Davemichels

The email component of Office 365, the online version of Microsoft's Office suite, has been down for nine days, according to CloudPro. 

Microsoft told CloudPro that the issue was not affecting all Office 365 users, but "those customers affected likely have a large number of users experiencing impact." 

It's unclear why the outage, which affects one of Microsoft's most important products, has been going on for nine days straight. 

According to CloudPro, the issues started on January 18. "As part of our efforts to improve service performance, an update was deployed... [that] caused a code issue," said Microsoft.

The fix was temporary, however, as users reported outages on January 24. Microsoft said it had fixed that issue, too, but companies are still not able to access email. 

"Engineers have identified that a number of infrastructure components that handle email routing and filtering became degraded due to high resource utilisation," said Microsoft in a statement issued on January 26. "Engineers are restarting services on the affected infrastructure to mitigate impact." 

One company, highlighted by CloudPro, says that OneNote Online and Office 365 are still refusing to open, nine days later. 

Microsoft has experienced four outages in the past two months. 

Business Insider has reached out to Microsoft to ask about the outage. We will update the post when we hear back. 

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There are more than a billion Apple devices being used around the world.

This includes iPhones, iPads, Macs, iPods, and Apple Watches.

Tim Cook made the announcement in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday.

“Our team delivered Apple’s biggest quarter ever, thanks to the world’s most innovative products and all-time record sales of iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV,” Cook said in the announcement. “The growth of our Services business accelerated during the quarter to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a major milestone of one billion active devices.”

This is the first time Apple has ever disclosed how many of its devices are in use.

Apple also reported earnings for last quarter that were generally in line with analyst expectations. The company sold slightly fewer iPhones than analysts expected.

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John McAfee is running for president as a member of the Libertarian Party. This is an op-ed he wrote and gave us permission to run.

I watched Donald Trump speak at Liberty University last Monday. It was inspiring, especially the part where he touted his “Great Wall” between the US and Mexico. He said that if the Chinese could do it, then so could we.

I ignored that fact the it took the Chinese over 200 years to build their wall because, as Trump rightly pointed out, the Chinese did not have bulldozers. However, I noted with great interest that Trump apparently was not informed that Mexico is, hands down, the world’s vanguard in illegal underground tunnel construction. El Chapo’s dramatic escape from Mexico’s maximum security prison through a mile-long tunnel last year is one of dozens of amazing examples that was apparently missed by Trump and his advisors.

But walls and tunnels are simple things that, hopefully, the electorate will eventually grasp without coaching.

Of far greater concern to me is Trump's grasp of technology.

The first photo that I saw of Donald Trump at work alerted me to a potential issue. There was not a single laptop, pad or other smart device anywhere on his desk. Given the fact that my own office, and the offices of everyone that I know are virtually littered with active screens, I found this to be odd in the extreme.

While pondering this, I remembered that Trump, in 2013, almost proudly stated that he rarely writes emails.

My initial impression on hearing this proclamation was that Trump was in the vanguard of those “super technologists” who are slowly abandoning emails as too slow and cumbersome and whose text messages and tweets are masterful creations of compacted characters.

But I fear I was wrong.

Our military, industrial, social and cultural worlds would not exist today were it not for the billions of computing devices that monitor and control everything from food production and distribution to our buying of socks, shoes and televisions. The electricity that powers our homes is produced and distributed entirely under automated control. Our emergency services could not function without these computing devices, neither our police forces or even our automobiles. We are fully submersed in the digital age.

In addition, most cyber security experts agree that there is an imminent cyber war on the horizon.

Given this reality, technological illiteracy should be viewed in the same light as an inability to read and write in the world of 50 years ago.

I am running for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president in 2016. If I were to tell you that I could neither read nor write, but that I would hire advisors who would explain words to me, would you vote for me?

I thought not.

How then can we rationally consider electing someone who is not fully conversant in the technology that holds our world together?

SEE ALSO: JOHN MCAFEE: The Obama administration doesn't understand what 'privacy' means — let me explain

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Banks are going gaga for blockchain technology, the protocol developed to underpin bitcoin.

It uses complex cryptography and a wide network of records — known as a "distributed ledger" — to eliminate the need for a central bank or middle man to regulate transactions.

Banks have been swarming around the technology, with 42 investment banks signing up to an industry-wide group looking at how to use it and Goldman Sachs declaring in a note that it has the potential to change "well, everything."

The conversation around this complex technology is pretty baffling, even to many of those involved. Everyone I speak to has a different way of describing it and the possibilities of what it could be used for are myriad.

But Goldman has explained why banks are so excited, in its podcast on "The Digitization of Finance." Don Duet, co-head of the Technology Division at Goldman Sachs, nails it by describing not how blockchain works, but what it can do.

Here what Duet says, as per an emailed transcript:

You can see who had it, who owned it, the fact that they actually committed to each other electronically and signed it with cryptology to ensure that it was authorized. You could see all those things, and importantly, again, by having that all being done in a set of digital transactions, it enables it to happen in a much shorter time frame, so it also reduces a lot of what today are the delays which create other types of risk in the settlement cycles, which need to be compensated for in other forms.

So one of the big benefits is pretty simple — transparency. At the moment, things like share registered are siloed in institutions so if you want to find out who owns what, you have to put a query to that institution.

There are other problems too. Duet says:

In order to facilitate the growth of our industry, much of that has been formed around concepts of having multiple sources or, you know, multiple parties owning a definition of truth, so the Bank of New York will own a big part of the reconciling of the ledger of who owns what stocks in the US, and so would other institutions around the world.

But you end up where... you have this situation where you have multiple versions of the truth, which means that everyone needs to reconcile with each other to ensure that they all have the right set of information — who actually owns that asset, when did it get transferred — and it also creates a certain degree of just temporal delay. It’s not possible to be done right away.

