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Furniture has largely avoided the smart home revolution, but robotic furniture is coming, and it may be the ultimate space-saver for anyone with an apartment or small home. Designer Yves Béhar has collaborated with Ori, a company spun off from MIT Media Lab's CityHome project, to create a line of architectural robot units that can be used in place of the furniture in your home.

Ori uses modular mechatronics to offer full-scale bedroom, living room, and offices in one unit. From retractable beds and desks, to configurable shelves and closets, the Ori — derived from origami — System allows you to open up additional space in your living area with a touch of a button (or using the app).

The company hasn't said how much the Ori Systems...

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One of the big advantages of Amazon's video-streaming service has always been the ability to download its content on mobile devices. That way, if you're taking a flight, or just want to save on battery, you can watch films and TV shows without having to connect to the internet. Now, Amazon has made a small but significant tweak to this feature, adding the ability for Android users to download content directly to their SD cards.

This means that users that want to download, say, the whole of Mr. Robot season one, won't have to juggle their files, moving them about from main to removable storage as they run out of space. Instead, they'll just go straight into the latter. The feature is available on Android tablets and smartphone starting...

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There are data breaches just about every day, as high-profile hacks of companies and governments have almost become commonplace.

But there at least a few incidents that truly stand out among the thousands of others. They are a bit scarier — the ones that have far-reaching consequences for people or organizations, and some even change the game in cyberspace.

These are attacks like Stuxnet, which destroyed nuclear centrifuges, or exposed email accounts that have consequences for presidential campaigns.

These are hacks we felt had some of the biggest impact over the past decade.

1. The "first major cyber conflict" was launched against Estonia in 2007 — a 21-day assault on its networks and websites that many believe was Russian-led.

It was dubbed "Web War One."

At about 10 p.m. on April 27, 2007, the Estonian government noticed that many of its websites were kicked offline. Then hackers defaced the websites of its president, ministries, and parliament. 

Others shared tips for coordinating distributed denial-of-service attacks on the country's financial sector and media sites. For 21 days, Estonia fought a war carried out entirely in cyberspace, which began after it decided to remove a Soviet-era statue from its capital.

Estonia accused the Russian government of carrying out the attack, though it was more likely carried out by incensed Russian hackers, who were not actually state-sponsored. Still, as Wired wrote, "never before had an entire country been targeted on almost every digital front all at once, and never before had a government itself fought back."

The Estonia attack didn't have much lasting damage, but it did highlight how an extremely-connected country could be brought down, albeit briefly, by hackers.

The attacks stopped entirely on May 18, 2007 at 11 p.m., according to Adam Segal's book "The Hacked World Order."

He wrote:

"Estonia was briefly cut off from the rest of the world, but the Internet remained accessible within the country. The damage of the attack was instead highly psychological, putting Estonia's digital vulnerability in stark relief."

As Segal noted of the post-mortem, Estonia had some soul-searching to do in its preparation and defenses against cyber attack, which proved inadequate. It eventually created a "Cyber Defense League" and has drastically increased its annual spending on cybersecurity.

2. The massive malware infection of the US government's classified networks in 2008 forced the Pentagon to create a new military unit dedicated to cyber threats.

The Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, where the US military shares classified documents and chats, and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System (JWICS) for sharing top-secret information around the world were supposed to be "air-gapped," or cut off from the normal Internet.

But that didn't stop a worm dubbed Agent.btz from moving undetected through both those classified systems and other unclassified systems in 2008 due to an infected USB thumb drive.

Fortunately, the worm on SIPRNet and JWICS wasn't able to communicate with its creator due to the air gap, though it's unclear what information it gleaned from systems that were connected to the internet.

The worm was relatively-unsophisticated, but it still took the military nearly 14 months to get rid of in an operation called Buckshot Yankee, which included a complete ban on the use of portable thumb drives.

 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This week, Apple Stores will begin selling the Tangram smart rope, a jump rope with embedded LEDs that creates the appearance of a digital display in mid-air that displays your jump count. The smart rope tracks your jumps, calories burned, and has a leaderboard system that will let you compare jump stats with your friends.

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Turns out the final frontier is nbd if you’re the billionaire CEO of Amazon

Jeff Bezos is not in this clip from “Star Trek Beyond”, which opens next week:

But the Amazon CEO does have a role in the new movie. He has a one-scene cameo, playing a “Starfleet Official”.

IMDB, which Amazon owns, acknowledges Bezos’ part in a credit, way at the bottom of the cast list:

As anyone who has spent any time using IMDB as a research tool knows, an IMDB listing is not a rock-solid source. But Star Trek producer J.J. Abrams and Star Trek director Justin Lin both confirmed Bezos’ appearance - described as a “single tracking shot that includes his character”, which suggests he doesn’t have a speaking role - to the Associated Press on Friday.

““He was awesome," Lin said. "It was like a president was visiting, you know? He had a big entourage! But it didn't matter because he was so into it. He had to wait around all day because it was one day we were shooting like three different scenes and, it was also credit to Jeff because ... he just nailed it every time."“

I’ve asked Amazon PR for comment. But really, how are you going to get better than that? [UPDATE: Amazon PR got back to me and... they declined to comment.]

Meanwhile, Bezos has been quite public about his space nerd-dom. “I’ve been passionate about space and rockets since I was a five-year-old boy,” he told Walt Mossberg at the Code Conference this year.

Of course, lots of kids get geeked out about space. But not many of them become billionaires who can finance their own space exploration companies that build recyclable rockets, like Bezos’ Blue Origin, or send teams to the bottom of the Atlantic to recover engines from Apollo 11, like his Bezos Expeditions.

And now you can add “appear in giant Hollywood space movie” to the list.

IBM announced that its Watson Conversation, a natural language interface within IBM Bluemix, has moved from Experimental to General Availability. Developers interested in including Watson Conversation features within third party apps need to move quickly as IBM will discontinue supporting the Experimental version on August 11, 2016.

