Davemichels

 We’ve been hearing all artificial intelligence, all the time from the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) industry over the last several weeks. Microsoft is the latest to trumpet its AI capabilities for sales people with the general availability of Dynamics 365 coming on November 1st. Microsoft announced last summer that it was going to be combining its ERP and CRM into a unified… Read More

No one doubts anymore that internet of things (IoT) devices pose a huge security threat, as a recent massive IoT-fueled DDoS attack made clear. But what many enterprises have yet to wake up to is that major structural changes are needed, involving IT and C-level executives above IT. IoT is a new and different kind of threat that can’t be effectively battled in an old-fashioned way. 

From an enterprise’s perspective, there are three sides to the IoT threat: 1) being attacked by an IoT army from around the world; 2) allowing enterprise-owned IoT devices to participate in such an attack against others; and 3) allowing your IoT devices to attack your own company. Making structural changes to your business will do nothing to help you defend against the first scenario, but it could make a profound difference in blocking attack scenarios two and three. 

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The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday announced that Comcast will pay a $2.3 million fine to settle a multi-year probe into whether or not the telecoms giant charged its cable customers for services they never authorized.

The FCC says it received multiple complaints from Comcast customers saying that they were being billed for “unordered services or products, such as premium channels, set-top boxes, or digital video recorders (DVRs).”

In some cases, according to the FCC, these charges were the result of a practice called “negative option billing,” in which a consumer winds up paying for a service unless they explicitly go out of their way to decline it from their bill. Other customers, meanwhile, claimed Comcast kept charging them even after turning those services and upgrades down.

The fine is a drop in the bucket for a company the size of Comcast, but the FCC says it’s the “largest civil penalty assessed from a cable operator” by the organization.

Comcast will also be required to adopt a five-year compliance plan in which the company will have to implement procedures that ensure customers give “affirmative informed consent” before they can be billed for new services and equipment. It’ll also have to give customers the option to prevent new services from being added to their accounts. (Apparently, all of this wasn't mandated before.)

In a statement, Comcast acknowledged that its "customer service should have been better and [its] bills clearer," but claimed that most of the policies it's being forced to adopt were ones that it was "already committed to make." It also claimed that the complaints noted in the FCC's investigation were the result of "isolated errors or customer confusion."

Whatever the case, the ruling could make the company keep a closer eye on its customer service efforts going forward. It also might encourage more people to issue a formal complaint if they find issues with their bill. 

SEE ALSO: Comcast is putting a data cap on its internet plans — and people aren't pleased

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Twilio's stock is down roughly 12% in midday trading on Monday, after the tech company announced plans to sell more equity in a follow-on stock offering.

Twilio, which provides phone and text message services to app developers, went public in June in a blockbuster debut that saw its shares surge 90% on its first day of trading. The IPO was a standout in an incredibly slow market his year  (although enterprise tech company Coupa saw its shares more than double in its Wall Street debut last week, renewing hopes that the IPO market is coming back to life.)

But Twilio's honeymoon on Wall Street appears to be over. The company's spectacular rally, which carried its stock from a $15 IPO price all the way to a 52-week high of $70.96 earlier this year, came to a sudden halt after its revelation on Friday that it was planning a follow-on stock offering.

The company did not say how many shares it intended to sell.  But it noted that it would sell $50 million shares of Class A stock, while existing shareholders would sell an unspecified number of shares as well as part of the offering. Investors clearly were not happy with the news. Shares of Twilio plunged 12% to $53.32 on Monday.

Here's a chart of Twilio's stock since its June IPO:

SEE ALSO: Twilio's CEO just got $100 million richer

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NOW WATCH: Turns out LA’s shade balls actually worked

Facebook is finally giving everyone an excuse to use Facebook at work all day.

The social network announced on Monday that any business can now sign up for its Workplace enterprise tool, which was previously called Facebook at Work.

Workplace is Facebook's first serious foray to the lucrative enterprise market, and it's a direct competitor to services like HipChat and Slack.

More than 1,000 businesses already use Workplace, which is essentially a stripped down version of Facebook for work colleagues, as part of the private beta program Facebook launched about a year ago.