With the blockchain, that information is kept across multiple servers — the distributed ledger — all updated simultaneously and all you need to do is check out the blockchain. Much easier.

So the blockchain can reduce admin errors, make things faster, reduces costs, and reduce settlement risk for things like payments and trading. It seems as close as a win-win as you're going to get.

But Duet raises an interesting point in the podcast:

I think that, you know, you could ask the question of, well, why couldn't this have been designed before? And I think that that’s a very valid question. I think part of what we find, or I certainly find personally very exciting about this is just the awareness. I think the awareness that’s happened within the financial community that there is a technological answer that can help drive change and improve our system is just very encouraging.

Software is eating the world and it looks like it's finally eating finance.

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Facebook announced today that it plans to open a new data center in Clonee, Ireland — named EU2 — since it's the second data center in the European Union, after the first in Luela, Sweden. 

This new data center is Facebook's sixth overall, reflecting the social network's ever-growing need to build more infrastructure to handle all those photos, videos, and 'likes.' 

But there's something different about this one, and it's going to make a lot of big tech companies sit up and take notice.

First off, this data center will run on 100% clean, renewable wind power. Second, and more importantly, EU2 is the first data center from Facebook, and therefore in the world, to be 100% powered by Open Compute Project technology. 

The Open Compute Project, or OCP, is an initiative started by Facebook in 2011 to completely change how servers and networking hardware is built to better suit the Internet age. It makes Facebook the unlikely vanguard of a movement to rethink large-scale computing and shake up a $141 billion market.

It's making decades-old companies like Cisco very nervous, as the OCP has the potential to provide the lucrative enterprise market with a cheaper, more flexible alternative to their pricey solutions. Meanwhile, companies like Microsoft have already started to work some of the OCP's concepts into their products.

Now, Facebook is already a customer of companies like Cisco and Arista Networks in its existing data centers, though it's been trying to use OCP-based tech to reduce its reliance. In mid-2015, Facebook said that OCP tech had already saved it $2 billion in operating costs.

With EU2, though, Facebook has at least one data facility that's completely and totally built from scratch using OCP tech. If it works, and there's no reason to think it won't, more will probably follow. And then other companies will likely follow in Facebook's footsteps. 

The big hardware companies will definitely be watching with interest.

SEE ALSO: These Facebook engineers are company's 'eyes and ears' outside the social network

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Facebook is looking to integrate WhatsApp, the messaging service it bought for $19 billion (£13 billion), more closely into its service. 

The Android beta of the app has a new option in settings that was spotted by developer Javier Santos. It reads: "Share my account info."Selecting the option will "share...WhatsApp account information with Facebook to improve [the] Facebook experience," according to the description. 

Facebook has previously been hands-off when it comes to WhatsApp, letting CEO Jan Koum run the service as its own entity. The company recently dropped its $0.99-a-year subscription option in favour of connecting people with businesses. 

In an interview with Wired, Koum explained the change as reducing the friction of signing up for WhatsApp, especially in emerging markets. "We've done really well in the consumer space," he said. "But there is (a) whole other aspect of communication as you go through your day: You want to communicate with businesses."  

It's unclear what kind of data is shared between Facebook and WhatsApp, but the kind of targetting Koum is talking about requires information about the user. Facebook "Likes" could illuminate the kind of services a WhatsApp user is interested in and help them connect with brands.

Another reason for the change could be to help WhatsApp expand into a fully fledged social network. The only way to find friends on the service currently is via a phone number and an integration with Facebook could expand this.

The beta app also includes a new section focused on privacy, explaining how messages are encrypted end-to-end so not even WhatsApp can see the contents. This is similar to the method Apple, which operates iMessage, uses.

WhatsApp was briefly banned in Brazil after refusing to comply with a court order for user messages and the new section helps reinforce the message that WhatsApp is on your side, not the government's.  

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For the first time since 2000, JetBlue has redesigned the interior of its fleet of Airbus A320 jets. 

In addition to the obligatory new seats and in-flight entertainment system, JetBlue's fleet of A320s will get access to the airline's free gate-to-gate wifi service — called Fly-Fi.

Gate-t0-gate service provides free wifi connectivity from the second a passenger steps onboard — until that passenger deplanes.

That means you can now remain connected to internet even during takeoff and landings.

The service uses technology from Thales and ViaSat to offer 12-20 mbps of speed. 

"Travel preferences have changed in the last 15 years, and we’re investing in what customers want today," JetBlue vice president of brand and product development Jamie Perry said in a statement.

"Our customers don’t want to switch off when they take off, so we are continuing to build on our investment in Fly-Fi."

As for that new entertainment system, it's a Google Android-based system that will offer everything from custom apps to live content streaming. All of this will be delivered on a 10.1 inch touchscreen display. 

In case you were concerned, DirecTV will still be available. Now it will have more than 100 channels and more than 300 on-demand Hollywood films. 

JetBlue expects to the begin retrofitting its fleet of 130 A320 airliner in early 2017 and is expected to complete the conversion work in 2019.

SEE ALSO: The jumbo jet is officially on life support — here's a look at its glory days

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The computer industry moves in waves. We're at the tail end of one of those waves — the mobile revolution.

What's next? Robots.

But not the way you think.

The robot revolution won't be characterized by white plastic desk lamps following you around asking questions in a creepy little-girl voice, like I saw at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That might be a part of it, but a small part.

Rather, it'll be characterized by dozens of devices working on your behalf, invisibly, all the time, to make your life more convenient.

Some people in the industry use the term "artificial intelligence" or "digital assistants." Others talk about "smart" devices. But none of these terms capture how widespread and groundbreaking this revolution will be. This isn't just about a coffee maker that knows to turn itself on when your alarm goes off, or a thermostat that adjusts to your presence.

(And "Internet of Things" — please stop already.) 

This is about every piece of technology in your life working together to serve you. Robots everywhere, all the time.

