Davemichels

The first reviews for Windows 10 are in, and it looks like a real winner. 

Business Insider will have a full review of Windows 10 later today.

But the general consensus, so far: After all the problems with the Windows 8.1 operating system, Windows 10 is a real return to form for Microsoft. It's familiar, but it rolls in some nice new features that make it easier to use.

Yahoo's David Pogue writes: "You really are going to love Windows 10. You’ll almost certainly want to upgrade your computers to it, especially since it’s free," and that "if you’re a PC veteran, then you’ll recognize Windows 10: It’s pretty much Windows 7, with Cortana, nicer typography, and a few new features."

Meanwhile, The Verge's Tom Warren says that "Windows 10 has some great additions over Windows 8 and Windows 7, and it really feels like a good blend of the familiarity of Windows 7 and some of the new features of Windows 8. It’s not irritating to use, and you don’t need a tutorial to find the Start menu. It just works like you’d expect."

There are three main areas of praise: 

• The Start menu: Windows 10's Start menu combines the touch-friendly "Live Tiles" of Windows 8 with the traditional Windows 7-style list of apps. "This mix of features feels like the best approach for bringing the Start menu back, and you can resize it freely to customize it further," Warren writes.
• Look and feel: Both Warren and Pogue call out Windows 10's general aesthetic as an especially big improvement over Windows 8. "Windows 10 is coherent. It makes sense. Its design no longer leaves you pounding your forehead on your desk, ruing the day that Microsoft lit up whatever it was smoking," Pogue writes.
• Cortana, the digital assistant: Microsoft's take on the Siri-style virtual assistant is being met with praise. Cortana can learn your preferences and learn your habits, so she can always present you with contextual information. "It might be my favorite thing about Windows 10," Warren writes.

Still, it's not perfect. As a new operating system, Windows 10 has plenty of bugs and some room for improvement, plus a lot of Windows apps haven't yet gotten updated for Windows 10 yet. 

"I’d suggest you wait six weeks. By then, Microsoft will have swatted most of the bugs, and many of your favorite software companies will have released Windows 10-compatible versions," Pogue writes.

SEE ALSO: The 9 best new features of Windows 10

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NOW WATCH: We talked to the head of Xbox about the newest feature that everyone’s been waiting for

Google is dead serious about the enormous, multi-billion cloud computing market. And, as we've previously reported, it's got a lot of catching up to do with market-leader Amazon.

Urs Hölzle is the man in charge of the cloud unit. One thing he's doing to build Google's cloud business is to beef up Google's professional sales staff to try and win business from some of the largest companies in the world. It currently counts companies like Coca Cola, HTC, Best Buy and U.S. Cellular as customers. 

Selling cloud services to big companies is very different than selling ads, the traditional source of Google revenue. Big companies expect a personal touch with their IT projects, with an account representative that can answer complex questions and sometimes deal with a very long and complicated bidding processes.

So, for the past year, Google has been hiring experienced cloud salespeople from companies like Amazon, Rackspace, Adobe. Google also moved some experienced Google salespeople from other units over to the new cloud sales unit.

At the start of this year, Hölzle decided to motivate these sales folks the old fashioned way, with commissions and, for the first time, quotas, according to a report from The Information's Amir Efrati and Steve Nellis.

While enterprise salespeople can earn a lot of money, thanks to commissions, in this case there's a rub. Hölzle reportedly cut the salaries of some of those long-term Googler's by up to $50,000, to make them more equal to the salaries of the newcomers, The Information reports.

Not that this puts them below the poverty line. According to data on Glassdoor, the average base salary for a "Google Enterprise Sales Operations Specialist" is $131,000, with another $90,000 in stock bonuses and $20,000 in cash bonuses, or nearly over $240,000 total.

We reached out to Google for comment and will update when we hear back.

SEE ALSO: 11 diabolical ways to destroy an iPhone

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NOW WATCH: People were baffled by 50 sharks circling in shallow waters off the English coast

Google's been slowly dismantling its struggling social network Google+ for months, and executive Bradley Horowitz just announced another big change: You'll no longer need a Google+ account to use YouTube or any other Google sites. 

Essentially, Google's admitting defeat for its original goal of using Google+ to give users one identity across all of its services.

People had long been skeptical of Google's mandatory integration of its social network, feeling like it mainly functioned to help Google get more information on users for ads purposes. 

"While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink," Horowitz writes. 

When Google first started forcing YouTube users to have a Google+ account if they wanted to comment on videos or share content, many hated the fact that it decreased the ability to be anonymous.

Moving forward, you'll only need a Google Account — no Google+ profile —  to use Google's services. 

