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People have found a new way to communicate with businesses, so you might be able to kiss that wonderful "on hold music" goodbye.

A new report by MEF reveals that approximately 65% of smartphone users worldwide have used a messaging app to talk to a company. The study analyzed the responses of almost 6,000 people from nine different nations and found that over-the-top (OTT) apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, along with SMS, have become the preferred communication platforms for most users who talk to companies.

As these apps become more popular, companies are starting to leverage them to reach customers, particularly because businesses know their customers are spending more time within these apps. WhatsApp and Messenger, for example, have eclipsed SMS in terms of person-to-person messaging.

But application-to-person (A2P) messaging, or SMS texting from businesses to consumers, is still the most trusted channel for communication. In fact, 75% of respondents said they talked to businesses through SMS.

This method will likely stay relevant as a B2C channel in the short- and mid-term. This is mostly driven by the ubiquity of SMS technology, which is not tethered to data strength and reaches users worldwide no matter what type of mobile device they had.

For more, see the detailed report on messaging apps from BI Intelligence. Click here to learn more about how you can gain risk-free access today.

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Smart vending machines are an excellent example of how the “Internet of Things” (IoT) can affect business models and revenue flow.

The vending industry is going through a sea of change. The access to data that is generated by connected devices has changed the way companies can operate and the way in which they generate revenues. Constant connectivity allows companies to offer customers a product utility as a service, as seen in vending machines.

With user customization, improved security, smart payments and continuous monitoring of inventory and consumption patterns, opportunities for vending machines to dispense new products in more profitable ways, using a network of connected devices are limitless.

Traditional vending machines have evolved, since they were first introduced almost a century ago. Technology that includes more digital capabilities, has transformed them into smart, connected machines.

Case studies: Coke and SAP

For example, Coke owns 16 million IP addresses that are used for installations like Freestyle, its new generation of smart vending machines. Supplying the machines with network connectivity allows Coke to identify each individual machine, keep track of inventory, conduct real-time test marketing and monitor trends and drinking preferences, adjusting selections accordingly. Freestyle machines can be found in fast food locations across the U.S. and the U.K.

Another major player in the tech industry, SAP, has been developing a variety of platforms and solutions for wireless and wired machines. SAP’s Smart Vending solution offers brands the ability to interact with customers through access to real-time management dashboards and visualization tools, showing timely sales and maintenance information throughout the entire network and at each individual point of sale.

With this new twist on vending, companies can take advantage of new technologies to go beyond just delivering snacks to establishing an entirely new retail center. Smart vending machines can now be located in many public areas as well as company facilities, providing a plethora of goods and services, including computer accessories, tickets, meals and office supplies. Traditional vending machine owners will soon be left in the dust if they don’t take advantage of the growing IoT market.

Improving revenue and lowering costs

Traditional vending machine owners face several problems. For example, they endure considerable expenses and inconveniences in attempts to maintain, repair, and upgrade vending machines without a central administration system to perform these functions. Maintenance and support costs are elevated because on-site visits are usually needed in order to perform software upgrades, troubleshoot, and complete repairs. Furthermore, revenue is lost when a vending machine isn’t working, a situation worsened by it taking days to realize and fix the problem.

Another problem is being able to get the attention of younger customers who are often preoccupied with their smart phones and reliant on an always-connected environment. In an effort to appeal to this group, leading manufacturers, such as Pepsi, are developing their own highly intelligent vending machines, with other industry leaders following suit.

Gamification and geo-fencing are new frontiers

However, integrating new technologies like the cloud, gamification and geo-fencing is not simple, causing most vending machine manufacturers and operators to ask for help.

For example, embedded computer solutions firm ADLINK and chipmaker Intel have stepped in with smart solutions, enabling a new breed of connected, smart vending machines that offer lower operating costs and cloud connectivity.  With these solutions, machine operators can diagnose and repair systems remotely, and receive real-time updates, such as supply and operating status, that can be used to optimize delivery schedules and improve inventory tracking and controls.

Use of the cloud also makes it easier to use promotional strategies to increase transaction sizes and sales volumes, such as vouchers, coupons, gifting, dynamic pricing and loyalty programs.

With so many IoT solutions and ideas, in an increasingly busier society, the future of smart vending machines looks very bright. One day soon, we may see entire shopping centers composed only of vending machines.

The post IoT and vending machines: Connecting an already distributed network appeared first on ReadWrite.

Another bidder, likely Salesforce, was offering a few million dollars more, but its offer was made up of both stock and cash.

Not only did Microsoft fight an intense bidding war to get its hands on LinkedIn, but its $26.2 billion bid was actually slightly less than a rival (a.k.a. Salesforce) was prepared to offer, according to documents filed on Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Microsoft’s winning bid of $196 per share followed a months-long process involving as many as four other companies. (The filing lists them only as Party A, Party B, Party C and Party D, though Party A is likely Salesforce.)

From March through June, LinkedIn met with all four companies, but it became increasingly clear over that time that only Party A and Microsoft were seeking a full-on acquisition.

In the end, it was Salesforce that had the highest bid, after offering $200 per share, based on its own stock price.

However, LinkedIn says its board considered several factors in going with the Microsoft offer, including the fact that a Salesforce bid would have required approval of that company’s shareholders, as well as the fact that Microsoft was offering cold, hard cash.

Speaking of cash, LinkedIn could be on the hook for a $725 million breakup fee if they back out of the deal with Microsoft.

For those who want to see what a big company bidding war looks like, there’s a lot more detail in the regulatory filing.