After years of arguments, Microsoft has won a major victory in its legal fight over US access to information stored in a company data center in Ireland. In a decision filed today by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, judges ruled that US investigators can’t use the Stored Communications Act to compel access to the data, as it is physically located outside of US borders. As a result, the court found that Microsoft has "no remaining lawful obligation to produce materials to the government."

It’s a major victory for Microsoft, which has maintained that extraterritoriality was necessary to fulfill the company’s privacy policy to users. A number of outside groups made arguments in support for Microsoft’s case, including corporate partners...

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Drones flying over a war zone are nothing new, and as they've proliferated, there have been more efforts to make them harder to see from the ground.

Case in point? A drone that was recently downed in Mogadishu, Somalia looks less like a drone and more like a large bird.

Local reports associate this drone, which came down on May 1st, with Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA). It's unclear exactly how it was downed, or if similar drones have been used in the country before.

What’s most interesting about this particular drone are its wings: in addition to looking like a bird, the wings will flap, although it looks like it’s actually powered by two sets of propellers. A quick glance at it flying overhead likely won’t...

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A $9.95 high-speed internet plan for certain low-income families goes national Friday as Comcast Corp. opens its Internet Essentials program to anyone receiving public housing assistance — with or without children.

That’s about 1.3 million more U.S. households that are now eligible, said U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro during a conference call Thursday. About 700,000 HUD recipients were already eligible because they have children who qualify for the free lunch program.

“HUD informs us that more than 40 percent of all HUD assisted households live within the Comcast footprint and will benefit from the program expansion,” said David Cohen, Comcast’s chief diversity officer.

Castro said his department is willing to work with other internet providers to offer similar deals to those who don’t live in Comcast areas.

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In Colorado, approximately 49,182 households receive HUD assistance, according to Comcast.

For $9.95 a month, Internet Essentials subscribers get a Wi-Fi router and 10 megabits-per-second internet service. Users also can buy a computer for $150 and attend free tech classes.

Internet Essentials launched in 2011 with Colorado being one of the first states to participate. But the service was only available to families with child who qualified for the National School Lunch program. Last fall, the program expanded to all students in schools where 50 percent of the students are eligible for the school lunch program. In Colorado, that included 500 schools.

Comcast also picked Colorado last September for a pilot program extending the same internet discount to community college students. A separate pilot in Palm Beach County Florida offers the discount to senior citizens.

At last count, 80,421 Coloradans were eligible for the program and 33 percent signed up for it, which gave Colorado the highest penetration of subscribers nationwide.

The program could expand to more people by the end of the year. In March, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission agreed to expand its Lifeline Program to include broadband service. Lifeline offers discounts on phone service to people at or below 135 percent of the poverty line.

“We were one of the few ISPs that supported the expansion of Lifeline to broadband and we’re very excited about it,” Cohen said. “Assuming it all gets sorted out, we have every intention of participating in the Lifeline product and we think it will (make broadband) available to all low-income households, in and out of the HUD program.”

For more on Internet Essentials, visit apply.internetessentials.com or call 855-846-8376 (English) or 855-765-6995 (Spanish).

Pizza Hut might be the biggest pizza chain in the world, with global sales of more than $13 billion, but it's still got some catching up to do when it comes to using new technology. This week, the company announced its first pizza chatbot, which will allow "conversational ordering" via Facebook Messenger and Twitter. Customers add Pizza Hut as a friend via social media (yes, that's how the world works now), set up the basics of their account, and can then "reorder their favorites" or ask for the latest deals. You order, your food gets delivered, you get sent a receipt via email.

Pizza Hut wants to catch up with Domino's

However, it's clear that Pizza Hut's announcement is about more than just serving pizza — it also wants to catch up...

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 Microsoft announced this morning a new program aimed at expanding Surface’s footprint in the enterprise, dubbed “Surface as a Service.” The initiative will allow businesses to lease Surface devices, alongside subscriptions to Office 365 and Windows 10. The company says this will allow customers to benefit from access to the latest hardware as well as faster device refresh… Read More

PancakeBot is the first-ever pancake printer that uses batter instead of ink to print out photos or digital images as breakfast food.

Produced by Jenner Deal and Kara Cummings

Follow BI Video: On Twitter

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At the recent Mobile World Congress Shanghai, I got the chance to look at a new battery solution that could challenge lithium ion technology for the energy storage throne.

Zap&Go’s fast-charging solution uses graphene-based supercapacitors, with the goal of replacing billions of lithium ion batteries that are currently powering everything from smartphones to laptops to power tools.

And the best part: It can charge up a typical dying phone in five minutes or less.

See also: Can an energy “Network of Things” defeat grid instability?

Beyond the idea of fast-charging, Zap&Go wants to solve other thorny issues with the ubiquitous lithium ion batteries. Memory effect usually kills lithium ion batteries after 500-1000 cycles, since the charge/discharge cycle is a chemical reaction. Think of your cell phone — if you just charge once  day you’re already looking at poorer performance in year two.

Zap&Go is able to withstand 10,000-100,000 cycles, or up to 270 years if charged once a day. Somehow, I think your iPhone 6 will be obsolete by then.

Graphene an energy storage “holy grail?”

Graphene is not necessarily a new idea; it’s an energy technology that always “10 years away,” with the knowledge that nanotechnology advances will make it more cost-effective and scalable. Zap&Go claims to have solved that nanotech need with their own proprietary tech.

Safety is also a big issue that Zap&Go should solve. Even though your cellphone maybe say 0% is available, typically there’s still a charge left – up to 30% of capacity in some cases – since lithium ion batteries become chemically unstable when totally discharged. This leftover charge is also why airlines won’t allow significant numbers to fly in cargo holds, since the heat of the chemical reactions can potentially cause fires.

Zap & Go graphene system can be completely discharged for safe travel. As well, the metal case required in some uses of lithium ion batteries to render them safe can be eliminated, also making for a lighter battery, although the size of the cores of both battery types remains similar today.