Already, people are celebrating this change online:

"As always, your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles," Horowitz writes. "And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles."

Google says that the changes will be rolling out in stages.

"While they won’t happen overnight, they’re right for Google’s users—both the people who are on Google+ every single day, and the people who aren’t."

SEE ALSO: After furious users complained, LinkedIn brought back this important tool

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NOW WATCH: Sony has been working on this Playstation game for 8 years — and the trailer is absolutely beautiful

The appeal of tablets is in their versatility. Bigger than a smartphone but more portable than a laptop, they can serve as an essential productivity tool or a miniature entertainment hub, depending on your needs.

If you're in the market for a tablet that works well as the latter, you don't have to splurge on a pricey iPad or Microsoft Surface to find something that lets you enjoy the occasional Netflix or web browsing session.

Instead, you can head down memory lane and pick up a Google Nexus 7 (2013), which Amazon currently has in stock for $150.

Yes, months after Google formally discontinued its production, the Asus-built tablet somehow continues to surpass its competition in a variety of ways.

Its superb display remains its biggest attraction — while other 7-inch slates like the Asus Memo Pad 7 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 skimp on the pixels, the Nexus features a sharp and colorful 1920 x 1200 panel that makes extended viewing less of an eye strain. Beyond that, it's still wonderfully thin, light, and compact; and as a Nexus device, it's still privy to new Android updates well before anyone else.

There are certainly risks involved in buying an older gadget like this — its aging processor isn't so quick for gaming and other intense tasks, and its battery has never been the best — but for light users who've been priced out of iPad range, it continues to be a rewarding choice.

Nexus 7 from Google (7-inch, 16 GB, Black) by Asus (2013) Tablet, $149, available at Amazon.

SEE ALSO: Best Buy’s version of Prime Day includes big iPad discounts and more — here are all the best deals

READ THIS: Summer rain showers have nothing on this pint-sized Bluetooth speaker [45% off]

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For a lot of programmers, especially in Silicon Valley the trusted tee-shirt-and-hoodie combo makes up the only work uniform they need. It's considered by many to be a perk of the job: Nobody cares how you dress for work, so long as you deliver.

But this week, several teams within HP's 100,000 employee-strong Enterprise Services division were sent a confidential memo cracking down on casual dress in the workplace, because higher-ups in the company are concerned that customers visiting the offices will be put off by dressed-down developers, reports The Register.

"According to HP, men should avoid turning up to the office in T-shirts with no collars, faded or torn jeans, shorts, baseball caps and other headwear, sportswear, and sandals and other open shoes. Women are advised not to wear short skirts, faded or torn jeans, low-cut dresses, sandals, crazy high heels, and too much jewelry," says the Register report.

Technically, this is merely asking HP employees to adhere to a dress code that's already in place. But, especially in the company's R&D teams, this had previously apparently been taken as more of a suggestion than a hard rule. The news comes at a bad time, too, as many developers took to wearing shorts to work for the warm summer months. 

On Twitter, the response so far has largely been negative: 

HP Enterprise Services is soon to be spun off into its own company, and it seems obvious that the company is looking to run a tighter ship as it prepares to go it alone.

But a lax dress code is a major help in recruiting top Silicon Valley talent, and it remains to be seen if the tradeoff is worth it. 

HP did not respond to a request for comment at press time. 

SEE ALSO: When HP splits, employees will not be able to jump from one HP to the other

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NOW WATCH: The first computer programmer was a woman and the daughter of a famous poet

Pandora's stock popped more than 10% after-hours after it beat Q2 revenue expectations thanks to solid advertising growth. 

The streaming music service's revenue clocked in at $285.6 million, just over the $283 million expected,  though it lost $16.1 million overall.

Pandora's total advertising grew 30% year-over-year, with its local advertising business increasing 67%.  

The elephant in the room, of course, was the recent launch of a competing music service from tech giant Apple, and analysts on the earnings conference call wasted no time in asking Pandora's management about the potential impact to its business.

According to CEO Brian McAndrews, the threat is overblown. McAndrews said that Pandora has seen no meaningful impact yet, and the company doesn't expect it long-term, either.

"In terms of Apple Music, of course it launched at the end of June, so there was no impact yet," he said. "Going forward, we feel really good about our trajectory and competitive position. With any big launch like this and the noise in the marketplace, there could be some users that experiment with it and there could be some short term impact... But we don't believe that there will be any long-term impact." 

The Pandora CEO's comments come on the same day that Apple Music got a black eye from an influential blogger who publicly lambasted the iPhone-maker's new music offering calling it a "mind-blowing exercise in frustration." 