This week, Eye-Fi announced that it would be discontinuing services for its older Wi-Fi-connected SD cards. The X1 and X2 SD cards were designed to bring Wi-Fi connectivity to older cameras that lacked it, and worked with a mobile or desktop app for transferring images. Eye-Fi says it started phasing out the X2 cards in 2012 and ceased selling them in authorized channels in March, 2015. The company currently sells (and supports) the Mobi line of SD cards, which were launched in April, 2014.

Eye-Fi has an FAQ set up that details what exactly will happen when it shuts off services for the older cards in September, but the gist is that most services will stop working and none of the functions are guaranteed to continue to work. The company...

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Selling connected devices to the public continues to be hit or miss, but General Electric and Hitachi have no qualms about going all-in for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

According to Application Resource Center (ARC), the technology leviathans Hitachi and GE are betting big on IIoT, a market which GE recently estimated could be worth $225 billion in four years. By 2030 GE Digital predicts total investment in IIoT will reach a mind-boggling $60 trillion.

With an increasing flood of data that IIoT technology is producing, various industrial sectors could be revolutionized if they can efficiently harness this information.

“If we look at the next 10-15 years we anticipate an investment in harnessing all this data around the end-to-end value chain of industrial companies across many industries,” said Greg Kinsey, vice president of Hitachi Insight Group. “For example, if you look at aerospace and automotive manufacture, there is still massive potential in digitizing and integrating those end-to-end value chains.”

Kinsey also identified the food and agriculture industry as another sector that IIoT will help flourish.

“If we look at the food industry, we have value in farm-to-fork—that entire value chain from the planting of the seed to the meal on the table,” said Kinsey. “There is a massive opportunity to make that more efficient, to improve the quality, to improve the safety and eliminate waste.”

IIoT means a new view on asset management

One of the revolutionary aspects of IIoT is the change in how companies conceive their industrial assets.

“The center of the Industrial Internet of Things is assets – plane engines, locomotive engines, oil refineries etc.,” said Vish Soaji, GE Digital’s head of engineering for industrial IOT application.

“How do I improve the performance of my asset and how do I get more juice out of it by spending less?”

“Around these assets there are so many things that we can do to maximize the life of assets, to do predictive analytics so we can catch failure before it happens,” adds Soaji.

GE is prioritizing investment in software solutions like its Predix cloud-based platform-as-a-service that provides tools for improving assets’ productivity and efficiency. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, GE plans to invest $1.4 billion into its software business this year.

“There are three big things in play,” said Soaji. “Machine learning … sensors collecting data, then you combine that data with other types of data to make changes. Second is big data and third is analytics.”

Meanwhile, Kinsey said Hitachi had identified three areas where IIoT can produce a major impact on the manufacturing sector: smart maintenance; improving quality in production; and dynamic scheduling.

In light of this, Hitachi is investing $2.8 billion over the next three years on predictive technology to help its clients achieve significant productivity improvement in factories.

The post GE and Hitachi see IIoT unlocking the next industrial revolution appeared first on ReadWrite.

It's been nearly three months since Facebook announced a platform for building bots that operate inside its Messenger chat app. The idea, Facebook said, was to connect people more directly to businesses and automate their interactions, for informational or commercial purposes. Since then, more than 11,000 bots have been created, Messenger chief David Marcus said in a blog post this morning. And 23,000 more developers have signed up to use a tools provided by Wit.ai, a Facebook acquisition that automates conversational interactions between users and businesses. "We're looking forward to building a future of amazing Messenger experiences powered by the community of developers, businesses and people who use Messenger every day," Marcus...

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Solar Roadway's crazy plan to replace America's roads with solar panels has always been met with a mixture of public glee and pragmatic criticism. Now, though, the company is getting a new, tiny public test, with a stretch of solar sidewalk to be installed on Route 66. According to Missouri's News Tribune, Solar Roadway's hexagonal, LED-embedded solar panels will be used to generate electricity for the Route 66 Welcome Center at Conway, as well as possibly fund future pilots.

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I wanted to know what it's like to nap inside a giant futuristic egg, so I went to a sleep clinic in downtown Manhattan to find out. There, I entered the MetroNaps EnergyPod — pods that look like very comfy chairs you'd expect to see on a spaceship. They're used by places like Google and NASA, and they're getting a sensory upgrade thanks to a new partnership with a company called Pzizz, which promises soundtracks that can put you to sleep.

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There's a tiny bit of hazardous material in every smartphone. And at the end of a phone's life, it has to go somewhere.

But it's not always clear how to recycle your electronics responsibly, without contributing to the world's growing e-waste problem. There was a total of 41.8 million metric tons of electronic waste in the world as of 2014, according to a United Nations University study. 

Tackling that problem has been a longtime mission of the Basel Action Network (BAN), a non-profit organization dedicated to making sure hardware companies responsibly deal with the waste they help create. BAN recently conducted a two-year investigation into electronics recycling, in with the organization stuck GPS devices in hundreds of old electronics, and found that many devices ended up in Asian countries like Thailand and China.

"There's a lot of places that will say that they're going to recycle properly, but when we really carefully track where things go, it's most often going to Asia," Jim Puckett, BAN's founder and executive director, tells Tech Insider, adding that garbage workers in those countries are often ill equipped to deal with the toxic heavy metals found inside old electronics.

"What happens in Asia is there's usually an informal sector where recycling is done very crudely — this damages the environment and the workers' health. And that's been going on for years," he says.

So what's the responsible thing to do when you've got a phone you don't want?

Option 1: Sell it to a buyback program

Many companies have reliable buyback programs that allow you to take old devices in to be recycled or resold on a third-party market.

