Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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