Not like the Roomba. More like the movie "Her."

Where we've been

Every 10 or 15 years, a convergence of favorable economics and technical advances kicks off a revolution in computing. Mainstream culture changes dramatically. New habits are formed. Multibillion-dollar companies are created. Companies and entire industries are disrupted and die. 

I've lived through three of these revolutions.

• The PC revolution. This kicked off in the 1980s with the early Apple computers and the quick-following IBM PC, followed by the PC clones. Microsoft and Intel were the biggest winners. IBM was most prominent among the big losers, but there were many others — basically, any company that thought computing would remain exclusively in the hands of a few huge computers stored in a data center somewhere. By the end, Microsoft's audacious dream of "a computer on every desk and in every home" was real.
• The internet revolution. This kicked off in the mid 1990s with the standardization of various internet protocols, followed by the browser war and the dot-com boom and bust. Amazon and Google were the biggest winners. Industries that relied on physical media and a distribution monopoly, like recorded music and print media, were the biggest losers. By the end, everybody was online and the idea of a business not having a website was absurd.
• The mobile revolution. This kicked off in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. Apple and Samsung were the biggest winners. Microsoft was among the big losers, as its 20-year monopoly on personal computing finally broke. 

A couple of important points.

First, when a revolution ends, that doesn't mean the revolutionary technology goes away.

Everybody still has a PC. Everybody still uses the internet.

It simply means that the technology is so common and widespread that it's no longer revolutionary. It's taken for granted. 

So: The mobile revolution is over.

More than a billion smartphones ship every year. Apple will probably sell fewer iPhones this year than last year for the first time since the product came out. Huge new businesses have already been built on the idea that everybody will have an internet-connected computer in their pocket at all times — Uber wouldn't make sense without a smartphone, and Facebook could easily have become a historical curiosity like MySpace if it hadn't jumped into mobile so adeptly.

This doesn't mean that smartphones are going away, or that Apple is doomed, or any of that nonsense. But the smartphone is normal now. Even boring. It's not revolutionary.

The second thing to note is that each revolution decentralized power and distributed it to the individual.

 The PC brought computing power out of the bowels of the company and onto each desk and into each home. The internet took reams of information that had been locked up in libraries, private databases, and proprietary formats (like compact discs) and made it available to anybody with a computer and a phone line.

The smartphone took those two things and put them in our pockets and purses.

Tomorrow and how we get there

This year's CES seemed like an "in-betweener." Everybody was looking for the next big thing. Nothing really exciting dominated the show. 

There were smart cars, smart homes, drones, virtual reality, wearable devices to track athletic performance, smart beds, smart luggage (really), and, yeah, weird little robots with anime faces and little-girl voices.  

But if you look at all these things in common, plus what the big tech companies are investing in right now, a picture starts to emerge. 

• Sensors and other components are dirt cheap. Thanks to the mobile revolution creating massive scale for the components that go into phones and tablets, sensors of every imaginable kind — GPS, motion trackers, cameras, microphones — are unimaginably cheap. So are the parts for sending bits of information over various wireless connections — Bluetooth LTE, Wi-Fi, LTE, whatever. These components will continue to get cheaper. This paves the way for previously inanimate objects to collect every kind of imaginable data and send simple signals to one another. 
• Every big tech company is obsessed with AI. Every single one of the big tech companies is working on virtual assistants and other artificial intelligence. Microsoft has Cortana and a bunch of interesting behind-the-scenes projects for businesses. Google has Google Now, Apple has Siri, Amazon has Echo, even Facebook is getting into the game with its Facebook M digital assistant. IBM and other big enterprise companies are also making huge investments here, as are dozens of venture-backed startups. 
• Society is ready. This is the most important point. Think about how busy we are compared with ten or twenty years ago. People work longer hours, or stitch together multiple part-time jobs to make a living. Parenting has become an insane procession of activities and playdates. The "on-demand" economy has gone from being a silly thing only business blogs write about to a mainstream part of life in big cities, and increasingly across the country — calling an Uber isn't just for Manhattan or San Francisco any more. This is the classic situation ahead of a computing revolution — everybody needs something, but they don't know they need it yet.

So imagine this. In 10 years, you pay a couple-hundred bucks for a smart personal assistant, which you install on your phone as an app. It collects a bunch of information about your actions, activities, contacts, and more, and starts learning what you want. Then it communicates with dozens of other devices and services to make your life more convenient.

Computing moves out of your pocket and into the entire environment that surrounds you.

Your alarm is set automatically. You don't need to make a to-do list — it's already made. Mundane phone calls like the cable guy and the drugstore are done automatically for you. You don't summon an Uber — a car shows up exactly when you need it, and the driver already knows the chain of stops to make. (Eventually, there won't be a driver at all.)

If you're hungry and in a hurry, you don't call for food — your assistant asks what you feel like for dinner or figures out you're meeting somebody and orders delivery or makes restaurant reservations. The music you like follows you not just from room to room, but from building to building. Your personal drone hovers over your shoulder, recording audio and video from any interaction you need it to (unless antidrone technology is jamming it). 

At first, only the wealthy and connected have this more automated lifestyle. "Have your assistant call my assistant." But over time, it trickles down to more people, and soon you can't remember what life was like without one. Did we really have to make lists to remember to do all this stuff ourselves?

This sounds like science fiction, and there's still a ton of work ahead to get there. Nobody's invented the common way for all these devices to speak to each other, much less the AI that can control them and stitch them together. So this revolution is still years away. But not that far.

If you try to draw a comparison with the mobile revolution, we're still a few years from the iPhone. We're not even in the BlackBerry days yet. We're in the Palm Pilot and flip-phone days. The basic necessary technology is there, but nobody's stitched it together yet.

But when they do — once again — trillion-dollar companies and industries will rise and fall, habits will change, and everybody will be blown away for a few years. Then, we'll all take it for granted. 