Pandora shares took a hit last month after Apple introduced the new service and investors fretted that many of its listeners would switch to Apple. 

As of this quarter, Pandora has 79.4 million active listeners who tuned in for 5.3 billion hours. 

McAndrews comments align with results of a survey SunTrust included in a note Thursday morning, which showed that 58% of Pandora users are aware of Apple Music, 9% plan to take advantage of the three-month free trial, and only 1% definitely plan to subscribe. 

SEE ALSO: Amazon skyrockets more than 18% on earnings beat

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NOW WATCH: How to clear out a ton of space on your iPhone superfast

Female characters in video games like Lara Croft from "Tomb Raider" have historically had body types that were far from "average."

Even beyond the impossibly proportioned women of early console fighting games, most iconic female characters are, in various ways, stylized in an unrealistic way.

Now Bulimia.com, a collective dedicated to empowering those with eating disorders, has asked the question: “What would video game characters look like with average American bodies?”

The organization questions why — with games now featuring technical wonders such as natural cloud movements — they still don’t usually portray the female body accurately and free from exaggerated proportions.

Though it's also true that video games certainly don’t portray the average male body — with games like "Gears of War" featuring hulking body types that are practically unobtainable — it’s still useful to be reminded of just how far our fantastical representations can sometimes take us from reality. And that this could potentially have consequences.

Here is a series of graphics, created by Bulimia.com, that shows what different iconic female video game characters would look like with average American body proportions.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft's Xbox One video game console is your next work computer

NOW WATCH: There is a secret US government airline that flies out of commercial airports

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a mixed bag forth-quarter earnings and the stock price has been jumping up and down ever since in heavy trading.

It's currently down about 4%.

One big problem: Microsoft lowered its guidance for revenue for its next quarter (and implied a lowered guidance for profits too) — again.

This is the fourth consecutive quarter of lowered guidance, points out analyst Kevin Buttigieg from MKM Partners.

Microsoft's CFO Amy Hood expects Q1 of fiscal 2016 to come at $20.7-$21.3 billion when the street was looking for, on average, $22.7 billion.

There was the expected weakness in sales from a shrinking PC market, and some unexpected weak sales in commercial products to businesses.

The good news: Microsoft reported solid progress in the hot growth area of cloud computing. This contributed to an all-time high of $24.5 billion for off-balance-sheet revenues under contract but not yet billed, a spokesperson told Business Insider.

This morning, some analysts are believers, others are not convinced ... 

Credit Suisse: Microsoft's cloud will become the No. 2 leader behind Amazon

Bullish

Rating: Outperform

Price target: $55

"We believe that Outperform-rated Microsoft can return to double-digit EPS growth by (1) continued rationalization of its cost structure, (2) further divestitures/exits of non-core businesses, (3) optimization of its capital structure, (4) stabilization in Windows pricing, and (5) an accelerated shift to Office 365 (i.e., "pull a full Adobe").

"Furthermore, we believe that Microsoft Azure will emerge as the clear #2 market share player in public IaaS and will arise as the leader in public PaaS. We reiterate our Outperform rating and $55 target price."

Pacific Crest Securities: Microsoft is demonstrating financial discipline and growing its core businesses

Bullish

Rating: Overweight

Price target: $55

"Microsoft has started to deliver on the changes it announced last year. The company is demonstrating a renewed financial discipline, and we expect accelerating growth in the core businesses. Our price target of $55 is based on 13.3x estimated C2017 FCF plus $7.42 per share in net cash.

"At $55, MSFT would trade at a discount to the current market multiple and have a dividend yield of roughly 2.4%. We believe this multiple reflects the current headwinds to the PC business."

Deutsche Bank: The quarter 'wasn't pretty' but 'growth outlook is solid'

Bullish

Rating: Buy

Price target: $55

"While investors were already bracing for a mixed print [i.e. earnings report] given the weak PC market and disappointing results from ORCL, SAP and IBM, we conclude that MSFT’s 4QF15 results still fell short on the back of weak enterprise/server numbers, gross margin pressure from the out-performance in lower-margin Surface/Xbox, an EPS beat that came largely from non-recurring gains and light 1QF16 non-GAAP revs guidance (of $21.0b, $900m below our estimate).

"While the quarter wasn’t pretty, this growth outlook is solid in light of the PC market pressures (which should stabilize in the coming quarters), emerging markets weakness and the tough enterprise IT spending backdrop."

NOW WATCH: Scientists are astonished by these Goby fish that can climb 300-foot waterfalls

Microsoft's hardware business is a rollercoaster. 