Now Facebook has opened up Workplace for any company to use, revealed its tiered pricing model, and announced some new features. 

How it works

The easiest way to understand Workplace is that it's identical to how Facebook already works, except that you can only communicate with the people at your company.

The ad-free website and mobile app has all of the main components of Facebook, including an algorithm-driven News Feed, events, groups, and messages. Employees can login separately from their personal Facebook account to see what's happening within their teams or across the entire organization, poll their colleagues, comment and like posts, and message people directly.

You don't "friend" people on Workplace like the normal version of Facebook. You can instead follow them to see what they post.

Facebook created this work version of its social network after using it internally for years, Facebook HR chief Lori Goler told Business Insider during a recent interview.

“What we found is that as people really want to have a lot more visibility and transparency in the organization, Facebook is a great way to do that," she said.

New Features

On Monday Facebook announced a number of new features for Workplace that will be available in the coming weeks:

• Businesses on Workplace can now create multi-company groups. These allow employees from different organizations to easily communicate on shared projects.
• Any employee can shoot a live video for others to watch in their Workplace. Facebook said it created this feature after hearing that company leaders wanted any easy way to broadcast to their employees.
• The messaging component of Workplace now supports audio and video calling.
• You can see the most talked about, trending posts within your Workplace.

Pricing

As previously rumored, Facebook has a tiered, monthly pricing model for Workplace that's based on monthly active users. It works so that a businesses pays less as more employees use Workplace every month.

Here's the breakdown:

• $3 per first 1,000 monthly active users
• $2 per 1,001 – 10,000 monthly active users
• $1 per 10,000+ monthly active users

Nonprofits and educational institutions will be able to use Workplace for free.

Partners and competition

Facebook also announced the Workplace Partners Program on Monday, which includes companies like Deloitte and Microsoft that are committed to integrating their software and services with Workplace.

Cloud storage provider Box is also part of Facebook's Partners Program and will let people host and share files in Workplace with its service in the coming months.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Box CEO Aaron Levie said that he doesn't see Workplace as a direct competitor to enterprise chat tools like Slack, but rather a complimentary service that "organizations have long sought out."

"I think that there's broader experience around being able to communicate and connect with an enterprise, and that's the experience they're going after," Levie said of Facebook. "I think there's a much wider service area than just the real time communication space."

"All of this is momentum building for a new era of enterprise software and technology, which is incredibly exciting to see," he said.

SEE ALSO: Here's what the first users are saying about Facebook's Slack competitor

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NOW WATCH: How to see all the companies tracking you on Facebook — and block them

 After 20 months in a closed beta under the working title Facebook at Work, (as we predicted it would the other week) today Facebook is finally bringing its enterprise-focused messaging and social networking service to market under a new name, Workplace. It’s not only armed with a new brand: Workplace is launching with a new kind of pricing model based on Facebook-style… Read More

In a recent interview with T-Mobile US CEO John Legere, Business Insider asked him what he thought about competitor Verizon.

Legere said the company was even more "befuddled" than AT&T,  the other half of his competitors that he's dubbed "dumb and dumber."

He said Verizon's acquisition of "iconic 1990s internet companies," referring to AOL last year and Yahoo this year, "and a leadership shift that's going on now, with two or three aggressive people who are all vying to crawl into Lowell McAdam's CEO chair," and said the situation was "hilarious."

"Like, oh my God, you not only bought Yahoo, but they're a mess before you brought them in," Legere said. At the time of the interview, it had been revealed that Yahoo was the victim of perhaps the largest hack in history, with as many as 1 billion users affected. It had not yet been reported that, according to Claire Atkinson of the New York Post, Verizon is reconsidering its pending $4.8 billion acquisition deal and wants a $1 billion discount. This is on top of declining revenues across all major Yahoo segments during CEO Marissa Mayer's tenure since 2012.

Legere explained further that he understands why Verizon moved to acquire Yahoo, but that even if the acquisition went smoothly, wireless customers should see it as a sign that Verizon is juggling too much to improve its wireless business.