SEE ALSO: I WAS A CES NEWBIE: Here's what I learned in Las Vegas swarming with 170,000 nerds

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Debate is raging over tech companies' use of encryption software to secure their users' data — and the former head of the NSA isn't on the side you might expect.

Michael Hayden, who ran the secretive US spy agency between 1999 and 2005, told a panel on Tuesday that he doesn't support efforts to force companies to include "backdoors" for law enforcement in their products.

Since the Snowden revelations about US mass surveillance in 2013, companies like Apple and Google have increasingly introduced strong encryption into their products that even they cannot decrypt under any circumstances.

This has infuriated many in law enforcement, who fear that data is "going dark," and that they are losing access to vital evidence. But security experts counter that any "backdoors" in software to let law enforcement bypass these security protections would be open to abuse and make users less safe. "You can't build a backdoor that only the good guys can walk through," cryptography expert Bruce Schneier says.

James Comey, head of the FBI, has been a particularly vocal critic of encryption, calling for tech companies to give law enforcement "front door" access to encrypted data to help tackle terrorist threats like ISIS. Europol chief Rob Wainwright has called encryption the "perhaps the biggest problem" in tackling terrorism.

Hayden thinks otherwise. "I disagree with Jim Comey," he said, CNN reported. "I actually think end-to-end encryption is good for America."

He explained: "I know encryption represents a particular challenge for the FBI ... But on balance, I actually think it creates greater security for the American nation than the alternative: a backdoor."

The fact that a backdoor exists would immediately make it a target, the argument goes, for everyone from mischievous hackers to organised criminals and sophisticated state-sponsored adversaries. And their efficacy would be questionable: There are plenty of encryption products already out there that don't have backdoors, and are developed outside of Western jurisdictions. If necessary, criminals and terrorist would just move to one of these platforms instead.

The tech community is nearly unanimous in its opposition to backdoors, with Apple CEO Tim Cook a particularly vocal critic. At a recent White House summit he reportedly criticised the Obama administration for its lack of leadership on the issue and called on it to come out and make a "strong public statement" in support of encryption.

Michael Hayden has spoken out about alternatives to encryption backdoors before. In October 2015, discussing failed efforts to curtail encryption in the nineties, he said (via Motherboard): "in retrospect, we mastered the problem we created ... We were able to do a whole bunch of other things. Some of the other things were metadata, and bulk collection and so on."

The ex-NSA chief isn't alone in the intelligence community in opposing attempts to weaken encryption. The former head of British spy agency MI5 Lord Jonathan Evans previously told Business Insider that he thinks inserting backdoors is "not the answer" because of the risk they could be exploited by others.

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Microsoft could be planning to unveil two new flagship devices at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February. 

Details of the Lumia 850, which will replace the 830, have been leaking out over the past few months and filings in China prove a device that may be the 850 exists. 

Regulatory filings for an update to the Lumia 735, most likely called the 750, also leaked alongside the 850. 

The two new devices would sit below the Lumia 950, which was announced in October last year. 

Microsoft adopted Nokia's numbering system for devices which broadly relate to the status of the device. The Lumia 435 is the lowest-end device while the 950 is the highest and the 640, 735, and 830 sit somewhere in between. 

According to leaks, the 850 will be a powerful phone with a 5.7-inch 1080p display, a Qualcomm processor, and 2GB of RAM. No details about the 750 have leaked yet. 

Evan Blass, also known as @evleaks, tweeted a photo of an unannounced Microsoft device codenamed "Honjo" which could be the 850. 

Mobile World Congress takes place between February 22 and 25. Microsoft has had a big presence in previous years, unveiling several devices, such as the Surface Pro 3 and Lumia 640. 

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NOW WATCH: 7 ways the Samsung Galaxy S6 is better than the iPhone 6s

Use this in your pitch to remove a useless meeting from your schedule.

It's well known that companies waste a lot of time and money organizing and having meetings. We waste time endlessly emailing to find time-slots that suit everybody. We waste time waiting for everyone to arrive. We waste time discussing irrelevant points and tangential agendas.

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Microsoft has finished rolling out Skype's much-anticipated real time voice translation service to all of its Windows users, according to a post on the Skype blog.

Skype — founded in Estonia in 2003 — can understand Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, and translate one to another as you video call your Skype contacts.

"We launched Skype Translator preview just over a year ago in partnership with Microsoft Translator," the blog post reads. "Skype Translator has come a long way since then."

Skype said French to English is the most popular language pair, while the top international "calling corridor" is Germany to Ghana.

Skype also offers a text translation service that works in over 50 instant message languages.

The translation service has so far only been rolled out to Windows users but Microsoft is planning to roll it out to other platforms in the future. Additional languages are also expected to be integrated soon.

To start using Skype Translator, Skype for Windows customers must click on the globe in the upper right hand corner of the app. Skype users must first ensure they have the most up to date version of Skype.

Microsoft has also made it possible to integrate Skype with enterprise chat tool Slack.

The Slack integration has been introduced so teams on Slack can easily make a Skype voice or video call to each other. Set up requires the user to visit the Skype integration for Slack product page, and click on the "Add to Slack" button.

Earlier this week Microsoft introduced group video calling for iOS, Android, and Windows phones in a bid to help it compete with Google Hangouts.

According to Microsoft, Skype has around 300 million users who make over two billion minutes of calls per day, as of 2014. Data suggests that Skype is even responsible for a drop in international calls.

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Microsoft has cut the price of Azure, its cloud services product, after Amazon did a similar thing earlier in January, ZDNet reports. 

Amazon cut the price of EC2, a part of Amazon Web Services, and made it easier for a user to only pay for the services they use, based on the time they use them for. 

Microsoft has responded and cut the price across its own version of EC2. The price reduction can be by as much as 17%, according to Microsoft, depending on the kind of service used and whether it's based on Linux or Windows. 