Currently the firm is working on a next generation of the product, which will bring down the price and flexibility of this storage solution. In the long run, smaller devices and next generations of technology will have storage problems to solve; let’s see of Zap&Go can do it.

The post Does Zap&Go have this energy storage issue solved? appeared first on ReadWrite.

Verizon on Wednesday announced numerous changes to its phone plans. Most notably, it’s increasing the size of each of its data plans, but at a higher cost.

Previously, things looked like this:

As of Wednesday, though, that’ll become this:

• S: 2GB/$35 per month
• M: 4GB/$50 per month
• L: 8GB/$70 per month
• XL: 16GB/$90 per month
• XXL: 24GB/$110 per month

Beyond that, Verizon introduced a rollover program dubbed “Carryover Data.” Similar to existing offers from T-Mobile and AT&T, this makes it so any data you didn’t use for your current month will be usable if you run out the next month. That extra data will only be available for one additional month, though. 

The company’s also getting slightly more lenient on overage fees. A new “Safety Mode” feature allows you to use mobile data once you hit your allowance — albeit at a throttled speed of 128kbps, which is very slow. 

You’ll also need to go through the (newly redesigned) My Verizon app to access it, and it’ll only be included on the pricier XL and XXL plans by default. Anyone else will have to pay another $5 per month. A "Data Boost" feature lets Safety Mode users buy another GB of LTE data for $15, but at that point, anyone on the lower-tier plans is paying more than the $15/GB overage fee Verizon typically charges for going over.

Finally, the carrier is making it so calling, texting, and data plans will work in Mexico and Canada. Again, only the XL and XXL plans will have that baked in, while others will have to pay $5 per month for unlimited calling, or $2 per month for texting and data.

Current customers will be able to keep their current plans if desired.

A CNET report earlier this week first suggested the new plans, while a Reddit post spotted the potential Safety Mode and international rate changes late last month.

None of the moves here are unprecedented, but they further highlight the increased competition between major mobile carriers in US. While Verizon remains the country's number one carrier in terms of total subscribers (and general coverage), it has been forced to respond to aggressive offers from its rivals — typically initiated by T-Mobile — numerous times over the past three years.

Today's price raises, though, suggest that those offers haven't been too harsh on Verizon's ability to keep people onboard. Whether or not that's good for you is a little more subjective.

SEE ALSO: Everything we know about the iPhone 7

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NOW WATCH: Sorry Apple fans — the iPhone 7 is going to be boring

Microsoft announced on Thursday that it has set a new record by storing 200 megabytes of data on strands of synthetic DNA. That's about 20 times the previous record. 

Back in April 2016, Microsoft Research bought 11,000 custom-made synthetic DNA molecules from Twist Biosciences, a San Francisco startup.

The idea was to look into the idea of using DNA molecules as a way to store massive amounts of data. Unlike hard drives, Blu-Ray discs, or pretty much any current storage technology, DNA stays intact and readable for as long as 1,000 to 10,000 years.

With this announcement, only a few months later, the science is starting to bear fruit.

Microsoft was able to successfully encode and then decode a bunch of data to DNA strands, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in more than 100 languages, the top 100 public domain books from Project Guttenberg, the Crop Trust’s seed database, and the high-def music video to OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass."

Why OK Go in particular? Because the video's Rube Goldberg-inspired machinery required the band to bring in lots of outside help from all kinds of cross-disciplines, much like how Microsoft Research had to bring in biologists and computer scientists alike from Twist and the University of Washington to help break this DNA storage record.

"They're very creative and they bring a variety of other areas into their work," Microsoft Research DNA storage project lead Karin Strauss told Business Insider. "We see parallels with our work."

 Two hundred megabytes of data may seem measley. After all, the most basic iPhone holds 16 gigabytes, or 16,000 megabytes. And with an average price-per-gigabyte falling to less than $0.03 in 2016, it's both cheaper and easier than something crazy like storing data on DNA. That's why Microsoft is thinking bigger.

"Initially, what makes the most sense for DNA is archival storage," says Strauss.

Doesn't degrade

While it'll be a long time before it's as fast and as cheap as the solid-state drive that goes into a smartphone, DNA has the potential to be perfect for storing archives of big files, like movies and video, over long periods of time — hard drives, USB drives, tapes, and CD/DVDs degrade over decades, but this synthetic DNA could outlast us all.

That's why books and videos were chosen for this particular project, Microsoft says: To highlight how DNA storage could preserve culture over the long term, even as other technologies come and go. After all, as long as there are humans, there will be DNA, and likely the tools to analyze it.

Ultimately Microsoft Research estimates that one cubic millimeter of DNA can eventually store one exabyte, or one billion gigabytes of data. But the science is handicapped by the fact that it's tough to actually store that much data.  

DNA storage could become especially useful as the rise of the smartphone era means we're generating more photos, video, text, and audio than ever before. 

While the technology is very real, scientists need to figure out better ways to quickly and automatically encode the data into DNA. Right now, it's a slow, painstaking process, which is why it's only 200 megabytes. Still, Straus is confident that in the same way hard drives got smaller, cheaper, and faster over the years, so too will DNA storage.

"That's pretty much how all memory technology evolves," Strauss says. "The scaling needs to improve."

Scientists are also still working on the best way to decode the data once it's stored in DNA. So while it might seem really cool to have OK Go's music stored in the new DNA-format, don't expect to watch the video just yet: unless, you happen to have a DNA sequencer in your living room.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft is buying 10 million molecules of custom DNA from a San Francisco startup

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NOW WATCH: The DNA in your body stretches 12 times farther than Pluto

You can call it Lavazza intervention. The espresso company and coffee sponsor of all the Grand Slam events this year (the US Open, Wimbledon, Roland-Garros, and the Australian Open) will be letting tennis fans print photos on their cups of coffee through a Ripple Maker, which prints any image or text on a latte. Lavazza didn’t clarify whether fans will get to pick their own designs or will have to choose between pre-set options. It just says people can customize their cups with "special messages and photos, meaning they can support their favorite players whilst enjoying a caffeine kick." The "whilst" is all Lavazza.