The press release announcing Microsoft's quarterly earnings results, released today, carries this headline: "Microsoft Cloud and Hardware Results Drives Fourth Quarter Performance." 

Which is a weird thing to say, because the massive, $7.6 billion Nokia writeoff this very same quarter led Microsoft to a $3.2 billion quarterly net loss — its biggest ever.

Plus, the Windows Phone business declined $552 million, a whopping 68% down from last quarter, amid lower royalty rates and the aftermath of the Nokia deal.

And the Phone Hardware business had its own dip of $748 million in revenue, or 38%, because fewer people are buying Microsoft phones, and those that do are buying cheaper phones. 

But any good rollercoaster goes up, too: The Computing and Gaming hardware division, encompassing Surface tablets and Xbox games consoles, increased $591 million, or 44%, to a grand total of $1.93 billion in revenue.

Microsoft says that its Surface tablet did $888 million in revenue, representing 117% growth over last quarter, thanks to strong sales of Surface 3 and the launch of the fancier Surface Pro 3.

And the Xbox One gaming console had a good quarter, too: It sold 1.4 million consoles in just the past three months, versus 1.1 million over the same three month span last year. Xbox revenue is up 10%, or $86 million, which would have been more if it weren't for a price cut on the Xbox One hardware.

Still, even with phones dragging things down a little bit, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the quarterly earnings conference call with analysts and the media as a chance to reaffirm that the company has no plans to get out of the game — it's just going to rethink its approach.

"I believe our participation in the phone segment is important," Nadella said. "We need to be smart about how many of these phones we want to make." 

In other words, Microsoft is going to work towards getting its Windows Phone and Phone Hardware divisions into profitability, even if that means focusing on a more modest range of "premium" devices, Nadella said.

SEE ALSO: There's a statistic buried in Microsoft's earnings that indicates the company is going in the right direction

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NOW WATCH: Here's Microsoft's amazing vision for what the HoloLens can do

It looks like the hotel industry might be warming up to the home-sharing economy, or at least trying to play nice with it.

Hyatt Hotels is entering into a pilot program with Onefinestay that will let house renters freshen up at the Hyatt Regency London - The Churchill if they arrive early for their rental, according to a report from travel news site Skift.

British startup Onefinestay, often referred to as the Airbnb for the Rich, lets luxury homeowners rent out their apartments while they're away. CEO Greg Marsh previously told Business Insider that the typical customer is: "An American family coming from a coastal city in the US to stay in a 3 bedroom house in Notting Hill for 10 days over the summer."

Should that family arrive early, they'll now have a place to refresh or store their bags, thanks to the Hyatt pilot program.

This program isn't the companies first foray together. Hyatt was an investor in the home-sharing startup's latest $40 million round in June, but Marsh told Skift that the partnership has progressed beyond that. Neither Hyatt nor Onefinestay could be reached for comment.

A pilot program that involves one London hotel is not a major move, but it is the first sign of a hotel company being willing to collaborate with the burgeoning home-sharing economy. 

A partnership with the hotels industry, which have loyalty programs and name brand recognition, could be a boost to the nascent home-sharing industry, especially as these companies try to encroach on the lucrative corporate travel market.

Airbnb is making a go of wooing business travelers on its own, but it's still in the beginning steps. It announced yesterday that it had overhauled its business program to make it easier for employers to expense reports and track employee's rentals, although that won't solve the problem of getting business users to choose Airbnb over a traditional hotel in the first place.

SEE ALSO: Airbnb wants the future of business travel to be staying in someone's house

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NOW WATCH: We just stayed at an Airbnb in Cuba, and this one thing was a big surprise

Although IBM reported pockets of success (like 20% growth in cloud computing) as part of an overall mediocre second quarter, there's one old product that's still selling surprisingly well: the mainframe.

Mainframe sales were up 15% this quarter compared to the year-ago quarter in part because IBM introduced a new version of these high-powered, very expensive computers in March, a product line called Z System.

That's on top of the 30% increase in sales they had in the first quarter.

Now, granted, IBM doesn't have to sell very many mainframes for revenue to leap (these computers can cost $1 million), and sales are good in part because companies didn't buy as many of them last year, while they were waiting for new model to come out.

But the mainframe is a product that has been declared dead many times over many years by the IT industry. In the 1970s it was the standard for computing. Today, companies mostly use smaller, less expensive computer servers for their IT needs.

But for those running extremely computational intensive applications – think financial services, telecommunications, airlines or insurance companies– that have to instantly crunch through huge numbers of transactions, the mainframe remains their go-to computer.