Microsoft also touted the advantages of Azure over AWS. "It is worthwhile to note that the Azure Dv2 instances — unlike AWS EC2 instances — have load balancing and auto-scaling built-in at no additional charge," the company said.  

"In addition to delivering great prices, we provide further discounting and more flexible purchasing programs to support your journey to the cloud," Microsoft continued. The price discounts and flexibility come because Microsof bills for usage on a per-minute basis, not per-hour like Amazon. 

Amazon and Microsoft are currently locked into a vicious battle over the massive online software and services industry, which is valued in the hundreds of billions. The two companies recently started to focus on Europe, which is an $11 billion (£7.6 billion) market on its own. 

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The GOP presidential candidate also proposed offering liability relief to tech companies that share data with law enforcement officials.

At the tail end of a sixth Republican presidential debate, dominated by personal feuds and mutual condemnation of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush made a stunning proposal: Put the NSA in charge of civilian data and cybersecurity.

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The integration is another example of Skype's efforts to ease the enablement of its service inside other platforms.

Skype released the preview version of a new plug-in today that enables voice and video calls within the popular Slack team messaging platform.

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The virtual reality space is really beginning to heat up, and Google knows it needs to move fast if it wants to remain competitive. The search giant released an update to the Google Cardboard SDK today that should go a long way to improving the virtrual reality experience. Moving forward, developers will be able to move beyond stereo sound and create 3D sound canvasses that more effectively envelope users.

Microsoft has snapped up Australian company Event Zero, a provider of software that makes it easier for your office's IT pros to manage Microsoft Skype for Business.

"Our goal is to make the Skype for Business management tools as powerful and easy-to-use for IT professionals as Skype is for end users," writes Microsoft in an official blog entry. 

Skype for Business itself is a major investment area for Microsoft.

This workplace-focused voice and messaging app is a key part of the Microsoft Office 365 cloud productivity suite, and the company hopes to use it to lure more companies into paying a monthly fee for the service.

The short version is that Event Zero's tools make it easier for an IT department to see how, when, and how often failures or hiccups occur in Skype for Business calls and messaging, making it easier to troubleshoot problems as they pop up.

Going forward, Microsoft promises that the Event Zero technology will be opened up for customers to plug in their own software, including anything they use to manage traditional phone lines. 

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft made employment offers to a "small number" of Event Zero employees including CEO Dave Tucker, a Microsoft spokesperson said. Event Zero, founded in 2005, is listed as having more than 51 employees on its LinkedIn page.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft just gave Skype a big update to help it compete with Google Hangouts

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Who needs to communicate in enterprises anyway?

Everyone.

But do we really need to treat it as if it is the most critical piece of the enterprise world?

I use multiple systems to make my calls these days. They are WebRTC based or proprietary apps such as Skype, WebEx or GoToMeeting. I grumble when I have to use a proprietary system and install stuff on my laptop, but that’s life.

It was like that for me even when working for enterprises in the past – big and small. Somehow, you always need to have a “phone system” and be reachable. But other than that? I’d say “omnichannel” as a buzzword has stuck to the contact center but is just as important in unified communications.

But in Unified Communications, Omnichannel means something really different – it means that you can now reach out to people on lots of different channels and mediums – picking up the ones most suitable for the taks – which most often than not ends up being different than what the corporate IT has decided you should be using.

And you know what? I couldn’t be bothered with it.

The essence of Unified Communications is the here and now. Real time communications. If a minute passed, it is no longer interesting. It is lost.

Hangouts. Talky. A phone call (international or otherwise). Skype. Anything else.

Just pick one and lets meet.

—

Enterprise Messaging though is a different story.

It isn’t focused in the here and now, but rather in collecting data and making it accessible. It is about synchronizing teams and aligning them – asynchronously.

And “omnichannel” there? It means integrations with anything and everything that is enterprise software.

Which makes it the point of access for an employee to his daily life in the office.

It is a lot more sticky these days than unified communications.

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Unified Communication is on another rebranding rampage. We used to call it “Convergence” a decade or two ago. And when that felt old, we started calling it Unified Communications. There are analysts that are now coining the term WCC – Workstream Communications and Collaboration. A mouthful that simply says Unified Communications need to look at the Enterprise Messaging space and copy it.

The end result will still be a focus on the here and now. And it will still be overrated.

Planning on introducing WebRTC to your existing service? Schedule your free strategy session with me now.

The post Unified Communications is Overrated appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

Challenges ahead.

A shy over a year ago, I wrote about 3 startups: Talko, Wire and Switch

All of them looked promising. All were using WebRTC.

In 2015, Switch had a meeting with $35 million, along with quite a few successful deployments in businesses big and small.

A month ago, Talko got acquired by Microsoft. I’ve interviewed here the Talko team in the past. Selling to Microsoft shows. Shutting the company. With little objections from customers. It all points to a single conclusion – Talko has been a failure when it comes to the business side of it. It probably had a solid technology – otherwise – why would Microsoft acquihire the team and fold it into Skype? I am sure Ray Ozzie and the team of Microsoft veterans in Talko added to this acquisition, but there was no other value in this transaction.

The Talko Team expresses it best on their updated homepage:

However, as engaged as many of you have been, the reality is that the broad-based success of communications apps tends to be binary: A small number of apps earn and achieve great viral growth, while most fall into some stable niche.

Talko didn’t grow fast enough or big enough. Clementine’s acquisition by Dropbox is similar. A communication solution geared towards team/group/enterprise communications gets acquired for its team with the service being left behind, never to be seen again.

And that’s in the less competitive domain of the enterprise. What will be with Wire? The third company I wrote about.

On Android, Wire reportedly has 100K-500K installs. Assuming iOS has twice as much (I am trying to be positive), that still falls way short of any of the messaging services we usually hear about – they are measured by 100’s of millions. Of active monthly users – not installs.