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Walmart's proprietary mobile payment system Walmart Pay can now be used in all of Walmart's roughly 4,600 stores in the United States, including both its signature Supercenters and grocery-centric Neighborhood Markets, the company announced Wednesday.

The world's largest retailer launched its proprietary mobile wallet last December, and has added approximately 3,500 stores to its Walmart Pay network in the past three weeks, Senior VP of Walmart Services Daniel Eckert told reporters.

"We're building deeper relationships with our customers across our ecosystem and are looking forward to delivering new tools like Walmart Pay that allow them to use the Walmart App as their remote control for a faster, more convenient shopping experience," Eckert said.

Customers will be able to use Walmart Pay from their Walmart smartphone app at every register in every store. The payment system allows users to scan a QR code generated at card readers at checkout, allowing for a quick paperless transaction.

Eckert said that it is too early to reveal data regarding the number of Walmart Pay users, but that the Walmart app has 20 million active users. He said that last week, use of Walmart Pay was up 45% week-over-week and that 88% of customers who have tried Walmart Pay at checkout are repeat users.

At the annual Walmart Shareholders Meeting in June, CEO Doug McMillon said that "We have the opportunity to imagine retail again," and that this would include big investments in its technology. This includes the nationwide rollout of Walmart Pay, which met the company's goal of full availability by the first half of the calendar year, as well as its $49 ShippingPass answer to Amazon Prime, drone tech that will allow for more efficient delivery services, and expansion of its delivery service, which includes a pilot partnership with Uber and Lyft.

Eckert said early data suggests that the mobile wallet has no effect on basket size at checkout, but that the company is considering using customers' shopping habits to suggest "smart list" shopping lists, if the customer chooses to opt in.

When asked about other mobile payment systems like Apple Pay, which cannot be used at Walmart locations, Eckert said that Walmart is in talks with third parties concerning the possibility of future partnerships.

SEE ALSO: I spent 4 days in Arkansas for the 14,000-person Walmart shareholders meeting, and it's unlike anything else in the corporate world

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NOW WATCH: The most surprising brands millennials love

Facebook has long been working to reduce the number of people who don’t have access to the internet, and have announced the creation of a new platform called OpenCellular.

The OpenCellular is an open source, "wireless access platform" designed to drive down the cost of setting up cellular networks in places where it has been traditionally difficult to do so. The system is designed to provide the tools to set up a complete network, from the physical equipment to the software that runs it.

Facebook announced that they would be launching the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) earlier this year, with the stated goal of exploring new approaches to setting up data-intensive communications networks, and to "rethink how we deploy existing...

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The chain is launching a smartphone app that turns science fiction into reality.

Lowe's may not be where most people would expect to find a cutting-edge augmented reality app.

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Procurement and deployment of the PC and other devices is about to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

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Procurement and deployment of the PC and other devices is about to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century as a growing number of companies explore the potential benefits of PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) and Device-as-a-Service (DaaS).

We’ve been researching this trend for some time at IDC, surveying IT buyers and talking with industry players. Last week, HP launched a major DaaS marketing campaign. The company, which cut its teeth on the hardware-as-a-service model through its print managed-services business, has been quietly rolling out DaaS solutions through its channel partners around the world for months. This trend has legs because, done right, it has the potential to be mutually beneficial for customers and the industry.

Defining DaaS

Some will dismiss DaaS as the industry merely jumping on the "as-a-service" naming bandwagon. And truthfully, the name can be a bit confusing, especially when you consider that Desktop-as-a-Service is already a thing.

Why would a company want to pay a monthly fee for a device versus simply buying it outright?

Despite the matching acronyms, the two are notably different. Desktop-as-a-Service serves up a data-center-based, highly-secured virtualized desktop, accessible on a wide range of devices, including thin clients, desktops, notebooks, tablets and phones. Device-as-a-Service, conversely, serves up the hardware itself. Plans vary, but typically they include deployment, management, services and eventual end-of-life recycling of the device. Companies choose a length of service, typically around three years, and pay a monthly fee for each device.

Earlier this year, IDC surveyed U.S.-based IT buyers across a range of company sizes about PCaaS, and found that about one-quarter were already actively looking at such services. Among those who were not, nearly 20 percent said they had plans to do so in the next 12 months. Why would a company want to pay a monthly fee for a device versus simply buying it outright? Among respondents, the top three selected reasons included the ability to deploy only the PC assets they need, based on workload, as well as the ability to transition PC procurement from CAPEX to OPEX, and the ability to reduce IT workloads by offloading procurement and management to a third party. Let’s look at each of these more closely.

Key benefits of DaaS

The ability to deploy only assets as needed based on workload is a big one. This means a company has the ability to flex up, adding devices as needed when its workforce grows. More importantly, however, is the ability to flex down. The problem with the traditional PC procurement model is companies that decrease the size of their workforce due to seasonal changes, layoffs or the like, have to deal with the surplus of PCs (and sunk costs) that result. In a DaaS model, the provider takes back those devices, potentially redeploying them with another client.

Desktop-as-a-Service serves up a data-center-based, highly secured virtualized desktop, accessible on a wide range of devices. Device-as-a-Service, conversely, serves up the hardware itself.

Shifting device procurement from CAPEX to OPEX is a key reason why even a large firm with an in-place IT organization might consider DaaS. Instead of the high cost of purchasing PCs as part of capital expenditures they must depreciate, the as-a-service model lets a company shift the ongoing cost over to the operating expenses side of the ledger. The model also drives increased cost stability. Instead of trying to forecast the need for future hardware refreshes, those refreshes are built into the service plan. From an industry perspective, the upside here is to not only have a more reliable understanding of when customers will need new hardware, but also the potential to reverse the ongoing trend toward ever-longer device life cycles.