Much to IBM's benefit.

This chart shows that the only IBM unit to grow revenues significantly in the second quarter was the Systems Hardware business:

This chart shows that the Systems Hardware Segment was greatly buoyed by sales for the Z Systems mainframes. 

SEE ALSO: HP employees are bracing for the split into two companies, which happens internally on August 1

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NOW WATCH: Tom Hardy makes a crazy transformation playing identical twins in this new gangster movie

In the war between Microsoft and Google for office cloud software domination, Microsoft just won another big battle. It landed General Electric as a huge customer for Office 365.

GE will be bringing Office 365 to its 300,000 employees, making this one of the largest contracts for Office 365 to date.

The deal is big, but not particularly surprising. Microsoft and GE have had a relationship for eons. And at least one of its divisions, GE Healthcare, has been using another part of Microsoft's cloud, Azure, to host some of its apps.

GE is also a classic Office 365 customer, according to a recent survey by BetterCloud of 1,500 IT professional, all of whom either manage Office 365 or Google Apps for Work for their companies.

The survey found that Microsoft is winning Office 365 customers from exactly the kinds of companies you'd expect it to win: companies that already use Microsoft Office and older companies with older workforces, such as large multinationals like GE.

That's good news for Microsoft for a lot of reasons. It means that one of its most important, cash-cow businesses will not be eaten alive by Google anytime soon.

And that gives CEO Satya Nadella the runway he needs to get Office users to fall in love with all the fancy new, artificially intelligent productivity tools he's rolling out for them. This includes everything from Nadella's personal favorite new app, Delve, which helps people find important information buried in their in-boxes and Office Documents' to Power BI, which lets them ask questions of the data stored in office documents and get answers via charts and graphs.

Nadella's grand plan is to make all companies love Microsoft again with such productivity tools. 

On the other hand, the BetterCloud survey also found that Google Apps is winning customers from exactly the kind of companies you'd expect: younger companies, with younger employees that don't have a history of using Microsoft Office. In other words, the next generation of companies.

So Microsoft has a window of opportunity to keep Google away for now but maybe not forever.

SEE ALSO: This one thing about Google Apps for Work should seriously scare Microsoft

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NOW WATCH: This drummer created a whole song by only using the sound of coins

I firmly believe virtual reality will be the next frontier of computing. But for so many people — especially those who haven't tried a virtual reality headset like the Oculus Rift, Gear VR, or HTC Vive — it's difficult to understand why VR will be so profound.

Right now, most virtual reality apps are about gaming. But that's not why you'll care about virtual reality.

Social apps will be the "killer app" that convinces everyday people to drop hundreds of dollars on a virtual reality platform.

Imagine donning a VR headset and getting transported to a giant mansion, where you and 60 other people — friends, family and acquaintances — watch the Super Bowl together on a giant virtual TV that's streaming the game in real-time.

Imagine visiting a virtual playground with giant versions of board games for you and your friends to play — or, to just stand around and chat with each other — even if those friends are across the country, or on a different continent.

These aren't just ideas; these are actual virtual reality experiences you can try right now, thanks to two-year-old AltSpaceVR, which has raised $5.2 million in one funding round to create social applications within virtual spaces.

Back in March, AltSpaceVR invited me into its virtual social universe — a combination of the Oculus Rift headset and its own proprietary software — where you can talk, play games, and watch videos with your friends...well, avatars of your friends, which look like EVE from the Pixar movie "Wall-E."

If you enjoy watching endless YouTube videos on your computer — and who doesn't? — you'll enjoy it 10 times more in virtual reality, surrounded by friends and perhaps random acquaintances who you can talk and listen to even as the videos are playing in the background.

These social VR applications are extremely realistic, thanks to the power of 3D audio. Simply put, 3D audio – often called "spatial audio" – is the concept of true-to-life hearing. For example: If someone's avatar is far away from you, or standing right next to you, you'll hear their voice accordingly. You'll know if someone is to your right or left, near or far, which helps make the interaction feel more like real life.

Thanks to AltSpaceVR, I finally understood why Facebook dropped $2 billion on a virtual reality company: Social is, and has always been, the application that drives technologies forward.

We ultimately want technology to make our lives easier, to expand our abilities as humans. Facebook made it incredibly easy to make friends, but also keep track of those people and maintain those friendships online. 

In virtual reality, you'll be able to better keep up with all your friends, especially those who may be far-flung: Real-world interactions can't be replaced, but virtual reality is the next best thing, since you can invite dozens, even hundreds of people, regardless of geography, into a fantastic virtual area to catch up, play music and games, and watch movies together.