It is hard to see how Wire can change its abysmal future without a serious pivot or a drastic change in current market trends. Some will say this is a matter of a directory service and network effects. I think it is a matter of strategy and luck. Where Wire failed to attract the crowds, a different messaging service – Telegram, with 50M-100M installs on Android and a reported 60M monthly active users.

Wire was formed in 2012 and Telegram in 2013. So we can’t say Telegram had any head start here.

WebRTC makes it too easy to build and launch a communication service, which in turn, makes it hard to build a viable business with it. The role of product managers and people who need to think of the business case is more important than the technologists building the service when it comes to WebRTC. At the same time, finding good developers who grok WebRTC isn’t easy either.

2016 is going to be crucial for Wire.

What do you see for your initiative in 2016? Do you have a business case and route to market and money, or are you tinkering with the technology, assuming that if you build it they will come?

Planning on introducing WebRTC to your existing service? Schedule your free strategy session with me now.

The post Can Wire Succeed Where Talko Failed? appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

I just bet $1.3 billion in hopes of winning the now-$1.3 billion Powerball jackpot.

This might sound like the perfect way to greedily secure the largest lottery offerings in the history of Earth (before taxes). However, I fully I expect to watch all of that money disappear and never return, thanks to statistics.

Of course, I don't actually have $1.3 billion; I just pretended I did on the Los Angeles Times' amazing new Powerball lottery simulator.

The tool pseudo-randomly generates a set of five white balls and one red Powerball for each $2 investment, and it lets you play as many times as you want.

To take home the $1.3 billion jackpot, your ticket has to have the same five white numbers — order doesn't matter — and the one red number on the winning draw.

First you pick a set of numbers that you think are the winners. I clicked the "QUICK PICK" button and got 6, 23, 31, 58, 60 for the white balls and 8 for the red Powerball:

Next the LA Times gives you $100 — thanks, ailing newspaper industry! — and you click "Play!"

From there you watch the tool quickly cycle through a series of random Powerball draws, each costing you $2 per imaginary ticket.

I lost my $100 over 54 draws, or about 5 seconds, playing one ticket at a time (arguably the sanest way to play Powerball). Drats!

The extra four tickets came from reinvesting my small winnings in hopes of nailing that $1.3 billion jackpot.

From here you can try gambling with more pretend cash.

Let's try $1.3 billion

I skipped the $100 and $1,000 buttons and went straight for the "Bet your paycheck" option. Then I entered $1.3 billion, which is the current Powerball jackpot.

Why not?

I should hit the jackpot within a few minutes, right?

Nope.

My first $40,000 goes within minutes:

It takes about 8 minutes to lose roughly $125,000:

And 22 minutes to lose $500,000:

Hey, look! There goes my first $1,000,000 after 45 minutes:

An hour after I started the simulator, my losses are nearing $1.5 million, and I don't expect that to abate anytime soon.

The odds are never in your favor

The reason why this is such a hopeless situation is because of how probability works. With each draw, I have a 1-in-292,201,338 chance to strike the jackpot. Those odds do not increase on subsequent draws. It's that bad each time.

Buying more tickets to increase the probability of winning doesn't do much good, either, especially with the meager wages many Americans make. It's, well, highly improbable that you'd have enough cash to make a statistical difference.

You could buy millions of tickets to have that many more opportunities to match up the numbers, but the odds are still very stacked against you. Probability guarantees nothing.

My $1.3 billion LA Times simulation is still running, and I'm losing about $370.37 every second. This means it will take about 41 days to lose my investment, and I fully expect to.

If this were a real lottery, however, and I put one $2 ticket into every draw, it would actually take 6.25 million years to spend my $1.3 billion on the Powerball. The reason is because there are only two Powerball drawings a week, not one every microsecond (as is the case with the LA Times simulator).

I'll write a new post if I "win" the jackpot, but I wouldn't keep your hopes up. I'm certainly not.

But there is a way to guarantee a win

At this point, math fans have called my ruse.

If you have that much money to throw at something, the one-ticket, one-draw strategy makes no sense because there is a way to guarantee winning a jackpot: Buy enough tickets to cover every possible number combination before a drawing.

There are 11,238,513 possible combinations of five white balls, since order does not matter. Multiply that by the 26 possible red balls, and you get 292,201,338 possible Powerball tickets.

At $2 per ticket, you'd need $584,402,676 to buy every single combination and guarantee a win.

But think this out for a moment. How are you going to print that many tickets in less than four days? And ensure each combination is different? Also, you have to weigh the risk that one or more other people got the winning combination, too — forcing the lottery commission to split up the jackpot.

At the end of the day, buying out the lottery isn't practical. But buying just one ticket, especially now, does make economic sense.

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NOW WATCH: This 26-year-old accidentally signed up for a poker tournament and won $973,683

Intel had one of the coolest presentations at this year's CES, when it brought BMX riders, skateboarders, and free-runners alongside its CEO Brian Krzanich on-stage for its keynote speech earlier this week.

The action-packed performance was done to showcase its new button-sized chip, Curie, which can be attached to a sports device or the athlete's body to trasnmit data about their performance.

Intel sees a future where Curie is used in all sports, for both professionals and amateurs, to enhance the entire sports consuming experience.

"With Curie, we believe we created what’s going to change the world of sports," Krzanich said. "It's the start of a dramatic revolution in sports."

For example, snowboarders can mount Curie on their snowboards and see real-time data about their speed, jump level and distance, as well as the number of spins its does. TV broadcasters can display that data in real-time, and let the viewers have a more engaging experience, too.

In fact, to promote Curie, Intel has already partnered with ESPN to sponsor the upcoming Winter X Games in January, where data transmitted through Curie will be showcased on TV during live broadcasts of snowboard competitions.