"Now I do know, respectfully, underneath that, there is an advertising and a customer-information component to the deal that is very valuable, one that most people don't look at really why they're buying these things," he said. "But it's not the real business that they're in. So in the meantime, again, wireless is not really where they are. They lost the headline "We're the best network," and they're fighting desperately to capture it back, spending a lot of money."

Legere also had words for the rest of the Big Four wireless carriers in the United States. For reference, using Q2 2016 data for US wireless customers, Verizon has 142.75 million, AT&T has 131.81 million, T-Mobile US has 67.38 million, and Sprint Nextel has 58.45 million. T-Mobile overtook Sprint as the third-largest US carrier in 2015.

AT&T

"AT&T basically hasn't added a postpaid customer on the voice side since Q2 of 2014! If I hear one more time that in two quarters their over-the-top offers are coming out and life's going to be grand ... it's to protect and defend their profit streams and play a different game in the future. But every now and then we get their attention, and then they decry us, and then it's 'me too,' but it's too late, and then it shifts.

"They refer to customers as units of acquisition. They just don't get it. The guy that runs the wireless is like four levels down from the top, and he's not even allowed to do anything.

"They do have some good stuff. If I had a content and a cable asset along with my wireless, I would start putting these things together, instead of bundling them. Put that on the side, but right now they seem very content. They donate close to 50% every quarter of the customers who come to T-Mobile."

Sprint

"Sprint is ... people don't fully comprehend that their economics and balance sheet have them on a timer for when you're going to cook an egg or something. These guys are playing the game for two quarters, kicking the can down the road, trying to survive. The financials, it's pretty much walk around the house and use anything that's not nailed down to raise money so we can go to the next quarter — and let's show some postpaid nets, even if we have to push them over from our prepaid side.

"But they stumbled onto a good commercial. It'll run its course, but it's clever. Their ads are not true, though — there's a gigantic difference in networks. But I don't talk about them, ever. I compete with Sprint with [T-Mobile US subsidiary] MetroPCS, and it's completely cleaning their clocks."

Legere said that he's happy with T-Mobile's growth and is playing the long game.

"Because in X amount of time I will be the largest wireless player in the country by a mile," he said. "Because each of the three carriers have been donating customers to me every quarter for three years. And so if they're good, I'm good."

SEE ALSO: The T-Mobile CEO who calls his competition ‘dumb and dumber’ explains how he doubled customers in 4 years, and how a group of employees made him cry

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NOW WATCH: You will never lose your keys again with this device

From the Tesla Model 3 to a possible Apple car, electric cars are all the rage these days.

But cars aren't the only electric vehicles people around the world are embracing: Increased fuel prices and growing urbanization have spurred the demand for electric bikes, or e-bikes.

Global e-bike sales are expected to grow from 32 million in 2014 to at least 40 million in 2023, according to Navigant Research.

To meet the growing demand, startups — as well as traditional automakers — are rolling out electric bikes as an alternative form of transport. Electric bikes are just like normal bicycles, but they are equipped with an electric motor so you don’t always have to pedal.

Many of these new e-bikes also include new innovative features, like the ability to connect to your smartphone via an app.

Here's a look at 10 of the most impressive e-bikes that have been revealed recently.

SEE ALSO: You can ride this stunning new electric bike for 150 miles without pedaling

The Gi FlyBike has its own app, automatic locking, and phone charger. It can also instantly fold in half.

RAW Embed

The Gi FlyBike features smartphone integration and can fold in one second so that it can easily be taken anywhere and stored without a fuss.

While you can ride it like a normal bike, it also has an “electric flight assistance” feature, which enables the rider to tap the bike’s electric motor to travel 15 miles per hour with a range of 40 miles with a single charge.

It even has a USB port where users can charge their smartphones with the power the generate by pedaling. 

Pre-orders are available on the company's website. The bike costs around $2,300 and is expected to be delivered in March 2017. 

The OKO electric bike can travel 25 miles on a single charge.

The OKO is one of the most stylish e-bikes to launch this year. 

The bike, which was designed by the Dutch company Biomega, is about 40 pounds, has an aluminum handlebar, and is made of the same material as Formula 1 race cars. 