Apple, for instance, has a buyback program in which the company will give you money for an old phone. Apple then gives it to Brightstar, a company that assesses how salvageable a device is and performs the appropriate repairs in order to sell it on a secondary market. 

The company is also increasing its in-house recycling; the company harvested almost $40 million worth of recycled gold from old devices in 2015. And in April, Apple debuted Liam, a robot that can disassemble an iPhone 6 in 11 seconds. 

Gazelle is another buyback site that promotes responsible recycling, and it also has its own marketplace.

If you're considering using another buyback site, check their FAQs and verify that they'll recycle your device responsibly if it's not resale-worthy.

Option #2: Recycle it through a responsible program, or bring it to Staples

The Basel Action Network runs a program called e-Stewards, which awards companies a certification if they pledge never to export hazardous waste to developing countries, abuse prison labor, or dump electronics in landfills.

Certified companies have to go through two stages of audits, and Puckett says random audits are conducted annually to ensure that companies are keeping their pledge. 

"By doing that, we really hope it really scares the whole industry into doing the right thing," Puckett says.

If you're looking for a recycler near you, e-Stewards has locator on its site.  

If you're not near one, you can also take your electronic device to any Staples, and they'll ship it to an e-Stewards certified recycler for free.

Option #3: Fix it or sell it 

If you think device is broken and want to revive it, iFixit, a site led by home-repair advocate Kyle Wiens, offers thousands of DIY repair guides for anything from iPhones to cars. Many of the guides links to parts and tools you can buy from iFixit, making it a one-stop shop for self-repair. (Since the service can eliminate the need to buy a new phone, it seems to be a thorn in Apple's side — Apple removed iFixit's app from their App Store last year.)

If your device is in good condition and you still want to get rid of it, you can sell it on a third-party market.

On resale site Swappa, people can post Craigslist-like listings for their phones and tablets. The site's design lets you filter different carriers and phone models to find what you want. Every user on the site is obligated to describe the conditions of their device accurately and add verified photos. 

Unlike eBay, which has a byzantine listings fee system, Swappa only takes a flat fee of $10 for US sellers, and less for Europeans. Swappa also has a cordoned-off section for broken phones called the Boneyard, so that misleading listings for broken smartphones don't get mixed in with working ones.

Option #4: Consider upgrading less often

Puckett also points out that the culture of ownership is creating the e-waste problem. He hopes that one day, those who always want the latest gadget could have the option to lease it. 

"If you lease your phone and you lease your electronics, and the manufacturer was the lessor, then there would be a built-in incentive for that holder of equipment to have it last as long as possible," Puckett says. "That would have a huge impact on the environment if we can go to that model, rather that than the one where we're constantly thinking we have to buy a new one every year," Puckett says.

Of course, taking good care of your phone and waiting longer to buy a new model also helps to slow the e-waste problem. And with iPhones shifting to a three-year upgrade cycle and studies suggesting people are keeping their phones longer, we might be shifting slowly away from the throw-away culture anyway.

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NOW WATCH: How to securely remove your personal data before getting rid of your Mac

The age of the Blackberry as the go-to mobile device in Congress is finally coming to an end. Senate staffers were informed this week that BlackBerry devices won't be issued after the already-limited supplies run out. Though BlackBerry plans on supporting the devices the remaining few hang onto, it won't be long before everyone on Capitol Hill has to finally upgrade to an iPhone or Android smartphone.

"BlackBerry informed Verizon and AT&T that production of all BlackBerry OS 10 devices (Q10, Z10, Z30, Passport, and Classic) has been discontinued," reads a memo from the Sergeant at Arms office received by reporter Jim Swift. "Future carrier order fulfillment will not be guaranteed due to limited remaining stock."

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A robot-powered burger joint is coming to San Francisco.

In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It's fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The internet flipped out.

Years of relative silence ensued, but in January, Hoodline's Brittany Hopkins learned that the San Francisco-based startup had applied for a building permit to convert a ground-floor retail space in the SoMa neighborhood into a restaurant.

Now it looks like the restaurant is actually happening. A job posting on Craigslist from early June gives us our first glimpse into how the company's future flagship, presumably opening soon, might work.

"This location will feature the world-premiere of our proprietary and remarkable new advances in technology that enable the automatic creation of impossibly delicious burgers at prices everyone can afford," the ad explains.

Just look at that burger:

According to the job posting, Momentum Machines is looking for a self-motivated, conscientious applicant to take on the role of "restaurant generalist" at the restaurant.

It describes the ideal candidate as "autonomous," which seems about right since future robotic coworkers will also be quite autonomous.

But just because robots make the food doesn't mean there isn't human-worthy work to be done.

"[You will] learn to do everything that's part of running a restaurant in San Francisco," the ad explains. That includes taking customers' orders, scheduling shifts, and occasionally taking out the trash and tidying up.

The role will also challenge the applicant to "pick up some new skills that aren't part of typical restaurant work," such as software troubleshooting, market research, and product development.

The word "robot" is not mentioned in the job posting.

In 2012, Momentum Machines created a prototype machine that allowed every part of a burger to be customized, from cook time, condiments, and thickness of patties, depending on the day's menu.

A schematic of what the burger-bot looked like, released that year, showed a 24-square-foot Rube Goldberg-like machine, complete with a stamper that grinds and shapes custom blends of meat (like a one-third pork, two-thirds bison behemoth of a burger) and an oven.