"We believe we're on the cusp of a breakthrough in live sports," Krzanich said.

In an interview with USA Today, Krzanich said that he thinks Curie will be used more broadly for general training purposes for non-professional atheletes, too. For example, it could be placed in running shoes to see how hard your feet are hitting, or to find patterns in your workout that's slowing your run.

And that will lead to higher sales and open up new revenue streams for Intel, a company that's been exploring ways to deal with a shrinking PC market, where the majority of its sales have come from.

"It’ll take time to grow. But we think this an emerging sector that can sells hundreds of millions of these devices---the pieces of silicon," Krzanich told USA Today.

Curie will be available in the first quarter of this year. It will be priced for less than $10, Krzanich said during his keynote.

SEE ALSO: US Marshals raided a booth at CES to seize allegedly counterfeit hoverboards

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NOW WATCH: This is how you're compromising your identity on Facebook

Apple has big changes in store for the next iPhone, with plans to launch a new high-end pair of wireless earbuds made by its Beats Electronics subsidiary, according to 9to5 Mac.

The new earbuds will be sold separately from the iPhone, and will dovetail with Apple's reported plans to eliminate the 3.5 mm headphone jack in the next iPhone. 

But the Beats earbuds will not only be free of the wire connecting the earbuds to the phone — they'll also be free of the wires connecting the right earbud to the left earbud.  This kind of wireless earbud system is still in its early stages, with smaller companies like Skybuds and Bragi pioneering the technology (and the Doppler Labs Here system, pictured above, providing a different twist, by letting you adjust live sound). 

But going completely wireless brings up several significant challenges that Apple will have to resolve. Here are four of the big ones:

1. Only one Bluetooth audio device can be connected to a phone at a time. That's a problem because each earbud is a separate device, so the audio signal can't be sent to both Bluetooth earbuds simultaneously. The sound must therefore be sent from the phone to one earbud, and then from one earbud to the next. Perhaps Apple's next iPhone will be able to support more than one Bluetooth audio device simultaneously, though that could pose its own challenges.
2. The Blutetooth radio signal does not travel through the human body. That means that the signal must bounce of nearby walls to travel from one earbud to the other, which obviously poses a problem in open spaces. Skybuds uses “Near Field Magnetic Induction,” a technology used only in hearing aids, to push the signal to both headphones. The technology has until now primarily been used in hearing aids. But transmitting music with high fidelity is more complex than voices, requiring innovative tech tweaks. 
3. No wires means earbuds will easily get lost or misplaced. Earbuds are small objects, which are only kept together thanks to their wires. Without the wires, it's not hard to imagine the ear pieces falling out of pockets, getting stuck between sofa cushions or otherwise disappearing. Even losing just one earbud would be a problem. And given that these earbuds will reportedly carry a premium price tag, Apple will need to design a clever system to help users keep track of their earbuds to avoid consumer backlash.
4. Battery life with wireless earbuds will be tricky. If you're tired of constantly charging your phone's battery, wait until you have to worry about your earbuds running out of juice too. Apple is apparently working on a special charging case that will come with the wireless Beats earbuds. These will serve the dual purpose of providing a handy way to charge the buds, as well as a storage solution to help users keep track of their earbuds and minimize the risk of losing or misplacing them. 

SEE ALSO: Apple is trying to decide between 3 different designs for the iPhone 7

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Porn helped VHS vanquish Betamax and Blu-Ray beat HD DVD. Now it'll probably boost virtual reality.

If there's one segment of the VR content industry that is banking on the highly immersive nature of the medium, well, of course it's porn.

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There are growing concerns about how much information Windows 10 collects about users. Microsoft recently made statistics about the operating system available, including the total amount of time users spent in apps. 

This information comes from Windows 10, which tracks the way users are using the operating system in order to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't work. 

"Consistent with all modern services and websites, the Windows 10 information highlighted in the blog on January 4 is standard diagnostic, anonymous analytics that enables us to deliver the best Windows 10 experience possible," Microsoft said in a statement. 

Martin Brinkmann of GHacks was the first to highlight the potential problems of knowing how much time users spend in Edge, the web browser, among other apps. Apple, which makes OS X and iOS, does not collect this kind of data. 

Alan Woodward, a professor at Surrey University in the UK, told the BBC that users are "walking into [using Windows 10] blindfolded" when it comes to privacy. "[Users] don't necessarily realise what's going on," he said. 

Woodward was also curious about how, and where, Microsoft was storing the data from users, especially those from outside the US. 

Concerns about user privacy in Windows 10 have been growing recently after it emerged that the operating system sends data back to Microsoft even if it is told not to. 

Terry Myerson, Microsoft's Windows and Devices chief, wrote a blog post explaining the company's commitment to user privacy. 

Myerson highlighted the positives of data collection by Windows 10. "[The operating system] collects information so the product will work better for you," he wrote. "You are in control with the ability to determine what information is collected." 

"Microsoft is deeply committed to protecting our customers' privacy," the company said. 

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NOW WATCH: Silicon Valley’s most creative designer reveals the next wave of innovation — and we can’t wait

This article is sponsored by Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform where all ideas get an equal shot at success. As a sponsored post, it reflects the views of the sponsor, not ReadWrite's editors.

CES 2016 is in full swing and this year’s show features the best of the best in consumer technology. With innovative solutions from global enterprises and startups for everything from wearables to connected homes, virtual reality to drones and so much more, there’s plenty to see in Las Vegas. If you’re at this year’s show, make sure you stop by Eureka Park, the destination for amazing startups, and check out these 10 incredible gadgets you definitely want to see in person.