While the most e-bikes have their motors located in the back of the bike, the OKO's motor is in the center of the frame, allowing for more the weight to be distributed more evenly. 

The bike is currently available for pre-order and will set you back about $2,300. The white version of the bike is expected to be delivered in November 2016 and the silver version is expected to ship in January 2017.

The Otocycle RacerR features a five level LCD to help monitor battery power and bike performance.

The Barcelona-based bike company Otocycle launched its RaceR e-bike, which is partly made of recycled material.

The bike has a larger front light than normal, allowing for improved visibility (and motorbike-like appeal), as well as an LCD screen to show the rider the bikes battery level as well as performance. 

RaceR can travel at 15 miles per hour and travel a little more than 40 miles on a single charge with pedal assistance. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

 When Salesforce purchased Quip last summer for $750 million, it seemed at face value to be an unusual acquisition for the cloud CRM company — Salesforce tends to concentrate on more vertical targets. In fact, at a press conference this week at Dreamforce, Salesforce president, vice chairman and COO Keith Block — yes, he has all those titles — said when asked about the… Read More

In its ongoing effort to push new chat software, Google won't require Android phone makers to preload the Hangouts app as part of its core mobile app suite starting December 1st, according to Android Police. In its place, the company will instead include Duo, its recently released FaceTime competitor for instant video chatting. Hangouts isn't totally going away. It will remain an optional member of the Google Mobile Services package, which Google requires manufacturers to install so consumers have integral services like the Chrome browser and Google Maps. However, the demotion means Hangouts will have significantly less visibility among new phone buyers if companies do decide to leave it out.

This does not mean manufacturers will decide...

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Microsoft just issued invitations to a big event to be held on October 26 in New York City, promising updates on the future of Windows 10.

Historically, Microsoft has used these October events to introduce new hardware products — last year saw the unveiling of the Surface Pro 4 tablet, the Surface Book laptop, and the Lumia 950 and 950 XL Windows smartphones.

Reports have popped up over the last several months that this year's event will introduce a new Microsoft Surface PC, kind of like Apple's famed iMac. Expect that PC to be spotlighted, alongside some general updates to Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy, and possibly a few Windows devices from outside manufacturers like Dell or Lenovo.

But we're hearing that this year's event will be a little more modest overall: Minor updates to the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are on the table, but we'll have to wait for next spring for a proper Surface Pro 5 or Surface Book 2 launch. Similarly, the long-rumored "Surface Phone" and the next-generation "Project Scorpio" Xbox console probably won't be making appearances.

Business Insider will be on the ground at Microsoft's event, so stay tuned for updates on what's coming next for Surface.

SEE ALSO: How Microsoft built a computer so good, even Apple wanted to copy it

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NOW WATCH: Here’s where Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs started as interns

Apple has banned a popular app for programmers from its app store, as well as deleted the app developer's account, the developer says.

The app, called Dash, is for Macs and iOS. It's been around for years. It lets developers easily find and insert snippets of code that they frequently use.

The situation has caused a lot of angst among the developer community because Apple at first didn't tell the app's developer, Bogdan Popescu, why the app was removed or why his account was shut down.

After the story blew up on Hacker News, a site where developers post and discuss news of interest to them, more details emerged. Apple apparently told Popescu that the problem was "evidence of App Store review manipulation."  

He wrote in his blog post: 

"A few hours ago I received a “Notice of Termination” email, saying that my account was terminated due to fraudulent conduct. I called them again and they said they can’t provide more information. Update: Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I’ve never done. Apple’s decision is final and can’t be appealed."

The app probably did have a lot of positive reviews. App developers really liked it. As one wrote on Hacker News:

"Really love Dash. Hope it gets straightened out."

While Popescu can distribute and update the Mac version via his own website, he's pretty much hosed when it comes to a paid version of iOS Dash. He said in a tweet that he's now thinking of "open sourcing" the iOS version, which means share the code with everybody and possibly means also giving it away for free via a site like Github.

Some developers see this as an example of why they are wary of Apple and shouldn't trust Apple with their apps and their livelihoods.