"The burgers sold at 680 Folsom will be fresh-ground and grilled to order, served on toasted brioche, and accented by an infinitely personalizable variety of fresh produce, seasonings, and sauces," according to the Craiglist ad. Um, yum.

The prototype could replace two to three full-time line cooks, saving a fast-food restaurant up to $90,000 a year in training, salaries, and overhead costs, tech blog Xconomy reported after catching a live demo.

"Our device isn't meant to make employees more efficient," Momentum Machines cofounder Alexandros Vardakostas told Xconomy in 2012. "It's meant to completely obviate them."

A meaty controversy is shaping up

From the consumer side of things, a Momentum Machines restaurant is a burger lover's dream. Your burger arrives exactly as you like it.

A recent post on tech blog Nanalyze describes the perks of an automated cooking process: No robot will ever spit in your food or add mayo when you asked for the burger without. A robot won't take an extra minute to prepare your meal because it's checking Facebook.

Burgers will be fast, cheap, and personalized for your taste buds.

San Franciscans, at least, are already warming up to the idea of a restaurant experience with minimal human interactions. In 2015, futuristic food-chain Eatsa opened downtown. The vegetarian restaurant, which specializes in quinoa bowls, uses technology to automate the ordering and pick-up process.

But not everyone will be on board with the burger-bot, which takes automation to the next level. Momentum Machines' technology eliminates the need for line cooks (though front-of-house and custodial staff will likely still be essential).

It also raises the ongoing question: Will robots steal our jobs? The answer, according to Momentum Machines, is yes. But that's okay.

In 2012, Business Insider reported that the company thinks its can actually promote job growth by letting robots fill in for humans in the kitchen. Momentum Machines may, for example, have to hire new employees to grow their technology and to staff additional restaurant locations.

There is no scheduled opening date for the Momentum Machines restaurant, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.. We'll be over here, salivating, in the meantime.

SEE ALSO: Satya Nadella just showed why he’s a better CEO than Elon Musk

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As the mobile industry begins to stagnate, the Internet of Things (IoT) has become the new market that networking giants are looking at to push them through the next few years.

Bluetooth, the open network standard, is also adapting its short-range technology to become a leader in connecting IoT devices together. In 2016, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced a range of new features critical for IoT devices.

The three key features are extended range, increased speed, and mesh networking. Bluetooth SIG expects the changes to win over some IoT hardware makers, that may have chosen a proprietary networking technology if Bluetooth didn’t invest time into building IoT features.

“Bluetooth has been adopted by countless developers and manufacturers as their connectivity solution of choice for the IoT,” said executive director of Bluetooth SIG, Mark Powell. “The new functionality we will soon be adding will further solidify Bluetooth as the backbone of IoT technology.”

Bluetooth has 4X the range

Bluetooth for IoT has four times the range, which should be useful for businesses that want thousands of IoT devices connected, without large deployment of hubs. It also has 100 percent more speed, useful for critical infrastructure projects where the network must always be online and ready to send information. It also uses a new Mesh network topology, designed for devices to be interconnected inside a network, which is necessary for a scalable IoT solution.

In a separate update, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) made it possible for a coin-cell battery to last for months or years. The update paid specific attention to power management while idle, directly affecting IoT devices that spend a good amount of time not doing much.

If that wasn’t enough for IoT device makers, we have also heard that open standards in IoT could generate a more vibrant and competitive market in the next five years, and will cost smart cities less to adopt.

The network standard is set to play a massive role in the IoT deployment, both in consumer’s homes and enterprises. With thousands of devices already connected, it is already hard for developers to reject the network.

30 billion IoT devices could be connected in the next five years, making this the fastest growing hardware market, far outpacing mobile adoption. For networking giants, it is imperative that they don’t skip IoT.

The post IoT and Bluetooth: Winning over developers with new features appeared first on ReadWrite.

Many of us have come to dread the dial tone in an age of email and Slack. Here's how to be a phone person when you need to be.

For many of us, the thought of getting on the phone with someone when we can be emailing, chatting, or texting produces anxiety. If I can outline everything I need to tell someone in a clear and thorough email message, why would I take time out of my day for a phone call to discuss what can be summed up in a subject line, a couple of paragraphs, and a question or two?

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On June 17, someone stole $53 million from the DAO, an experimental investment bank built in the Ethereum cryptocurrency system — and the developers have spent the last two weeks trying to get it back.

The DAO’s withdrawal system froze the money for 27 days, and rather than let the money slip away permanently, Ethereum's coders have decided to stop the theft by changing the basic code that the currency runs on. But making those changes is delicate and complex — and if nothing changes before July 14th, the money will be lost permanently, and the theft will be complete.

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Doctors are increasingly prescribing health-related wearables, but a survey shows many patients are ignoring doctors’ orders.

The site Gadgets And Wearables reports the results from a recent Council for Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP) survey of over 30,000 U.S. patents and 626 U.S. doctors.

Only 4% of surveyed patients responded that their doctor had recommended self-tracking with wearables in the previous year. However, 40% of primary care providers said they had recommended using the devices in the same time period.

Even greater discrepancies arose when patients reported that only 4% of their doctors prescribed mobile apps to track biometrics like blood pressure or heart rate, and just 4% prescribed apps to track activity. For the same questions, doctors instead reported a prescription rate of 45% for biometric apps and a whopping 52% for physical activity tracking apps.

“This survey is evidence of the failure of American healthcare to provide coordinated, technologically enabled, high-quality healthcare to the majority of people,” said CAPP Chairman Robert Pearl. “These findings reinforce CAPP’s long-held belief that patient-centered care models are critical to closing the gaps between what patients need and what they are currently receiving.”