WowWee CHiP Robotic Dog

Personal robots are becoming more and more of a reality, and soon you might be bringing home a new four-legged robot friend to play fetch with your kids. The Canine Home Intelligent Pet (CHiP) by WowWee boasts an impressive array of infrared sensors to give it 360 vision and high speed Meccanum wheels, allowing it to move quickly in virtually any direction. It also comes with a special ball to play fetch with and a connected Smart Band that enables CHiP to act with intent. The Smart Band’s bluetooth technology tells CHiP when you’re around and gives you the power to positively reinforce good behavior with a Like button—just like with a real dog.

You can play with this cute robopup at Booth 80449.

Harman Selective Noise Canceling Headphones

Noise-canceling headphones have been around for years, helping students focus on their work in the busy library and frequent flyers block out crying babies on planes. Harman International Industries has developed new, cutting-edge technology that will enable users to selectively cancel unwanted noise and enhance the sounds they need or want to hear most. This technology, called Audio Augmented Reality (AAR), can alert joggers to danger, such as a honking car horn, or someone inside to cancel noise from a car alarm outside.

See how you can customize your soundscape with the Harman AAR headphones at Booth 80446.

Hexoskin Smart Shirt

We have smartwatches and smart homes, so it makes sense that our clothing is smart as well. Hexoskin validated their first product, the world’s first biometric smart shirt, on Indiegogo back in 2013, and they’re back with their newest technology: Hexoskin Smart. Hexoskin Smart is a sensor-embedded shirt that monitors and records your heart rate, breathing and movement whether you’re awake or asleep, providing valuable insights on intensity and recovery, calories burned, fatigue level and sleep quality. Hexoskin connects to all of your favorite bluetooth compatible apps and devices so you can see how your physical fitness evolves over time.

Try on a Hexoskin Smart at Booth 80450.

LuminAID Solar Light

As the world begins to shift its focus to climate change and energy conservation, innovative solutions like LuminAID demonstrate how easily we take certain things, like light, for granted. LuminAID is a solar-rechargeable lamp that packs flat and inflates to create a lightweight, waterproof lantern. Its simple yet powerful design makes it one of the most versatile and globally conscious products at CES 2016. Through an Indiegogo campaign back in 2011, the entrepreneurs behind LuminAID used the crowdfunding service for market validation and funding, then went on to receive offers from all five sharks on ABC’s Shark Tank—a truly impressive feat.

Give light with LuminAID at Booth 81324.

Bluesmart Connected Suitcase

Bluesmart, a smart carry-on suitcase, wants to keep you connected and make sure you never lose your luggage again. USB ports, 10,000 mAh battery, BLE connectivity, iOS and Android compatibility, a TSA-approved digital lock and a built-in scale makes Bluesmart the smartest luggage around. Now available at retailers like Amazon and Brookstone, Bluesmart brought their idea from concept to market quicker than ever with the Indiegogo platform. Whether you’re a frequent traveler or simply want to stay connected wherever you go, don’t miss the Bluesmart booth at CES 2016.

Travel smarter today with Bluesmart at Booth 72969.

RideBlock Skateboard Tracker

Whether you’re an avid skater or a novice, the RideBlock skateboard trick tracker will help you keep track of your progress so you can become the next pro skater. With progress analysis, slow-mo video sync with stats, the ability to compete with friends and more, the mobile app makes it easy for anyone to start learning tricks. RideBlock’s slim, shock- and water-resistant design makes it unique, rugged and slim—perfect for the gnarliest tricks.

Compete in RideBlock’s skate competition at Booth 80240.

Eyesir Panoramic Camera

Capture what it’s really like to be there with the Eyesir panoramic camera by Perfant Technology Co. Ltd. Their small, portable camera provides superior image stitching, 360° panoramic shots, real-time live video and 4K hi-resolution. The next time you’re on a tropical beach vacation and your friends are stuck home in a snowstorm, the Eyesir can live stream a 360° panoramic view to make them all jealous. The future of VR is here.

Check out the Eyesir panoramic camera at Booth 83542.

Elfy Connected Lamp

Your smart home may be well connected, but how cute is it? The Elfy connected lamp by Emie is an adorable connected lamp that stays by your side, bringing you brightness, warmth and companionship. Set the mood with one of Elfy’s seven different colored lights and brightness adjuster. In addition to this cute companion, you can see several of Emie’s design-oriented electronics on display at the show.

Say hello to Elfy at Booth 73048.

Brewie Home Brewery

Home brewing your own beer has become a hobby for craft beer enthusiasts and seasoned drinkers. Brewie, a fully automated home brewing machine, has a super sleek and compact design, making it easy for beginners and experts to brew their own high-quality beer at a super-low cost and zero hassle. Brewie is here to revolutionize the making of craft beers.

Try Brewie for yourself at Booth 81551.

National Science Foundation

When the National Science Foundation cofounded Eureka Park back in 2012, their goal was to create a space for up-and-coming technology born from fundamental science and engineering innovation. This year, at CES 2016, the NSF’s space is a one-stop shop for nonstop amazingness. Exhibitors range from robotics to biomedical and IoT to virtual reality and so much more. Nearly two dozen small businesses demonstrating premarket consumer technologies will be there—see the full list.

Immerse yourself in technology with the National Science Foundation at Booth 80146.

Bonus: Sphero

If you’ve already seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you might recognize Sphero’s BB-8 droid rolling around on the show floor. Sphero originally joined the Disney family in 2014 as part of their accelerator program, and brought the concept to a finished product in just 10 months. You can see the latest prototype for the Sphero Force Band, a unique wearable wristband that lets you use gestures to control the droid. Though the Force Band isn’t due to hit the market until Fall 2016, you’ll definitely want to check this out for yourself at CES.

See the Sphero prototype at Booth 26402 (South Hall).

Which of these Eureka Park products is your favorite? Which ones did we miss at CES 2016? Leave us a note in the comments!

This article is sponsored by Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform where all ideas get an equal shot at success. As a sponsored post, it reflects the views of the sponsor, not ReadWrite's editors.

Photo by ETC-USC