worthwhile to employ human beings at all.
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- One example of these new technologies is kiosks - similar to airport scanners, that will do a free 10-second body scan for customers. These scanners, available in many U.S. shopping malls, take about 200,000 measurements in 360 degrees using low-power radio waves. The numbers are translated into personalized shopping guides for body size and shape. The kiosk then prints out a list based on the style, size or brand a shopper is interested in. The retailer pays a fee each time they show up in a personalized recommendations list.
- The confluence of smartphones, 3-D printers, parametric technology and other digital technology will change retailing dramatically, eliminating traditional fitting rooms, check-out lines and expensive inventory and returns
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- As better technology increase the possibilities of online shopping, in-store experiences will likely focus on "touch and feel" experience and leave shipping and payment to the Web. That could mean smaller staff, smaller spaces and smaller inventory.
- By using an LCD monitor and parametric technology, the Magic Mirror will be able to take clothes you pick and contour them to the shape of your body. Called "augmented reality," this kind of technology aims to put a layer of Internet images and information over your real-world sight
- With the advent of payment methods such as Square, shoppers will need only their smartphones. Near-Field Communication is a growing technology that allows single taps with a phone to perform certain actions
- downloading data from the Internet. In the future, they could create "towels, utensils and clothes" as the printers become more sophisticated
- Predictive data mining: Before you even walk into the store, the clerk may someday know what you are looking to buy based on stats from your tablet and smartphone and from your purchase history.
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Want to see what stocks I find that have the competitive advantage in these waves?
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Is Facebook Sitting On The Next Big Thing, Or Are They Close To Becoming Big Brother?
I have discussed the endless possibilities of a real time search engine that uses images and how it will completely disrupt MANY industries.
Using Facebook's "face tagging", which creates a very powerful database AND the endless number of security cameras could truly be the next big thing.
The new FaceDeals camera from Facebook has the potential to completely disrupt "search" as we know it.
As Google's Eric Schmidt said "Give us 14 images of you and we can find other images of you within 95% accuracy". Well how many photos are you already tagged on Facebook?
Where Google searches for documents on the Net, Facebook could search for people in the real world. The security cameras become a search engine for the physical world.
This story has me wondering...Is Facebook Sitting on The Next Big Thing?
The Facebook Camera can recognize you every time you walk into a shop. (From DailyMail UK)
Shoppers could soon be automatically recognised when they walk into a shop using a controversial new camera.
Called Facedeals, the camera uses photos uploaded to Facebook to recognise people as they walk in.
Shoppers who agree to use the system, which has not been developed with Facebook, will be offered special deals.
The Facedeal camera can identify faces when people walk in by comparing Facebook pictures of people who have signed up to the service
All day long these cameras are creating data.
Just imagine the power Facebook could have if they turned these cameras into real time search engines.
Say you want to find a specific person. The facebook database would be able to tell you the last location and time they spotted this person (and who they were with).
As Eli Pariser writes in the book The Filter Bubble (highly recommended), "the ability to search by face will shatter many of our cultural illusions about privacy and anonymity"
The newsletter that spots investing waves and the companies in them. How To Find Big Stocks Newsletter
Google Buys More Wireless Patents..Could This One Be Next?
Bill Slawski over at SEO By The Sea discovers that Google now owns a good chunk of Proxim Wireless IP (PRXM)
Google acquired 58 patents from Proxim Wireless Corporation in an assignment noted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as having been executed on July 9th, 2012, and recorded on August 7th, 2012. The USPTO doesn’t include any of the financial details of the transaction. Proxim Wireless still has a number of patents left in their portfolio, and the Proxim Wireless website is still online.
This is Proxim Wireless:
SEO By The Sea lists all of the patents that were assigned:
What all of the major players are watching though with key interest:
A Markman Hearing on September 10 for Calypso Wireless and their "seamless switching" patent
Their ASNAP patent has been estimated to be worth billions if the hearing is successful because it represents a key part to HotSpot 2.0
It has been called the Holy Grail Patent.
Gartner's Akshay Sharma made this prediction for Hotspot 2.0:
" Hotspot 2.0 with FMC will be the dominant (over 50%) approach for carriers to achieve carrier grade 4G offload by 2015"
This solution is known by the trademarked acronym, ASNAP™, which stands for: Automatic Switching of Network Access Points.