Finally, reducing IT workloads is attractive for all the reasons you might expect. By offloading day–to-day management and other service tasks to a third-party organization that is incentivized to keep everything running smoothly, employees are likely to have a better overall experience. Plus, overtaxed IT organizations can focus on other business-driving initiatives. If the service provider does its job well, it’s a win-win situation, with more attractive margins for the seller and a simple, single-contract experience for the customer.

There is a long list of other potential benefits associated with DaaS, including reduced overall costs, the ability to predict and prevent hardware failures through enhanced analytics, and the capacity to make sure all devices are properly retired.

That last one, interestingly, may be a key driver for many companies. During a recent conversation with HP executives on this topic, they noted that asset disposal is a key challenge for many businesses. Too often, old PCs in non-regulated small, medium or large-sized business end up stashed in desk drawers, still filled with company data. A DaaS model not only ensures those devices are collected and wiped of sensitive data, but that the business also recovers the residual hardware value.

Early days, but a clear opportunity

DaaS programs are just starting to spin up, and the model is far from a guaranteed success. As more companies enter the space and we dive deeper into the research, we’re likely to find some aspects that need refinement. What’s clear now is that one size certainly doesn’t fit all. For example, the needs of small companies in emerging markets will be dramatically different from those in a mature market. Many companies will likely find the available products and services too limited. Others will prefer to stick with their existing lease programs. Still others will simply always prefer to buy and manage outright. And, of course, the appetite for DaaS providers to take on higher-risk organizations will only scale if they first find success with well-established, stable ones first.

Bottom line: In a world where much of the news around PCs and devices more broadly is often negative, with growth rates going the wrong way, DaaS looks like a promising development for all involved.

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Tom Mainelli has covered the technology industry since 1995. He manages IDC’s Devices and Displays group, which covers a broad range of hardware categories including PCs, tablets, smartphones, thin clients, displays and wearables. Mainelli is also driving new research at IDC around the technologies of augmented and virtual reality. Reach him @TomMainelli.

It’s actually worse than it was in the days of the overflowing email inbox.

Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, now an executive editor at The Verge and editor at large of Recode.

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Up until just a few years ago, I got around 350 emails a day, which presented me with an exhausting, time-consuming daily task that I grumbled about plenty. Now, because of social media and messaging services, that number has been cut by more than half. But things are actually worse.

These days, messages come at me from so many directions that it’s incredibly distracting and even harder to deal with. Friends, co-workers, business acquaintances and strangers contact me on multiple siloed services, which can signal subtle shades of immediacy or weight. And when I have to reach someone with something important and time-sensitive, I often wind up resorting to two or more similar but independent pathways, because I’m never sure which one will be likelier to work, since he or she is under a similar assault.

And then there are the notifications, ever-present on every operating system on every device. Sure, you can fine-tune or even silence them with some work (more on that later), but most people don’t, or don’t know how, or feel they don't dare. Notifications are supposed to save you time, but often they wind up doing the opposite.

Many mornings, it’s common for the lock screen of my iPhone and the right-hand side of my Mac’s screen to be jammed with notifications about "news" I don’t care about, messages whose relevance has come and gone overnight, tips on birthdays of people I’m not close to, reminders of meetings I’m not attending and warnings of traffic tie-ups on roads I don’t use. The signal-to-noise ratio is very poor and gets only marginally better during the work day.

The confusion will only grow

And this weird, mixed-up communications structure is about to get more complex, because U.S. tech companies — following a strong trend in Asia — are turning messaging from a service into a platform, with supposedly intelligent bots and assistants and apps built into them. Apple is beefing up iMessage. Facebook is beefing up Messenger. Google, which has been behind in messaging, is launching two new platforms: Allo for text and images and emojis, and Duo for videos.

Maybe these bots and assistants and apps will be a means to controlling and focusing your messaging and communications, but that would be a hard, tricky job. More likely, I fear, they will just spew more messages and notifications they think — wrongly — you care about.

Alongside the race for consumer loyalty among these giants, there’s a parallel race to become the new-style internal messaging system for companies. In the lead so far is Slack, an unthreaded, sometimes chaotic series of chat rooms which my employer, Vox Media, uses, and which claims to be the fastest-growing business application on the market. Microsoft and others are trying to catch up. Slack is just another thing you have to keep up with. I don’t know about you, but I expect to be pretty cautious about committing to Google’s new Allo service, once I’ve tried it out. Other new services inspire similar caution. All due respect to the smart folks at Google, but I’m just not sure I can handle yet another messaging service in my life.

Stop! Attention thief!

Sometimes, I yearn for the old days of email dominance (I can’t believe I typed those words). Why? Because despite the spam, you could be pretty sure you were good if you just checked it a few times a day, since most people used it as their primary means of written communication and they usually didn’t expect an immediate response.

A text, or short internet message, on the other hand, seems to demand instant attention, and may even lead to a whole thread of conversation. This can sometimes be delightful or enlightening, but it takes you away from the moment — from your thinking, reading, working. It steals your attention at a time of the sender’s choosing.

Even social network posts can act like this. You might be succeeding — for a while at least — in staying away from Facebook or Twitter while you work on a project or think through a problem. But then somebody acts on one of your posts, or even on a post you merely commented on, and boom! There’s a notification nagging at you. This happened to me as I was writing this column, because I forgot to kill notifications for a while.

And, of course, a tweet or Facebook post can spawn a whole, sometimes heated, conversation that’s hard to ignore, even if you’re not browsing your whole feed for news or amusing GIFs.

The rabbit holes are everywhere, and it’s too easy to fall down them.

Dumb and Dumber

One reason for the messaging overload, especially when it comes to notifications, is that too many apps just have no idea what’s relevant to you, or don’t care. For instance, I signed up for a local text alert service to get notified of things like dangerous storms on the way or bad road conditions. But I’m on the verge of shutting it off because it floods me with texts about anything worse than a fender bender on roads I never travel. It knows nothing about my driving habits and offers no way to teach it. Then, it compounds the distraction by texting me again when the irrelevant traffic tie-up is cleared.