Virtual reality also has huge potential to meet new people.

If you and your friends can invite anyone you want to the virtual setting, you have limitless potential to create new connections — I could easily imagine a Facebook-like "Add Friend" option popping up above a user's avatar, in case you're clicking with someone you've met in VR. As it turns out, Facebook owns one of the foremost VR companies: Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift launching in early 2016.

Imagine if a company like Skype imported its instant translation technology to virtual settings. VR could transcend language.

Virtual reality would be recognized as the ultimate social platform, where you can connect to anyone, anywhere, regardless of physical and linguistic limitations.

Last week, I tried HTC's premium virtual reality headset, called the Vive. I'm convinced it's the best virtual reality experience out there right now. But even with all the incredible imagery in front of my eyes, I kept thinking back to my demo with AltSpaceVR. It would be nearly impossible for someone to truly believe what I had just seen in the HTC Vive. Painting 3D objects in mid-air, visiting an underwater shipwreck and cooking in a virtual kitchen is extremely fun, but it's nothing if you can't share in these experiences with others. Once that happens, virtual reality might finally be better than the real thing.

SEE ALSO: I tried HTC's insane virtual reality headset, and I'm convinced the world is about to change forever

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NOW WATCH: This is Microsoft's ambitious plan to own virtual reality

Phil Libin will step down as Evernote CEO and be replaced by former Google exec Chris O'Neill, Recode reported on Monday. Libin will remain as executive chairman.

The move comes a month after Libin revealed in an interview with The Information of his intention to step down. 

Libin told Recode that his decision to resign is largely due to his lack of passion leading a company that's about to go public. He's said in previous interviews that he's more interested on the product side of the business.

“I’ve always said that I wouldn’t be the company’s last CEO. And I realized years ago that I didn’t want to be the CEO when the company went public...I realized I wasn’t passionate about being the CEO who will take this company public and that I should find someone who will be passionate about it," Libin told Recode.

O'Neill formerly led the Google Glass project for 13 months, before leaving his position in June. He's been with Google since 2005, filling in various executive roles at Google Canada and Google X.

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All routes are leading towards WebRTC.

Somehow, people are still complaining about adoption of WebRTC in browsers instead of checking their alternatives.

Before WebRTC came to our lives, we had pretty much 3 ways of getting voice and video calling into our machines:

1. Build an application and have users install it on their PCs
2. Use Flash to have it all inside the browser
3. Develop a plugin for the service and have users install it on their browsers

We’re now in 2015, and 3 (again that number) distinct things have changed:

1. On our PCs we are less tolerant to installing “stuff”
   • As more and more services migrate towards the cloud, so are our habits of using browsers as our window to the world instead of installed software
   • Chromebooks are becoming popular in some areas, so installing software is close to impossible in them
2. Plugins are dying. Microsoft is banning plugins in Edge, joining Google’s Chrome announcement on the same topic
3. Flash is being thrown out the window, which is what I want to focus about here

There have been a lot of recent publicity around a new round of zero day exploits and vulnerabilities in Flash. It started with a group called The Hacking Team being hacked, and their techniques exposed. They used a few Flash vulnerabilities among other mechanisms. While Adobe is actively fixing these issues, some decided to vocalize their discontent with Flash:

Facebook’s Chief Security Officer wants Adobe to declare an end-of-life date for Flash.

It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day.

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) July 12, 2015

Mozilla decided to ban Flash from its browser until the recent known vulnerabilities are patched.

Don’t get me wrong here. Flash will continue being with us for a long time. Browsers will block Flash and then re-enable it, dealing with continuing waves of vulnerabilities that will be found. But the question then becomes – why should you be using it any longer?

• You can acquire camera and microphone using WebRTC today, so no need for Flash
• You can show videos using HTML5 and MPEG-DASH, so no need for Flash
• You can use WebGL and a slew of other web technologies to build interactivity into sites, so no need for Flash
• You can run voice and video calls at a higher quality than what Flash ever could with WebRTC
• And you can do all of the above within environments that are superior to Flash in both their architecture, quality and security

Without Flash and Plugin support in your future, why would you NOT use WebRTC for your next service?

Kranky and I are planning the next Kranky Geek in San Francisco sometime during the fall. Interested in speaking? Just ping me through my contact page.

The post Now That Flash and Plugins are out the Door, What’s Holding you from Adopting WebRTC? appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

San Francisco (AFP) - Is Apple Watch a dud?

Nearly three months after the launch of Apple's fashionably smart wrist wear, some analysts say it's not a mainstream mega-hit. But others see promise in its popularity with Internet-savvy young people.