Not all doctors offer a digital medicine portal

Though the survey revealed a large number of patients not taking their digital medicine, it did gather some more positive findings.

Specifically it found that 48% of patients said they had access to a patient portal, which is a significant increase from last year. Also greatly improved from 2015 was the 42% of patients who reported online scheduling availability from their doctors’ offices and the 42% who had access to online secure messaging platforms to communicate with their doctors.

The disconnect between doctors and patients was also much less pronounced with 50% of physicians saying that they offer portals, 27% allowing online scheduling and 30% enabling secure messaging.

Though the CAPP survey indicates that many U.S. doctors are getting on board the medical wearables bandwagon, other corners of the medical community are still showing skepticism to the new technology. Some healthcare providers have indicated that the clinical community will not accept consumer-facing medical wearables until the data is relevant and reliable.

This follows recent comments by the American Medical Association that the digital health space is awash with “snake oil salesmen.”

The post Are patients ignoring doctors’ wearables prescriptions? appeared first on ReadWrite.

Voice interfaces are confusing. Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google Now all want you to speak to them to get stuff done, but unlike with visual interfaces, there's no obvious way of knowing what it is you can ask. Well, that problem has now been solved for Google at least, with this handy directory of everything you can ask the company's voice interface.

The site is the creation of coder Kristijan Ristovski, who said he was "annoyed" by having to keep up with the ever changing list of Google Now commands. He says that his research turned up more than 150 commands and more than 1,000 variations. "I'll try to keep [the site] up to date," writes Ristovski, adding that he plans to update the directory so the community can add commands.

T...

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We’re changing as human beings. We’re getting more demanding.

As consumers, we expect a seamless approach to everything we experience: The way we communicate, work, purchase goods, exercise, travel and play. The length of time between consumers experiencing delight at something new and being bored and ready for the next big thing is shrinking all the time.

In an expectation economy that is customer-led and data-driven, disruption and innovation have ceased to be a "nice-to-have" or "some other company’s job."

Uber commissioned research that goes a long way to demonstrate this with a study that the company ran in both 2013 and 2014 in nine cities around the world. It asked its customers how long they would be prepared to wait for a cab in 2013. In London’s case, the answer came back as seven minutes. When the same question was asked in 2014, the answer was five minutes. The patience of Londoners had decreased by 30 percent in the space of 12 months.

The study was repeated in another nine cities around the world, and the findings were the same. People are becoming less patient.

A "linear" perspective on that study might see it as an interesting commentary on the changing way we order taxicabs. A "platform" perspective on the research would see that disruptive brands are changing the very nature of consumers and therefore the way all industries are expected to work.

The world now thinks in platforms

Consumers think in platforms. They care little about the success of a single leg of their journey. They want a city’s various travel companies to work together in a single platform to ensure they reach their destination on time and in good shape.

Connectivity and experience are arguably now more significant than brand in building customer joy and loyalty.

Similarly complex expectations are now being placed on all consumer-facing companies. For years, businesses could have been justified in believing that what mattered most to consumers, alongside product and price, was brand. As the "owner" of the customer within a business, the most important thing for any marketing department was building brand preference.

That may have shifted. Connectivity and experience are arguably now more significant in building customer joy and loyalty. That is, the ability to act as a platform that serves relevant, personalized experiences to each individual customer while allowing them to seamlessly connect the different parts of their daily activity.

An Uber experience is a great example of platform thinking. From a user’s point of view it is simplicity at its best, a stressful experience made easy and fun at the touch of a button. Behind the scenes lies an incredibly difficult infrastructure build-out task. Consider for a moment some of the data sets that might be pulled and woven together to create this type of taxi service:

Data set 1: The taxi’s location data

Data set 2: The location data for the passenger

Data set 3: The driver’s availability status

Data set 4: The driver’s consumer rating

Data set 5: Your credit card data and whatever other financial data is used for identification and transaction purposes

Data set 6: Whatever GPS-based data set enables you to see how long it will take the driver to reach you

Data set 7: The data that helps you determine your optimal route

Data set 8: The data used to set bill-splitting calculations

Data set 9: The data needed to enable mobile push notifications

Data set 10: The data needed to enable email integration to provide journey and billing summaries as well as driver information and rating systems

Data set 11: Other data sets to enable fun temporal promotions — on Valentine’s Day, the cabs may appear on your map as hearts, on Halloween they become pumpkins, and so on

Data set 12: Real-time data that aggregates all of the passengers that are opening the app against the number of cabs in a given geographical area to determine pricing, etc.

These interwoven data sets enable a company to match the consumer’s expectation for platform thinking and their need to feel "connected." The problem is that businesses don't think about disruption the way that consumers do.

Consumers rarely even think or speak in terms of "innovation" or "disruption." What they see is improvements, breakthroughs and evolution.

For consumers, neither innovation or disruption is an industry sector issue. They instead see new products and services through the lens of their own ecosystem — their lives, their peer networks and so on — rather than through the lens of a particular brand, company or market. Consumers rarely even think or speak in terms of "innovation" or "disruption." What they see is improvements, breakthroughs and evolution.

Business sectors are a meaningless artifice to a consumer. Instead, as platform-thinkers, they drift effortlessly from one new experience or product to another. In a world where Google is innovating in driverless cars faster than most car manufacturers; in a world where Ford Motor Company sees its own driverless car as more of a mobile movie theater, the traditional siloed boundaries of industry sectors start to blur.

The expectation economy

When consumers are exposed to superlative customer experiences or faster ways to action something online, they are quick to apply their newly-raised expectations to every other brand or industry. We’re changing as human beings. We’re getting more demanding.