Starbucks notifies me when I’m near one of its branches where I buy a lot of coffee. But the notification remains on my Apple watch long after I’ve left the vicinity of that store. CVS notifies me of sales, when I really don’t care and I only wanted to know if my prescription is ready.

And to make some of these apps smarter, I might have to give up more of my personal information, which is a dangerous balance — especially when dozens of these apps start asking for it.

The big solution?

It would be nice if, like most email services, these major and forthcoming messaging services could somehow interoperate in the same client of your choice, so they could all somehow learn your preferences and you could use a single scheme of settings and preferences to control their behavior (maybe you could "snooze" them) and their notifications. But that seems highly unlikely. Palm’s webOS operating system had a feature something like this called Synergy, but it's defunct.

So the big fix to this is probably up to the makers of the operating system platforms. They permit and control the notifications, at the least. They could create more and better user tailoring and learning that could be shared by all messaging services. But the problem, of course, is that the two big mobile OS makers, Apple and Google, are also deeply enmeshed in the messaging wars.

The small, available solution

So, what can you do? Well, you can be like me and vow to stick with one or two messaging services, turn off all notifications when need be and, at times, when it really matters, put your mobile devices into airplane mode for an hour here and there, even on the ground.

Or you could carefully tweak your notifications on iOS and Android. For instance, if you have an iPhone, you could open your Notification settings and go through the long list of apps you own, decide if you want notifications from each, and if so, what types of notification (sounds? Lock screen snippets? A badge? One of two types of banners?).

And then you could dive into the preferences on Facebook and Twitter, and quiet the notifications that stem from threads in which you are involved. This might do the trick, but, if you’re a power user, it’s a daunting task. It’s like that vow you make, but never keep, to devote a bunch of time to paring down your list of Facebook friends. A shorter, simpler list of steps outlined here should help.

And none of the excitement and energy around messaging as a new platform will go anywhere if managing the flow of messages is more trouble than they're actually worth.

Google’s Now on Tap service is adding translation to its ever-growing list of options. After the latest update, Android users will be able to translate any screen of foreign text — in both apps and web pages, including pages with multiple languages — into their native language. While it can seemingly translate from any language that Google Translate supports, it’s only supported on Marshmallow phones whose default language is set to English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian.

Using Google Translate on a phone is nothing new. This spring, a new Android feature let users highlight text in a foreign language and get a pop-up option to translate it. But Now on Tap should ideally make the process near-automatic — as...

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Today, Microsoft announced a free browser version of Skype aimed at small businesses. The service is called Skype Meetings, and it's the company's first web-based product after the beta release of Skype for Web last year. Skype Meetings will let you video chat with up to 10 people at a time for the first 60 days of use, and then meeting capacity is limited to three people. It also includes some of the more powerful collaboration tools included with Skype for Business, such as screen sharing and PowerPoint integration.

Skype Meetings is very similar to the free version of Skype. Both versions of the software let you video chat with the same number of people and make use of the platform's messaging capabilities. But Microsoft is clearly...

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The rise of IoT comes with all the promise of self-driving cars, smartwatches that do everything from track your heartbeat to acting as your credit card, and homes that can be entirely controlled with your smartphone from anywhere in the world. However, this isn’t where many brands are taking the technology. There is also a rise of single-use IoT devices that only do one thing, and that one thing is only really useful in occasional circumstance.

It’s actually difficult to find many cases of single-use IoT devices in today’s ecosystem.

Even wristwatches which used to only tell time are now responsible for delivering your text messages, tracking your steps and heartbeat, updating you on the score of the game your favorite team is playing, and any number of other things. The same can even be said for programmable lights which can be programmed to blink when you receive a tweet or turn on when you are within a mile of home.

Enter the Amazon Dash Button

Perhaps the biggest example of this category is the Amazon Dash Button. We’ve written about this device before, both in how its original purpose takes the concept of IoT too far and how its extended purpose could make IoT technologies more useful.

At first glance, these buttons would appear to be an April Fool’s joke by the retail giant. How ridiculous would it be to have buttons attached to various places in your home that order things on your behalf?

These buttons are purchasable for $4.99 that do one thing: order an item from Amazon when you press it. Certain promotions through Amazon available to Prime customers enable users to receive a credit for $4.99 after their first purchase using the device. This makes the button essentially free, as long as you can prove that you’re willing to use it to restock on things like laundry detergent or macaroni and cheese.

But in reality, do we really need a dedicated button in our home to resupply our cache of Slim Jim meat sticks? Do we need a button inside our cabinets or attached to our appliances that do nothing more than add single items to our cart on Amazon?

The case for convenience

If there is one argument to be made in favor of these gimmicky devices, it’s convenience. In a household that uses Amazon as its primary source for groceries and other goods that can survive a trip through the mail, this simple button is an added convenience to remind you that you are running low on something when you might otherwise forget.

Instead of whipping out your phone and adding a box of Tide to your cart, you just push a button. It’s convenient, and that makes you more likely to buy.

For Amazon, these buttons are great. It makes Amazon a more logical choice for consumers that could otherwise drive down to their local grocery store for these goods. From the moment someone brings a Play-Doh button into their home, it’s safe to say that Amazon will be their source of Play-Doh from that moment forward.

This makes these single-use devices like the Dash Button a convenience for the consumer and a sale-generating tool for the retailer.

Security and single-use IoT Devices

Then, of course, there is the security concern that comes up every time an IoT device is introduced to a network. That concern being that with each new system to add to a network, your susceptibility to intrusion increases.

Thankfully for Dash Button users, this isn’t a big issue with this particular type of device as it doesn’t do anything more than send an HTTP call with its unit ID. That HTTP call tells Amazon to add one of that item to the consumer’s cart. If someone listening in to network traffic really wanted to use this HTTP call against the owner of the network, at best they could mimic the HTTP call themselves. Of course, this could also happen if a child were to wander over to the button and playfully mash on it.