Media outlets last week jumped on a study by research firm Slice Intelligence suggesting that, based on a large sampling of email receipts in the United States, orders for Apple Watch have plunged 90 percent since the week that the wearable computing gadget made its debut.

The estimate did not factor in data about Apple Watch sales at real-world stores. It remains to be seen whether the famously tight-lipped technology company will provide insights into Apple Watch sales when it releases a quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.

While not sounding an alarm, BMO Capital Markets analysts put out word to investors that they were "disappointed" and reduced their estimate for Apple Watch sales in the coming year.

They reasoned that the product was "nice to have but not a necessity, and is a bit hard to use."

Richard Windsor at Edison Investment Research said that even if Slice is way off the mark about the drop in Apple Watch orders, it was clear the smartwatch has sold far below even conservative expectations.

"My single biggest disappointment when the Apple Watch launched was Apple's failure to come up with a compelling use to which the device could be put," Windsor said.

"I think that this failing is the single biggest reason why the device is underperforming and why wearables in general continue to massively underperform the hype."

Go-to gift 

However, Cantor Fitzgerald experts believe Apple Watch will be a "go-to gift" during the year-end holiday season and become the best selling new product in Apple's history.

Apple Watch was the first new product line introduced by the culture-changing company behind iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Macintosh computers since 2010.

Global Equities Research managing director Trip Chowdhry has estimated Apple could sell 20 million to 25 million of the watches in the final three months of this year.

Jack Gold, President of J. Gold Associates, a research firm, said that it would be no surprise if Apple Watch sales momentum fell after the hype of it hitting the market subsided.

"The Apple lovers are going to buy things as soon as they come out," Gold told AFP.

"The rest of the market though, the mass market, really waits for more definition around 'What can this do for me?'"

So far no smartwatch, even a fashionably sophisticated offering by Apple, has hit the market accompanied by uses so compelling that people swarm to snap them up, according to Gold.

"Why do I spend $400 for a screen on my wrist that allows me to do basically the same thing than my phone does?" he asked rhetorically.

Wearables without a cause  

This is not just a challenge facing Apple. Rather, it is a gauntlet thrown down before every maker of smartwatches or other forms of what has become known as "wearable computing," according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech analyst Carolina Milanesi.

"It's a market issue for wearables," Milanesi said.

"It makes your life easier, it might help you with fitness, but it doesn't serve a basic need of communication, which is what the phone does."

And while people in the United States can get smartphones at steeply discounted prices if they sign telecommunication service contracts, such discounting is not done with smartwatches, the analyst noted.

Given those factors, it is unrealistic to expect smartwatches or other wearables to rack up the kinds of sales seen by smartphones, according to Milanesi.

Long-term play 

Measuring Apple's success in the sector for now could come down to how much profit it makes per smartwatch and how big a chunk of the market it commands, analysts said.

Kantar research indicated that iPhone owners are more interested in wearable computing overall and more willing to spend money on gadgets, signaling that Apple could be more successful in the sector than rivals.

Eight analysts consulted by AFP anticipated that Apple Watch sales this quarter would range from three million to five million units, and most expected sales by the end of the year to tally slightly less than 20 million.

The figure would eclipse sales posted my big-name makers of Android-powered smartwatches. Apple could clinch 56 percent of the global smartwatch market this year, according to research firm IHS.

"This is a long-term play," Gold said of Apple Watch.

"It's going to take another year or two, not just for Apple but for the market, to understand what it is that consumers really want these smartwatches to do for them.

"Apple will have to make some adjustments and I think it'll become more popular over time."

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As boss of Canary Wharf's Level39, Eric Van der Kleij is one of the most important people in the fintech scene in London — and possibly the world.

There are over 150 fintech businesses housed in Level39, which despite its name now covers three floors in One Canada Square.

"People tell us it’s the biggest space of its kind worldwide," Van der Kleij told Business Insider during a recent visit to Level39, a fintech-dedicated office space. "We’ve not measured so I don’t want to make any claims."

Level39 was set up in 2013 by the Canary Wharf Group to encourage a new generation of finance firms to come to the East London office peninsula — financial technology, or fintech, startups.

"Canary Wharf deserves credit because this is not cheap," says Van de Kleij. "This is a serious long term investment. But I think it’s a good thing because what we want is one of these companies to turn around and say can you build me my new headquarters in Wood Wharf."

Just over 2 years on, the space has broadened out to welcome "smart city" and cybersecurity startups too, as well as opening new space for high growth businesses on Level 42 and 24. The building can now house a startup from being a 2-man operation up to a 20-plus team.