Andrew McAfee, associate director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT and author of "The Second Machine Age," told Google Zeitgeist in 2015 (as reported by Guardian journalist Janine Gibson), "The experience of being in a driverless car goes from terrifying to thrilling to boring in 15 minutes."

Some may feel that disruption only qualifies as a term if a brand in a specific sector invents something new in a certain sector for an otherwise neglected segment of consumers.

A different view would be that disruptive brands are those that are changing the very nature of consumers as human beings, raising our expectations and changing our behaviors.

In an expectation economy that is customer-led and data-driven, disruption and innovation have ceased to be a "nice-to-have" or "some other company’s job." As far as consumers are concerned, the measure of value of any brand is how seriously it takes its responsibility to make their lives better or easier. Constant change for the better is now unconditionally expected.

As the co-founder and CMO of Qubit, the world’s leading provider of data-driven customer experience, Ian McCaig leads all product marketing, communications and business operations. Before Qubit, McCaig led Google’s business marketing team in the U.K., helping customers and agencies understand how to get the most out of Google’s solutions such as Adwords, YouTube, Google Analytics and Google’s suite of insight tools. Previous to that, he led the monetization of the Google Content Network across EMEA and helped develop the U.K. & Benelux sales strategy which went on to shape the global thinking about search. Reach him @IanMcCaig28.

Mark Choueke is Qubit's global communications director. Formerly an award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist and editor who wrote about business, brands, technology, marketing and consumer trends, he’s responsible for building the company’s brand and its marketing and PR initiatives worldwide. Reach him @MarkChoueke.

Windows 10 is a worthwhile upgrade to its predecessor. But, like any OS, it has its share of niggling annoyances.

Active users, for instance, have no doubt noticed that all the software’s settings menus and customization options are split between two places: the Control Panel, and the Settings app.

If there’s a particular tweak you’re looking to make, it can take a little longer than it should to find the controls you want to find.

Is this a first-world problem? Totally. Does that mean you can’t fix it? Absolutely not.

The solution lies in a long-time Windows shortcut called the Windows Master Control Panel. Colloquially, it’s known as GodMode. While it’s not quite as exciting as that video game-like term would suggest, it’s still a handy option for Windows tinkerers and power users to keep in their back pocket.

It’s also super easy to set up. Here’s a quick tutorial.

SEE ALSO: Satya Nadella cannot imagine the world without this one Microsoft product

Provided you have admin access, you first right click, then select New > Folder.

Then copy and paste the following code: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Hit enter, and it should turn out like this.

Verizon Wireless has partnered with Samsung's Network Division to create a LTE network extender for homes and small businesses. If you've ever had cell signal issues in your home or office you know it can be a pain, and Verizon says this small box which features Samsung's small cell technology could be the answer to your networking issues.

The LTE network extender will allow up to seven devices make HD calls and receive LTE data within 7,500 square feet, by essentially creating a localized cell tower indoors when connected to broadband. That's big enough to cover small apartment buildings and some offices. You can pick up the Samsung LTE Network Extender from Verizon Wireless today for $249.

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There's a new Furby, and nothing is safe or sacred. It has hell eyes, made of cursed LCDs. It speaks 1,000 phrases, all adorably designed to destroy your soul probably. Its ears are kind of like arms! It connects to an app via Bluetooth, "allowing users to frequently engage in fresh entertainment content." Also there are virtual "Furblings" in the app, so that's confusing because I thought Furby was a meatspace thing?

Oh, I just remembered something kind of related: 666.

Here's an excerpt from the press release, that reads like some sort of Lovecraftian horror:

A colorful, bright LED in FURBY CONNECT’S antenna lights up to signal new content has arrived in the app’s theatre. The FURBY CONNECT creature directs a child to the new...

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Both Cisco and IBM have been on a partnership binge lately, so it seems inevitable that the two giant tech companies would eventually find a reason to partner with each other.

On Thursday, they announced that Cisco's Slack competitor, Spark, as well as its online meeting service, WebEx, will be integrated with IBM’s new smart email system, Verse, and IBM Connections (also a Slack competitor, but a little bit more like Yammer, which itself is most like a Facebook news feed for internal company use).

The two companies are going to marry these products so that they work together and then add Watson, IBM's machine-learning technology, to it all.

The idea is that employees will save time by having Watson provide them with insights and information based on the context of the conversations they are having, and by studying their work history. It might, for instance, surface relevant documents or apps, or make suggestions of other employees to connect with.

Interestingly, on the IBM side, the deal with Cisco was struck by Inhi Cho Suh, who is now the general manager of IBM's collaboration business unit. Cho is a rising star at IBM who orchestrated IBM's unusual purchase of the Weather Company in a deal said to be worth about $2 billion. That was in her last role, when she was a vice president in charge of acquisitions in IBM's all-important, $18 billion-a-year analytics unit.

The new partnership will help Cisco and IBM and their giant sales forces go after Microsoft, which is also unrolling smart tools as fast as it can under CEO Satya Nadella's mission to reinvent productivity. It also targets Slack, which seems to be on an unstoppable roll.

SEE ALSO: The best and worst things about working for Microsoft under Satya Nadella, according to employees

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NOW WATCH: Engineers invented a computer mouse for people who can't use their hands

If you depend on Google Calendar to manage your every minute, today wasn't exactly your day.