As for other concerns such as open ports and two-way communication leading to someone accessing other systems in your home, it’s not a huge problem with the Amazon Dash Button – at least not in its original programming. Unless the Dash Button communicates directly with those other systems, or receives commands itself, it isn’t a particularly big security concern on the network.

Where security becomes a concern is actually with the more complicated devices. Devices that receive commands from the cloud and execute those commands, such as the Philips Hue smart bulbs which have been found to be susceptible to malicious attack in the past, rendering them useless unless the owner disconnects them entirely from the network and uses them like a regular light bulb.

This isn’t to say that Amazon’s Dash Buttons are entirely safe from malicious foul play. Just that their digital reach is far shorter, making them a poor target.

Getting more out of Amazon’s Dash Button

Clearly, the Dash button concept can be used to do incredible things like open all the blinds in a room, change the lighting to match, and fire up your television and/or stereo simultaneously. This is cool, and exactly what a proverbial IoT red button should be used for.

It is also one of the reasons that Amazon finally released an IoT version of its Dash Button, giving developers the opportunity to put this button concept to more productive use. Now, this little hackable button could be used like the electronic ignition of a car, firing up your coffee pot or turning on your lights for you.

Indeed, the real value of this device is in its potential. Sure you can order goodies with it, but if you could also use it to do things that provide actual value to your life, why not?

For all the gimmick and silliness that buying a button to refill your supply of Nerf darts, Amazon really did create a concept around a uniquely useful single-purpose networked device. While it might not be the revolutionary hot new item in retail, it could have a lasting impact as developers find new ways to put this simple product to good use.

The post The ridiculous world of single-use IoT devices appeared first on ReadWrite.

IBM on Monday told workers in the Netherlands to expect a layoff. This is the first time that IBM has ever done a layoff in that country, it said in an email to employees.

Previous changes in the workforce were done via voluntary separation packages.

That internal email that explained the layoff was leaked to the Watching IBM employee watchdog Facebook page and shared with IB Times UK. 

In it, IBM explains that it needs to its employee base from workers with aging "redundant" expertise to new areas. 

The email explains:

"In the past IBM implemented successfully voluntary leave programs. This time the number of places we need to rebalance is too large."

IBM isn't new to layoffs, although these are the first to affect the Netherlands. IBM's troubled business units, like its global technology services unit, are shrinking faster than its booming businesses, like its big data/analytics, machine learning (aka Watson), and digital advertising agency are growing.

But there was a particular sentence in this email that was enlightening. In it, IBM all but admitted that its current method of shifting workers is not temporary, but the new norm:

"Our customers have a need for new insights, knowledge and capabilities, making the existing expertise redundant. That is why the optimization of our workforce is a permanent and ongoing part of our business model."

All told, IBM eliminated and gained jobs in about equal numbers last year, it said. It added about 70,000 jobs, CEO Rometty said, and cut about that number, too.

IBM does not disclose the number of people or jobs impacted by any particular layoff, and the Netherlands layoff is no exception. It also doesn't announce its layoff plans. But IBM does talk about the financial impact of layoffs to Wall Street analysts every quarter.

For instance, in April, when it reported Q1 2016, CFO Martin Schroeter said that IBM thinks it could end 2016 with roughly the same number of people as it had at the beginning of the year, 380,000. IBM says it's looking to hire 25,000 people right now, with skills in the new fast growing areas.

An IBM spokesperson tells us:

"The news from the Netherlands is part of the changes to the company we articulated during first quarter earnings. At the time, we did state that we are transforming the company to lead in a new era of cognitive and cloud computing. To this end, IBM currently has more than 25,000 open positions, many in these key skills areas. If IBM meets its hiring goals, we expect to end the year with the same number or more employees than at year-end 2015."

 

 

SEE ALSO: This is the dark side of being a 'pampered' Valley software engineer

RELATED: IBM refused to lay off workers for decades, and then America had to rethink its entire corporate strategy

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A company called Rufus Labs has built a wearable that's more capable than the Apple Watch, both in its size and in the scope of what it can do.

Called the Rufus Cuff, the device is a computer worn on your wrist, which runs a complete Android operating system. Unlike other smart watches and similar wearables that must be linked to a phone, the Cuff is a standalone, though it can connect to a phone if you need it to.

The device is jam-packed with everything you might find in a larger tablet, but miniaturized: A 3.2" touchscreen, 1 GB of memory, WiFi, GPS, camera, microphone, and 128 GB of storage. And quite surprisingly, it's very lightweight.

Tech Insider caught a prototype and demo of the Rufus Cuff at an event last week for Make in LA, a hardware startup accelerator. Rufus CEO and Cofounder Gabe Grifroni was pitching at the event, hoping to raise awareness and investment capital for his company, which previously took in nearly $500,000 on IndieGoGo.

Consumer features of the Cuff include the ability to make voice and video calls, play onboard music or stream it over WiFi, and track your workouts.

But there's a key difference between other smartwatches and the Cuff. Though it originally launched on IndieGoGo for consumers, the company has since pivoted its focus to the enterprise market, which Grifoni says has really embraced the technology.

"We have a much better solution to bring wearable tech to the workforce," Grifoni told TI.

For the average consumer, a large wearable on the wrist may not make a whole lot of sense. But as Grifoni explained, it could be a game-changer for the people delivering your packages or grabbing parts in a warehouse.

That's because most rely on bulky barcode scanners that usually cost more than $1000. The Rufus Cuff instead brings more processing power and time-saving to the warehouse, for far less money. And it can even be used to keep workers safe: A Cuff could alert a worker that a forklift is nearby based on its GPS position or other sensors, for example.

The battery also lasts for up to 12 hours ("A full shift," Grifoni said). 

Right now, you can preorder the device for $299, but it will retail somewhere closer to $400.

SEE ALSO: Meet the leaker who reveals Apple's products before they come out

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Airport security lines have become so long and problematic for US travelers that major airlines and the federal government have finally taken notice.