Patent # 6,680,923 titled "Communication system and method which covers the seamless roaming of voice, vidoe and data between Wide Area Network access points such as cellular towers (GSM/GPRS/EDGE, CDMA, WCMDA etc) and short range Internet access points (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc.)
The How To Find Big Stocks Newsletter discovered this "Wireless Wonder--A 100 Bagger?" several months ago at .02. We called it our "Powerball Lottery Play".
As more phones become "smart", and as more objects are connected to the Net, they will tax the current cell network's ability to provide a constant contact regardless of data size or location.
The holy grail of mobile communications is maintaining a connection regardless of data size or location.
The newsletter that spots investing waves and the companies in them. How To Find Big Stocks Newsletter
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)
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- This is because we are in the midst of unprecedented technology change, population growth, and global exposure. The world is changing so quickly that no one can predict even 12 months out.
- Understanding what people want, at the exact moment they may want it, in the fashion they wish to consume it. This is how a new rule to the game may get introduced. Old schoolers spend millions behind the curtain researching scientific data. The new American Dreamer just listens, watches, and reacts.
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NFC Company ViVOtech Unloads Its Reader Business, Will Focus On Software Going Forward | TechCrunch
- ViVOtech has made progress on that front: it has unloaded its reader business to ID TECH, and says its focus will now be on making software
- ViVOtech has been one of the more notable names in the NFC technology space, and was responsible for over half the NFC terminals found in big-name retailers such as McDonald’s, Home Depot, Whole Foods and more.
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Solving Real World Problems with NFC Mobile Phones. The Next Generation in Customer Service.
- NFC is here today, but most people don’t even know it. The reason people don’t, is because it’s pushed as either a mobile payment technology, or a novelty for hobbyists. The reality is that NFC is the fastest growing, and most powerful technology today. Narian realized years ago, that NFC could make lives better, in a completely new and revolutionary way
- Near field communication (NFC) is a revolutionary new technology, now found in 10’s of millions of phones today. Many are now familiarizing themselves of NFC’s boundless capabilities, including Mobile Payment via Google Wallet and Isis Wallet, Mobile Ticketing
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Local web developers cash in on switch to HTML5 | Technology | Business in Vancouver
- Steve Vestergaard said. "HTML5 is allowing us to use the browser to directly render the video.
- sales of HTML5-enabled smartphones are projected to hit one billion in 2013.
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Exclusive Romney Interview: On Humility and Tax Returns - Businessweek
- government is the least productive—the federal government is the least productive of our economic sectors. The most productive is the private sector. The next most productive is the not-for-profit sector, then comes state and local governments, and finally the federal government. And so moving responsibilities from the federal government to the states or to the private sector will increase productivity.
- Don’t forget! It’s the private sector jobs that pay for government workers. So if you have fewer government workers doing work more and more productively, that means private sector work will grow.
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- While traditional paper printers use a moving toner cartridge head to form lines of text, adding row upon row of toner as the paper moves through the printer, 3D printing works much the same way. Instead of toner, however, a free-moving printer head precisely deposits layer upon layer of plastic or other material to create a solid object from the bottom up.
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3D Printing with Peter Weijmarshausen - Forbes
- the time to market is compressed immensely. The other key aspect is that the risk of going to market is almost non-existent, because your investment is only the design of the product itself
- 3D printing allows you to make incredibly complex designs at no additional cost: interlocking components, naturally hinged parts, semi-translucent surfaces, and even objects that can move on their own without assembly
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Let’s Clear Up Some Details About Square’s Big Partnership With Starbucks - SplatF
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Starbucks will use its existing point-of-sale registers and infrastructure to add Square to its stores. For now, there won’t be any Square-powered iPad registers, no cute little Square credit-card readers, and no geolocation-powered Square “tab” feature. Starbucks may add more Square features in the future, Schultz said, but for now, it seems mostly a back-end thing. (That’s the easiest, fastest, safest, and cheapest way to start, so it makes sense.) Square will handle credit- and debit-card transactions, but Starbucks’ existing infrastructure will handle the rest.
Starbucks cashiers will scan a Square barcode on your phone to “pay with Square”, the same way they currently scan a barcode on your phone’s Starbucks app
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Stratasys: Don't Ignore The Risks - Seeking Alpha
- General Electric (GE) has already announced a push into using additive manufacturing processes whether 3D printing or something else. At the recent Farnborough Air Show the company announced the making of parts for the LEAP engine by using the SLM 250HL additive manufacturing machine. What is to stop this manufacturing giant from building machines as well?