Google Calendar went down on Thursday morning, preventing people from accessing their schedules. While service returned for some users shortly before noon, others who attempt to access the search engine's calendar page will still be greeted with this friendly server error:

"We're investigating reports of an issue with Google Calendar," Google told Business Insider. While the service has been restored for some users at this time, Google said it "expect[s] a resolution for all users in the near future."

To see when the calendar app is fully functioning again, you can monitor Google's App Status Dashboard.

As is traditionally the case when a popular service goes down, people weren't happy, and some took to Twitter to complain:

Or celebrate:

SEE ALSO: What Apple's $5 billion 'spaceship' campus looks like 6 months from finish

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NOW WATCH: This unconventional keyboard is a must-have for power-programmers

Amazon is building a new office in downtown Seattle. But it also wants to make sure its employees get to enjoy some green while at work.

The solution: three giant glass domes filled with trees.

According to a report by Bloomberg on Wednesday, Amazon is building three giant spheres — called Biopsheres — right in front of the new office building that's currently under construction.

The 100-foot tall domes, scheduled for completion in 2018, will come with more than 300 plants that are endangered species, essentially turning the place into a conservation project as well. John Schoettler, Amazon's global real estate director, tells Bloomberg the goal was to create a "link to the natural world," so Amazon employees could brainstorm while taking a breath of fresh air in the domes.

The glass domes have already become a popular tourist photo spot and it's not hard to find photos of them on Instagram. Here are a few photos, alongside the renderings we previously published:

SEE ALSO: Amazon's crazy new crystal dome headquarters is under construction — here's what it will look like when it's finished

Here's what the glass domes will look like when they're finished.

It's located right in front of the new Amazon headquarters being built now.

Inside the dome.

“The opportunity to compete must remain open for new entrants and smaller competitors.”

Google, Apple and Amazon aren’t just giant tech companies. They’re giant tech companies that use their size to “snuff out competition.”

That’s the charge levied by Elizabeth Warren in a speech the Massachusetts senator delivered today in Washington.

Warren singled out three of tech’s biggest players in a speech about the perils of “consolidation and concentration” throughout the economy. It comes the day after Hillary Clinton, Warren’s recent stage-mate, laid out a “technology agenda” that seemed designed to please Silicon Valley.

Warren had different beefs with Google, Apple and Amazon, but the common thread was that she accused each one of using its powerful platform to “lock out smaller guys and newer guys,” including some that compete with Google, Apple and Amazon.

Google, she said, uses “its dominant search engine to harm rivals of its Google Plus user review feature;” Apple “has placed conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer competitive streaming services” that compete with Apple Music; and Amazon “uses its position as the dominant bookseller to steer consumers to books published by Amazon to the detriment of other publishers.”

“Google, Apple and Amazon have created disruptive technologies that changed the world, and ... they deserve to be highly profitable and successful,” Warren said. “But the opportunity to compete must remain open for new entrants and smaller competitors that want their chance to change the world again.”

Not included in Warren’s list: Facebook, which certainly has platform power that freaks out everyone in the media business.

Then again, Facebook doesn’t have a home-grown product that competes with the product the media business creates — unless you want to argue that Facebook’s main product is the user-generated content it is now favoring over the stuff publishers make.

Reps for Google, Apple and Amazon all declined to comment.

But Spotify, which has complained about the fee Apple charges music services — and other services — that sign up subscribers using its iOS platform, was happy to comment. Here’s Jonathan Prince, who runs communications and public policy for the streaming music company:

“Apple has long used its control of iOS to squash competition in music, driving up the prices of its competitors, inappropriately forbidding us from telling our customers about lower prices, and giving itself unfair advantages across its platform through everything from the lock screen to Siri. You know there’s something wrong when Apple makes more off a Spotify subscription than it does off an Apple Music subscription and doesn’t share any of that with the music industry. They want to have their cake and eat everyone else’s too.”

Warren’s speech didn’t only go after the tech sector. Other targets included Walmart and Comcast, which owns a minority stake in Vox Media, which owns this site.

Her main critique was directed at politicians and regulators she thinks have abandoned their responsibility to “restore and defend competition.” Warren doesn’t expect those same politicians to pass new legislation to fix any of this, but she does want them to “enforce our laws in the way Congress originally intended them to be enforced.”

This isn’t the first time Warren has gone after some of Silicon Valley’s standard-bearers. Earlier this spring she laid into Uber and other “gig economy” companies; Clinton made her own critique of that sector last year.

I can’t imagine that Warren’s newest words will reverberate in techland. It would be nice if they did.

The predominant mindset when it comes to competition in Silicon Valley is that the best tech company wins until it doesn’t, and is replaced by a competitor that does it better. When we do talk about competition, it tends to be about fights between giants, usually about little stuff. Hey! Why won’t Amazon sell Apple TVs?

And when it comes to platforms, we usually hear that companies that have built enormously powerful platforms get to operate them any way they see fit — and that the people who built them are going to make the best decisions about this stuff, anyway.

But these things are enormously powerful platforms, built on the same internet that Silicon Valley says should be treated as a public utility. If the platform owners don’t want to end up with Washington regulating, say, the size of their app store fees, they ought to work hard to keep themselves in check.

Here’s Warren in mad-as-hell mode at last year’s Code Conference:

 The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a new video on Wednesday with tips on how to keep your computers safe when traveling overseas.

The video is a little bit corny, but what did you expect from a government video? The staged video follows a fictitious traveler journeying into an English-speaking country where he finds himself under surveillance. 

"Many of the same measures intelligence officials take to mitigate threats from foreign spies can benefit anyone, not just security clearance holders," the ODNI wrote on Facebook. 