In May, Delta installed new security lanes in the Atlanta Airport that allow more people to load containers onto conveyor belts at a time; in June, the House of Representatives passed a bill outlining requirements for The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to make its security screening process more efficient.

Now the TSA wants to start testing CT scanners that can screen bags without the need for constant human supervision.

According to the AP, the TSA and American Airlines plan to start using CT technology at a checkpoint in the Phoenix airport by the end of the year. The technology, which is already used for checked baggage, creates detailed 3-D images of all the items in a suitcase. If applied to carry-on bags, CT scans would allow passengers to keep liquids and electronics inside their bags, and could potentially eliminate the need for workers to examine every X-ray the way they do now. That would vastly speed up the screening process.

CT scanners are already being used in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and London's Luton Airport. The technology can recognize suspicious or unknown items and flag them to security workers — a process that the two airports estimate has cut wait times in half. 

The TSA has also announced other wait-reducing programs in addition to its own CT trial. The new measures will be implemented this fall at American Airlines checkpoints in four of the country’s busiest airports: Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami.

Similar to Delta's Atlanta checkpoint, each upgraded security lane will have two automated belts — one that carries empty bins to passengers and another that moves bins toward the X-ray machine. The new system will also designate a separate area for further screening of suspicious bags so that officials don’t hold up the line while taking a closer look at one suitcase. The TSA suggests these measures could cut wait times by 30%, and could eventually be rolled out in other airports. 

But, much like those winding security lines, it's not yet clear how long we'll have to wait. 

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Huawei, the Chinese smartphone company, got caught Monday using a photo taken with at least $4,500 worth of DSLR equipment to promote the camera in its Huawei P9 smartphone. (They've since taken down the post.)

Here's the deal: The P9 is a pretty good Android smartphone. In general, it falls somewhere in the middle of the quality pack in terms of flagships.

The device's one standout feature is its Leica-branded dual-camera system. It's not the best smartphone camera in the world, falling well short of industry leaders like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s Plus.

But Huawei has touted the phone's image quality anyway. And the dual cameras do imbue this device one superpower: It can sense depth and blur backgrounds of nearby objects to give the illusion of a DSLR's lens. On Huawei's site the company calls this "professional camera like photo quality."

However, that's a very different thing from shooting images of the kind that actually come from professional cameras. Here are all the ways you can tell Huawei's ad photo didn't come from a smartphone.

Here's the photo Huawei shared to its various social media accounts.

Huawei took it down and apologized, but only after Android Police spotted metadata on Google+ showing it really came from a Canon DSLR and pricey 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.

But the thing is, this photo couldn't have possibly come from a smartphone. There are a few ways to tell. First of all, smartphones rarely produce lens flare of this kind. That's true if the sunlight is within the camera's field of view...

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In an age where it seems anything and everything can benefit from connectivity, the future of toys is changing rapidly.

Toys are becoming more intelligent, more connected and important assets among the Internet of Things.

U.S. domestic toy sales, according to industry association data, hit close to $22 billion in 2014, and that number has been growing steadily ever since, especially with the new connected opportunities for manufacturers.

Mattel, Fisher-Price and Sphero cashing in now

With the advent of sensors, chips, phones, apps and the cloud, the possibilities for what toys can offer is almost limitless.  Just look at Mattel’s Hello Barbie doll that works the same way Samsung voice operators do, sending children’s conversations into the cloud and returning verbal responses through a speaker in the doll.  Fisher-Price makes a WiFi-enabled stuffed animal, and Sphero has introduced an awesome little app-enabled droid toy, called the BB-8, that has an adaptive personality and evolves as an individual plays with it.  It can even create and display holographic recordings.   This toy can also connect with one’s phone, allowing for movement control.

As consumers change the way they are interacting with the connected world, all these IoT products enable toy manufacturers to leverage real-time data, collecting insights about customers to create more interactive and personalized devices that continue to impress and entertain.

But awesome toys present security issues

However, all these connected toys create concerns about security.  There are many gadgets these days that can be used to eavesdrop.  Part of the problem is that many hardware manufacturers offer poor security, and often times consumers are left vulnerable because of all the information they are sharing.

“One of my technologists has a phrase: ‘internet of other people’s things’,” says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. “Even if you bought it, it’s not necessarily truly yours – it may need to talk to the vendor’s machines to work, handing over data about you or those around you (if it has sensors); it may have features you don’t know about or don’t know how to control, or can’t control.”

The internet of things is quite helpful to eavesdroppers, both official and hacker types, for several reasons, with the main one being regular data leaks.

“One helpful feature for surveillance is that private sector IoT generally blabs a lot, routinely into some server, somewhere,” states Tien. “That data blabbing can be insecure in the air, or obtained from storage.”

To further complicate things, just look at video games, which require televisions and game systems.  New smart systems are equipped with cameras and voice monitors that are connected online and constantly sending information to the cloud.

But is someone watching through Barbie’s eyes?

Many people are concerned about what that can mean.  Can smart televisions spy on them? The US director of national intelligence says that is obvious. The ever-increasing variety of “smart” web-enabled devices, most recently dubbed the Internet of Things, is a blessing to intelligence officials and law enforcement, according to director James Clapper.

“In the future, intelligence services might use the Internet of Things for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper tells the Senate in public testimony.

Unfortunately, intelligence officials are not the only ones wanting to hack into hi-tech devices. Being aware of when people are home, what they own and where they store it is valuable knowledge for thieves.

A cyber-attack on toymaker VTech released the personal data of 6.4m children last year, and it was a scary reminder of the vulnerability of children on the internet. A similar thing happened to Sony, when hackers from North Korea stole users’ credentials, and online playing came to a halt during a major holiday.

However, even though a lack of privacy and security breaches are major concerns, it looks like connected toys are here to stay as long as consumers continue to happily purchase them.

The post Iot and toys: Connected toys require more security appeared first on ReadWrite.