Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

• Why Bitcoin Matters - NYTimes.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The White Ghetto | National Review Online

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

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

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

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

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

• Welcome To The Net Neutrality Nightmare Scenario

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

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

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

• Court Strikes Down Net Neutrality - NationalJournal.com

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

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

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

• Spectrum Sharing Drives Mobile Market Growth

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Always On Real-Time Access

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

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

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

• Should Governments Mandate Videoconferencing?

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

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

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Google, Apple Forge Auto Ties - WSJ.com

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

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