"They want to eat the banks’ lunch"

The huge number of startups under Van der Kleij's nose gives him a good overview of what exactly the fintech world is up to.

"We find they fit into two camps," he says. "There’s the camp that wants to help the existing world of financial services to improve, to be more transparent, to provide better customer choice, to lower their costs. And then there are those that want to be the new bank, they want to eat the banks’ lunch. We love both of them."

Van der Kleij is very excited about one particular type of new technology — the blockchain, the software that runs bitcoin.

"The real powerful work being done in fintech is blockchain," he says. "I can tell you now with certainty that every major western bank we’ve spoken to, and some eastern ones, are looking at blockchain technology."

The blockchain creates bitcoins, allows transactions to happen, and creates a public record of all transactions, shared across hundreds of computers. Transactions can't be reversed and are much faster than the current system.

Banks currently have to interact with each others' systems when transferring money between accounts. This can be a slow, cumbersome, and a costly exercise, given how old many of the banks' computer systems are.

But if a secure, transparent, piece of software could automate these types of interbank transfers, it would be vastly quicker and cheaper. Barclays, UBS and Citi are all exploring how it could be used.

There are potential applications beyond payments too — Santander says it has 25 use cases for blockchain technology, while BNP Paribas says the technology could make some companies that hold stock "redundant."

"Very similar dynamics to music"

Van der Kleij calls blockchain "the real frontier" of finance and likens its evolution out of bitcoin to the rise of peer-to-peer technology out of illegal music-sharing website Napster.

He says: "In the world of music you had Napster as the unregulated challenger to the establishment. What they did is prove that technology can enable peer-to-peer file sharing to take place without the establishment controlling it. What that industry did is they wisely embraced that technology to reduce their costs and you now have the iTunes Store, Spotify. That transformed the model of music distribution.

"Who’s the Napster? It is companies involves in open ledger or blockchain technology. Of course its origins came from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is incredibly interesting and very exciting but very challenging for the regulator because of the privacy it affords.

"The challenge is we don’t want this to become the money launder’s weapon of choice, which is what the regulator is worried about. It has very similar dynamics to the world of music."

Level39 residents working on bitcoin and blockchain technologies include CodeStack, BitReserve and Coinjar.

Van der Kleij is confident that, as with music, blockchain technology will mature and enter the mainstream — we'll get our iTunes or Spotify of finance.

Not only will blockchain adoption make banking faster and cheaper, he also thinks the blockchain has the potential to make banking safer.

"You know the thing that caused the big problem in the financial crisis?" he asks. "It was these derivative mortgage-backed securities. Cunning people were repackaging different mortgage securities into products. When institutions bought them they had no real way of looking at the underlying assets they were buying because they were so complex. If they were forced to build that on blockchain, an investment manager could press a button and see the truth because of the immutability."

For now though, it's early days for the blockchain.

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NOW WATCH: You've been rolling your shirtsleeves wrong your entire life

Phone makers like Samsung, HTC, and LG technically make Android phones, but what you see on their screens barely resembles the "clean" version of Android that Google develops.

That's because phone makers add their own software features, or "skins," on top of the pure version of Android so that they can differentiate themselves from other phone brands.

Unfortunately, while some skins add great features that you wouldn't find on any other phone brand's phone, it also means that you get a lot of extra apps from the phone maker and carrier.

And more often than not, apps made by phone makers and carriers tend to be poorly designed both aesthetically and functionally. It's the reason why a lot of Android fans prefer Google's version of Android over the bloated versions phone makers create.

Here's a look at all the ways phone makers are changing Android compared to the clean version from Google's own Nexus phones.

SEE ALSO: How two of the best smartphone cameras ever made compare to each other

This is the pure version of Android with no skin layer on top, and this phone (the Nexus 5) was bought unlocked directly from Google. That means all the apps you see here are Google's own, and it results in a clean, simple interface that's not confusing. It also means no carrier apps. Even though LG made this particular phone, there are no LG apps, either.

The Galaxy S6 has Samsung's TouchWiz layer on top of Android. As you can see, it looks much different than pure Android, and there are many extra apps from Samsung and the carrier. (AT&T in this case). There are several duplicate apps for messaging and emailing, for example, which can be confusing. There are also a bunch of apps, like Yellow Pages, Uber, and Facebook that come preinstalled, which is somewhat intrusive, as the user should chose which apps to install on their devices. Notice the sharing menu on the bottom right with so many apps that it's hard to find the one you want to share to.

HTC has a skin layer called Sense. It looks quite classy, but it still carries a lot of HTC's and carrier bloatware. (T-Mobile, in this case).

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