As Thom Holwerda wrote on the tech blog OSNews:

"Dash is quite a popular tool among Apple developers, and it seems incredibly unlikely that its developer would need to resort to manipulate App Store reviews ...  all this - again, sadly - illustrates what I've been saying for years: building your business atop Apple's iOS or Mac App Store is a terrible business decision. You are completely and fully at Apple's whim."

Holwerda isn't alone in his frustration. Lots of it was spilled on that Hacker News discussion. 

For instance one person complained, "Apple's arrogance in running their store may eventually cause it's decline."

And another added: 

"Arrogance is exactly the right word. Arrogance that is not justified at all by their execution lately. Developers were willing to look the other way while the app store gold rush lasted but those days are long over and it's increasingly looking like a Faustian bargain sold cheap."

Neither Apple nor Bogdan Popescu could be immediately reached for comment.

SEE ALSO: IT professionals have mixed feelings about Apple, survey finds

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NOW WATCH: This drone flies inside hurricanes to gather data that could save your life

AT&T now says it is deploying fixed wireless using millimeter wave frequencies to apartment complexes in Minneapolis, outside its traditional 21-state wireline service area.





All those efforts would have AT&T operating as  a competitive local exchange carrier competing with Verizon and CenturyLink for the first time.

Greyp Bikes announced a new electric bike today called the Greyp G12H. It can reach speeds of up to 27 miles per hour while using its 3kWh Lithium-Ion battery. It’ll reportedly stay charged for up to 150 miles. We don’t know how much it weighs, but Greyp’s similar bikes weigh around 120 pounds, so I’d presume it’ll be around there. Greyp says this model is "fit for every day commuting." I say that I want to see all the New York food delivery people zipping around on these. The bike isn’t available to buy yet, and we don’t have pricing info. We’ve covered a few electric bikes, all of which still seem cool as hell to me. This new bike isn’t the fastest available, nor is it the cheapest or lightest, but it’s got great battery life and...

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By Tom Brannen
Perhaps the growing chasm between the consumer and business communications experience isn't such a bad thing.

 The Internet of Things — the area of technology where previously dumb objects are getting equipped with radio signals and microprocessors to be connected, monitored, controlled and supercharged through networks — is still in its early days, but one of the more interesting startups in the field is raising some significant money as it gears up to take a leading role in its… Read More

Oakley and Intel’s Radar Pace training sunglasses, which were introduced at CES last year, are now available to buy. The sunglasses come with built-in earbuds that allow the sunglasses to respond to voice commands. You can ask how far you’ve traveled and your pace, and your voice assistant "coach" will respond along with encouragement to keep going. The sunglasses are also outfitted with a bunch of sensors, including an accelerometer and gyroscope. They can also apparently detect pressure, humidity, and proximity. The gradient on the sunglasses’ lens is called "Prizm Road." I enjoy it. It reminds me of Word art or PowerPoint slides.

The sunglasses pair with your phone through Bluetooth and can be controlled through the Radar Pace’s...

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If the control method for all your smart home technology has to be constantly charged or plugged in, it's going to limit your flexibility when it comes to setting things up. Panasonic, however, is looking to improve on that with its new wireless and batteryless switch technology that the company unveiled at CEATEC 2016.

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The search giant wants to beat Apple and Amazon to a fully voice-enabled interface.

Even though it was billed as a hardware event, Google’s product launch Tuesday was really about artificial intelligence, which is now under the hood of almost all the new gear coming out this year.

The power of Google’s computer brain is a result of all the searching you and everyone else in the world have done on Google over the years. And now the company is using all that data to build a voice-enabled personal assistant, which will debut on Pixel, Google’s new smartphone, as well as Google Home, the company’s answer to Amazon’s Echo.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said they’ve gotten really good at helping people figure out what they want to know. Google’s Knowledge Graph, that small box on the top of search results with the quick answer you’re looking for, now holds 70 billion facts, all of which help power its new AI assistant.