But many of the security tips and "simple steps" provided by ODNI are, frankly, worrying.

Security is serious business, but advice like "assume that when you travel, you have no privacy, and all your communication might be watched" is pretty hardcore if you're not NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Here's how the ODNI recommends you protect your personal information when you're overseas: 

• Minimize the number of electronic devices you bring with you
• Consider buying a disposable phone when you arrive, and set up a throwaway email account for traveling 
• Don't post upcoming travel plans on Facebook or social media — or, if you must, change your privacy settings so your itinerary isn't public
• Don't open work email attachments 
• Even if you don't have any classified information, you still might have access to proprietary information from your company.
• You could be targeted by foreign intelligence services or business competitors, even in countries friendly to the US
• Be cautious if a stranger asks a lot of questions about what you do or who you know
• Assume that when you're traveling, you have no privacy, and all your communication might be watched, even if you're in your hotel room
• Don't trust hotel room safes

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NOW WATCH: Mark Cuban explains why downloading Snapchat is a huge mistake

If you want to know what can go wrong when police rely on equipment such as Tasers and pepper spray to combat petty crimes, look no further than the case of Bruce Kelley Jr.

Around 3:30PM, on January 31st this year, Bruce Kelley Jr. and his dad, Bruce Kelley Sr., both African-American, were drinking cans of beer near a public gazebo in Wilkinsburg, a small borough on the City of Pittsburgh's eastern border. Two Allegheny County Port Authority Police officers showed up, apparently on a routine patrol, and approached the two men to ask what they were doing.

Bruce Kelley Jr. was drinking beer in public when the police approached him

Drinking in public is illegal in Pennsylvania, and Kelly Jr., who was 37-years-old, had a history of bad...

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Computer security giant Symantec, which makes popular antivirus software, including the Norton brand, has been on a roller coaster lately. And on Wednesday it suffered a major black eye.

Google's most famous security researcher, Tavis Ormandy, published a scathing blog post documenting some huge security holes he found in Symantec's major security products being sold to enterprises.

"These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets," Ormandy writes.

"They don’t require any user interaction, they affect the default configuration, and the software runs at the highest privilege levels possible. In certain cases on Windows, vulnerable code is even loaded into the kernel, resulting in remote kernel memory corruption."

To decode that a little: Ormandy is saying that Symantec's holes are so serious, they could give an attacker control over Windows without doing things like tricking people into opening malware-laced attachments.

These huge holes were found in all all Symantec antivirus products, as well is its Norton antivirus brand. That's a big embarrassment for a company whose main business is security.

Symantec jumped to fix the problems

Ormandy is part of Google's Project Zero. That's a Google project with a mission to improve overall computer security in the industry by poking around other companies' software, finding holes, and convincing those vendors to fix those holes.

Ormandy also took Symantec to task for using old code with loads of widely known security holes, some dating back seven years. 

"Symantec dropped the ball here," he writes.

In Symantec's defense, after Project Zero contacted the company, Symantec hopped to it. It fixed its products, issued a warning about them, along with information about how customers can update their products. And it promised to add "additional checks" to its security testing processes to prevent  buggy security software in the future.

"Symantec takes the security and proper functionality of our products very seriously," the company writes in its warning notice to its customers.

Symantec on a roller coaster

This black eye from Ormandy comes at a particularly troublesome time for Symantec.

Only a week ago it announced plans to acquire another security vendor, Blue Coat, for $4.65 billion in cash in a deal that was unusual for a couple of reasons.

First, the price. Symantec agreed to pay more for Blue Coat than it had generated in its last fiscal year. The company announced in May that it booked $3.6 billion in revenue for its 2016 fiscal year. (That was a drop of 9% from the previous year.)

So, to make the deal happen, Symantec leaned on private equity investors Silver Lake, who kicked in $1 billion, and Bain Capital (a major shareholder of Blue Coat) who kicked in $750 million.

Second, Symantec appointed Blue Coat's CEO, Greg Clark, as Symantec's new CEO. He'll take over after the deal closes, expected to be next quarter. It's pretty rare that a CEO of acquired companies are asked to run the company that just bought them.

But in this case, Symantec needed a new CEO. In April its board announced that CEO Michael Brown was out as soon as they could find his replacement. Brown had been in the role for barely two years. He orchestrated Symantec's spin-out sale of its data storage unit Veritas, another strange deal where Symantec wound up getting $1 billion less than it expected from the deal. 

Symantec actually has a long history of dismissing CEOs, sometimes after on a few years on the job, particularly when a big acquisition didn't go well.

This big slam to Symantec's reputation from one of the best known security researchers in the field is not a good sign for Clark's upcoming new reign.

SEE ALSO: Employees name the best and worst things about working for Microsoft under Satya Nadella

SEE ALSO: A rare tour of Google's 'The Garage' lab where employees can build anything

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NOW WATCH: MICHAEL MOORE: 'I think there’s an excellent chance' Trump will be president

D-Link introduced three new Wi-Fi cameras today, all of which come with sound and motion detection, night vision, and local recording. The HD Wi-Fi Camera (DCS-936L) features a 720p camera with 4x digital zoom, and can record continuous, scheduled, or detection triggered video on a microSD card (up to 128GB). It also features a Wi-Fi signal locator to help you choose the best place to place the camera for an optimal connection, remote viewing through the mydlink Lite app, and it's the cheapest of the three cameras, coming in at just $79.

The HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi Camera (DCS-5030L) has all the same specifications as the HD Wi-Fi Camera, but includes 340 degree pan and 110 degree tilt capability, allowing you to remotely change the angle...

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