- Naturally building a competing technology or product might not be simple, but assuming Stratasys and 3D Systems have this market as a duopoly might be disastrous to an investment thesis
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Exclusive: Amazon seeks leader for patent acquisitions | Reuters
- Amazon has hired executive recruiting firm Argos Search to help the company hire an intellectual property "Acquisition and Investment Leader" to "identify and evaluate strategic IP acquisition and licensing opportunities," according to a job description obtained this week by Reuters.
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The search suggests that Amazon is trying to amass more patents, either through acquisitions of patent-rich companies, purchases of patent portfolios or licensing, according to intellectual property experts. It is also a sign that the world's largest Internet retailer is serious about being a long-term player in mobile devices and digital content, they say.
Amazon is known for developing its own patents, but mostly in the e-commerce area. An expansion into mobile devices and the delivery of digital content to those devices will require a lot of different patents, intellectual property experts say.
"As they get into wireless devices and digital media, they realize the best way to handle this is to get more proactive in IP," said David Pridham of IPNav, which helps companies make money from their patents.
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Square, Starbucks aim to give mobile payments a jolt | Internet & Media - CNET News
- Square will process credit and debit card transactions at U.S. stores. Also, Starbucks customers will be able to make purchases with Pay with Square -- Square's payer app -- at Starbucks locations later this fall.
- The service, founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is being positioned as an alternative to the much-touted but still emerging near-field communication (NFC) technology. Square's system still lets you pay for goods and services using your mobile phone without the need for cash or a credit card. But instead of having users tap their phone against an NFC-enabled register or terminal, Square's system also lets users "check into" a store through phone, pick up items, and pay for them through Square account.
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NFC Focus: What is NFC and Contactless Payment? - International Business Times UK
- Near field communication is basically a contactless, wireless means of transferring data between two objects. It is activated when two antennae communicate with each other through a magnetic field, for example an NFC-enabled smartphone and an NFC enabled point of sale payment terminal," explains Philip Robinson, head of payments at Lloyds Banking Group
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When NFC technology is included in a mobile phone, it can be embedded within the SIM card in something called a secure element.
This is similar to using the gold chip on a debit or credit card to store user information such as your credit card number and expiry number
- When you put your debit or credit card into a terminal, that is what it reads and then it verifies your PIN number and you make your payment. That same information gets embedded in the SIM card in the secure element, which is as secure as that chip on a card
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New app allows instant connection to wi-fi network for friends | The Cloud Blog
- Android smartphone users can now instantly connect their friends’ devices to a WiFi network with the help of a new app. InstaWifi uses either near field communication (NFC) technology or quick response (QR) codes – depending on the devices in question – to allow other phones to pick up all the details they need to access the same WiFi internet connection, reported phonesreview.co.uk.
- NFC technology is being harnessed as more than just another way to pay for items. She suggested the real benefit of InstaWifi is that people can invite others to use a WiFi network without ever giving up their password, as it is automatically transmitted from one phone to another without ever being displayed to users.
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Apple could play key role in driving NFC | ZDNet
- Following speculation that the upcoming iPhone 5 will be NFC-enabled, industry watchers note that Apple's latest phone may increase the adoption of near field communications (NFC) transactions, but it is the collaboration of the entire ecosystem of players will ultimately be needed.
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Apple wins NFC-enabled barcode-reading "shopping list" patent
- an NFC-capable barcode-reading shopping assistant.
- While there are existing readers on the iOS App Store that allow users to scan a variety of codes using an iDevice's camera, including UPC and QR codes, none offer the capability of directly linking scans to purchases or stored credit card information. Apple's '276 patent describes such a solution.
- Apple's patent describes a comprehensive app that offers lowest price indicators as well as an option to create shopping lists and read or write product reviews when a barcode is scanned. The "Shopping" app can also be integrated with Maps to offer store locations as well as in-store directions.
Scanning is done in one of three ways: object recognition or code recognition through the device's camera, NFC or a dedicated barcode scanner.
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Why Google May Be Secretly Happy That Apple's Dropping Its YouTube App - Forbes
- the Apple YouTube app doesn’t allow ads to be run against all those billions of videos views a month that YouTube draws on mobile devices
- Because she can’t run ads on the iPhone YouTube app, and no ads means no money generated. Multiply that by thousands of artists, movies, and all kinds of content that advertisers want to run ads against–ads that will bring in up to $3.6 billion in revenues this year, by Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney’s recent estimate for YouTube. Now you realize why Google may not mind much that the creaky old adless Apple app is heading for the trash can icon.