Google isn’t the only company vying for your spoken commands. All the big players, from Apple to Amazon to Facebook, are investing in the idea that voice is going to be the next digital interface. And they’re all racing to become the de facto standard for voice-enabled AI. Google won desktop search. Apple won mobile with the iPhone, and Facebook won social media. But voice is still up for grabs, even if Amazon is off to a head start with the popularity of Alexa, the voice-powered AI that lives inside the Echo.

Google’s image recognition abilities are rapidly improving in accuracy, too. Sundar says Google’s AI can now identify images with 93.9 percent accuracy, up from the 89.6 percent accuracy they achieved in 2014. Sure, it’s fractional, but it amounts to dramatically refined results.

And when it comes to natural language processing, Google says that its AI is approaching human levels of understanding. Now that Google Translate uses machine learning, their accuracy clocks in (on a scale of 1-6) at 4.263, said Sundar. Humans generally score 4.263 on the same scale.

Here are all the ways Google is using artificial intelligence to power its new hardware offerings.

Pixel Phones

The company’s Pixel Phones will be the first devices with Google Assistant preloaded. It’s either voice activated or turned on with a long hold of the home button. The idea with the assistant is that it glides from search queries to text to your calendar, all with voice command. Yes, it’s similar to Siri, but it’s fair to say Google is better at search than Apple, so its assistant should reflect that.

The Pixel also uses AI to power an intelligent burst mode in the camera, Smartburst, that takes multiple shots and chooses the best.

Google Home

This is probably the most important product the company shared today, as it highlights the company’s vision for the future of computing. The company packed its artificial intelligence into a tabletop speaker that resembles an air freshener.

Google Home is voice activated, can handle complex queries and is programed to learn your preferences. So the more you use it, the smarter it gets.

Google Wi-Fi

The new router system creates a mesh network throughout your house and uses artificial intelligence to take some of the guesswork out of picking the hotspot with the strongest signal.

Chromecast

Even the video streaming stick is benefiting from the company’s AI push. Google showed how Chromecast can work as a smart endpoint in conjunction with Google Home, allowing a Chromecast-ready television to broadcast the results of queries like, "Show photos from October" or "Play John Oliver clips." If it doesn’t get it right the first time, correct it and next time it should know better.

The one outlier of the bunch was Daydream, which is part of a separate push to make Android the operating system for virtual reality. We’ll have more on that effort in a bit.

Apple is increasingly pushing itself into the lucrative world of enterprise IT budgets as a way to expand sales of its iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

But enterprise IT folks have mixed feelings about the company, according to a survey of 900 of them from Spiceworks, a social networking site for IT professionals.

For instance, IT professionals are watching and talking about Apple a lot.

It ranked second only to Dell in terms of hardware brands discussed by IT pros on Spiceworks this year. 

And that's saying something given that Dell sells everything from PC and servers to storage and networking equipment, and it just completed a massive acquisition of EMC.

But Apple is not considered a particularly "innovative" brand to watch in 2017. Only 16% surveyed believed that it was. More people thought that Microsoft was innovative. Amazon scored far higher too, and Google outscored them all.

One reason that Apple's reputation for innovation has fallen behind among IT folks is this: It's not considered much of a player in the upcoming tech trends that IT pros are watching and talking about.

IT pros are heavily watching 3D printers and the Internet of Things, two areas where Apple isn't involved.

They are also watching Artificial Intelligence. Apple claims it has game here with features like identifying a caller from your email, telling you where you parked your car, or surfacing a hotel address from a reservation stored in email. But again, Apple is not as a tech company moving the AI ball the way Google and Microsoft are doing with both their products and their cloud services.

Apple isn't much involved in the hot area of virtual reality, beyond some so-called secret projects, either.

With Siri, Apple is a major player in Intelligent Assistants. However, that's the least interesting of all the upcoming tech to IT pros.

SEE ALSO: How Oracle turned a program that salespeople hated into one of its secret weapons

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NOW WATCH: Watch Google repeatedly mock Apple at its October 2016 event

Everybody copies everybody. It doesn't mean they're "out of ideas" or "in a technological cul-de-sac" — or at least it doesn't necessarily mean that — it does mean they want to make money and keep users. It's actually one of my favorite elements of the tech industry. It's self-regulating in a small way, because there's a certain shame to, say, copying GoPro or Meerkat or Snapchat or Dropbox, but sometimes a product category or feature is just irresistible.

At today's Pixel event, Google hit a lot of pre-existing categories and features with its own Google-branded hardware. And to clarify once more, because I don't want to be misunderstood: I'm not saying this is bad or dumb or unethical or boring, I'm just saying it's kind of obvious...

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Google’s Pixel hardware event today unleashed a torrent of news and product announcements on the tech world. We got to see two new phones, a new virtual reality headset, a tiny puck-sized router, a 4K-ready Chromecast, and pricing and availability for the new Google Home speaker. For Google — which tends not to have big, splashy events outside its I/O developer conference every May — today marked its most significant hardware push in years.

If you’re still trying to wrap your head around everything the company showed off, you’re in luck. We’ve boiled the 117-minute presentation down to 10 minutes of essential video. Check it out to catch up on Google's ambitious play to control every bit of consumer computing and entertainment, from the...

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Kim Kardashian West's social-media visibility and flaunting of jewelry online made the reality TV star a target for her recent robbery at a Paris private apartment, police tell CNN. 

Kardashian West — who has 48 million Twitter followers and another 84 million on Instagram — posted a picture of a huge diamond ring on Instagram and Twitter five days ago, and her online documentation of her whereabouts leading up to the robbery made her an easy target, according to the outlet.

Johanna Primevert, the chief spokeswoman for the Paris police department, explained to CNN how Kardashian West's social-media presence prompted the attack.

"It was really the celebrity who was targeted, with possessions that had been seen and noticed via social media," Primevert said. "And it was these goods that the attackers targeted."

Five armed men dressed as police officers seized a private mansion and stole up to $11 million in jewelry from Kardashian West on Monday morning. They also tied her up in a bathroom during the incident.

Primevert told the Associated Press that such a robbery is "extremely rare" in the French capital and was mainly the result of Kardashian West's celebrity.

"This kind of incident is extremely rare in Paris. This is a star who is famous worldwide," Primevert said. "I think this could have happened abroad just as easily as in Paris." 

The Paris police department's investigation into the robbery and process of estimating the exact worth of the stolen jewelry are reportedly ongoing.

SEE ALSO: How robbers stole $11 million in jewelry from Kim Kardashian West

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NOW WATCH: Here's what 'Game of Thrones' stars look like in real life

In another episode of "Stop it tech, you're drunk," Apple accessory company Twelve South has released a candle that smells like a freshly unboxed Mac. For just $24, you can enjoy a hand-poured, 100 percent soy wax candle with scents of mint, peach, basil, lavender, mandarin, and sage. I'm not sure how all that equates to the smell of a new Mac, but enough people have been hyped about this candle for it to sell out on the website.

Honestly, I can't remember what my Macbook Air smelled like the first time I unboxed it. Perhaps it was a mixture of excitement and vague anxiety at having just dropped the biggest sum of money I'd ever spent in my young adult life.

And where exactly should one place this candle in their homes? In the home...

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Facebook has finished rolling out end-to-end encryption on Messenger, allowing users of the app to protect their conversations from being monitored by hackers, government agencies, or Facebook itself. Trials for the feature started back in July, but this week sources from the company told Wired that the encryption was now available to all of the app's 1 billion users.

Messenger's new encryption comes in the form of "secret conversations" — an option that's available by clicking on a user's name in any regular chat. Once activated you can talk as normal, with the added option of setting a self-destruct timer on your messages — anywhere from fives seconds to a day.

send stickers with end-to-end encryption

Some functionality, like...

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By Dave Michels
Three months after its IPO, Twilio stock prices continue to soar, validating this new APIs-centric view of enterprise communications.

The United States Postal Service would like to aid in the expansion of smart city technology, according to a recent report from the Office of Inspector General.  Proposed are five programs that would focus on how the USPS can help improve smart city technology.