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NFCNews | Report: 100 million NFC phones to ship in 2012
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Approximately 100 million NFC-enabled mobile devices are expected to ship globally in 2012, according to a new report from Forrester.
The report, “NFC: What Lies Beyond Contactless Payments,” predicts that the increasing number of NFC mobile phones, coupled with a growing NFC infrastructure, will cause NFC to emerge as the standard for contactless solutions across the world – namely in South Korea, Poland, Turkey, the U.K., the U.S. and France.
- According to Husson, the key long-term driver for NFC is that it can enable many new product and service experiences beyond just mobile contactless payments. These include transport ticketing, loyalty and rewards, authentication and ID, and “immersive marketing.” Husson predicts that NFC will also expand into other consumer and workforce connected devices, facilitating content and app sharing and cross-device experiences.
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Social Discovery Is Pushing Search and Social Closer
- people are more likely to accept a friend's opinion or advice than that of a general crowd or a search algorithm. Having been built on algorithms, Google and Bing are looking for ways to include social discovery in their traditional search results.
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Talk to Me, One Machine Said to the Other - NYTimes.com
- Machine-to-machine communications has been around for more than two decades, initially run on landline connections and used for controlling industrial processes remotely. With advances in mobile broadband speeds and smartphone computing, the same robotic conversations are now rapidly shifting to wireless networks.
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Currently, about a third of all machine-to-machine communication involves so-called smart utility meters, which perform duties like sending data on household electric and gas consumption to utilities; the utilities use the information to tailor production to actual demand. In Europe, all households in Sweden and Italy are equipped with smart meters, many of them running wirelessly. In Austria, a law will require five million homes to be equipped with smart electric meters by 2019.
Another third is taking place in the auto industry, through car and truck fleet management systems, which allow transport companies or corporate car managers to track their vehicles in real time, or that are used by emergency accident, repair and location services like General Motors’ OnStar system, now installed on a quarter of new GM vehicles. In Europe, similar technology is beginning to appear in preparation for 2015, when the eCall initiative, an E.U. law requiring all new cars to be equipped with wireless transmitters will take effect. The transmitters would automatically report accident data, as well as airbag deployment and location, to emergency responders
But it is variations on consumer applications
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Near field communication will make credit cards, cash obsolete | Kidela
- Standards have been created that allow the NFC technology to be put into smartphones. A phone can serve as both an active and passive device. As an active device, it can exchange information with other compatible smartphones by simply bumping the phones together. It can serve as a passive device when passed next to a reader or interrogator. To assure that the information that is exchanged is secure, the NFC connection creates a secure channel and the transmitted data is encrypted.
- One technology trend that is making an impact in 2012 is near field communication (NFC). Like Wi-Fi, it is a form of wireless communication between two devices. One is a tag, which is passive and holds information, and the other, which is known as a reader or interrogator, can read and transmit information, and can also change information on the tag if it is authorized to do so
- Standards have been created that allow the NFC technology to be put into smartphones. A phone can serve as both an active and passive device. As an active device, it can exchange information with other compatible smartphones by simply bumping the phones together. It can serve as a passive device when passed next to a reader or interrogator. To assure that the information that is exchanged is secure, the NFC connection creates a secure channel and the transmitted data is encrypted.
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- On Track Innovations, or OTI, seeks compensation for the alleged infringement or a “reasonable royalty” for use of the technology, the complaint states.
- It is not surprising that OTI seeks to protect its NFC-technology patent because the company considers itself a pioneer in contactless payments.
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OTI was “an active participant” in helping MasterCard Worldwide develop contactless-payment technology with PayPass cards in 2003 and Visa Inc. with payWave cards in 2007, Bashan says.
The company has been at the forefront of NFC development, Bashan contends. The payments industry tends to term different forms of contactless technology as NFC without a full understanding of how it works, he adds.
The key aspect of true NFC technology is that it allows a consumer to initiate a payment transaction through a mobile handset at a terminal that has an NFC reader and, in turn, instantly receive information back to the handset about the payment balance, a store coupon, loyalty program points or updates, Bashan says.
“Constant feedback and a personalized program is what NFC is all about,” Bashan says. “We really are in the first steps of this technology, which will provide many more capabilities [for consumers and merchants],” he adds.
It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to any infringements on the more than two-dozen of its recently awarded NFC patent
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