The concept of an “Internet of Postal Things” was first described in a 2015 white paper that explored how connected technologies could both help cities, while at the same time improving the USPS, in regards to its own operational efficiency. This new report explains how the Postal Service can harness IoT to speed up the adoption of smart city technology.

See also:  Will smart cities need AI to truly flourish?

Out of the five possible pilot programs, two of these would occur in Pittsburgh, partnering with Carnegie Mellon University.  One of the projects would be placing CMU-developed software and cameras in some USPS vehicles, to study road conditions and identify potholes and cracks. The other would attach accelerometers to postal transportation, in order to detect vibrations during bridge crossings on normal vehicle routes. The data collected would assist in monitoring conditions of the infrastructure. The city’s light rail actually already uses this technology.

“We put the whole postal physical infrastructure on the table for people to use,” states Jacob Thomases, a public policy analyst with the Risk Analysis Research Center, which made the report. “Cities very quickly came back to us with the vehicle over and over again because it has a power supply and you can attach a sensor and not have any involvement by the letter carrier.”

Moving on to Montgomery County, MD, the proposed pilot program would use USPS vehicles to gather data from sensors on water pipes and fire hydrants in order to determine problems in underground water infrastructure.  Furthermore, a program in Portland, OR would connect air quality monitors to the vehicles.

There is a slightly different spin put on the New York project idea.  It would be based on the postal carriers’ knowledge of the neighborhoods they serve. “An application could be created for the carrier’s device to capture this knowledge to allow more consistent input of information about properties in order to detect early signs of blight. For example, the carrier could report that a house is falling into disrepair or that a mailbox has not been emptied for a long time,” states the report.

USPS needs further research to begin

Through this research, the United States Postal Service hopes to gain better understanding of the value in the existing infrastructure, possibly adding to the agency’s bottom line.  Last year, USPS requested information for the next-generation postal vehicle, according to Piscioneri.  The request specifically mentions data collection, along with drones, she states, though they are not the main focus.

USPS’s Vice President of Delivery Operations, Kevin McAdams, said, in response to this report, that he is in favor of the projects but wanted more clarity in three topics not addressed by the paper: fleet modification, privacy and bandwidth issues associated with data collection and the workforce.

“We support opportunities for new potential sources of USPS revenue and the ability to copartner with local government agencies which may earn ’good will‘ for the Postal Service,” McAdams explains. “However, it is important that any service we may end up providing is properly costed and that all potential liabilities are fully explored.”

Through these types of programs and partnerships with local government, suppliers and customers, the Postal Service can experiment with new business ideas such as connected mailboxes and other new services for communities.  The answer to successful implementation of an IoPT will be the creation of an open platform where data is managed, stored and shared, along with solid privacy and security policies.

 

 

The post USPS looks to rush in delivering with smart city technology appeared first on ReadWrite.

Facebook's COO offers insight on how the company is pushing clients to take advantage of the smartphone revolution.

Facebook's COO offers insight on how the company is pushing clients to take advantage of the smartphone revolution.

Facebook's growing stature as an advertising juggernaut is increasingly overshadowing its identity as a mere "social network." This evolution was especially clear during New York's annual Advertising Week event, as chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and a team of Facebook of executives revealed some key client metrics and initiatives—among them, the fact that Facebook now has a whopping 4 million advertisers on its platform. Sandberg talked with Fast Company about the ways Facebook is helping advertisers take advantage of the global proliferation of mobile devices.

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Xiaomi has officially released its Android TV-powered Mi Box in the US, five months after announcing the device at Google I/O earlier this year. The $69 Mi Box will support Google Cast box out of the box, and will playback 4K content at 60fps, as well as HDR content, matching Roku's latest set-top boxes.

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A jury has ordered Apple to pay $302.4 million to VirnetX Holding Corp. after it found that the tech giant's FaceTime feature infringed on the VirnetX's patents related to secure communications. The case will now go to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC.

Virnetx is a communications technology company founded by a group of employees at the Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) which developed security technology for various federal agencies. However, the company is regularly described as a patent troll, making most of its revenue through licensing the patents that it holds. The company has instigated lawsuits against Microsoft and Cisco.

This is the third trial between the two companies

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