Davemichels

Here is a brutal chart for Apple from Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves. 

It shows that interest in the Apple Watch, as measured by Google Trends, is below interest in the iPod. Yes, that's iPod, the thing that's pretty much dead:

The Apple Watch is Apple's first new product in a new category since the company launched the iPad in 2010. Initial demand was strong as Apple's built-in base of users leapt to buy the latest product from the company.

"After strong initial demand, follow-on interest in Apple Watch appears mediocre," Hargreaves says. He believes Apple will be able to ship 11 million watches by the end of September, which would still be pretty good. He says his "confidence is declining" in the product, and thinks there's a chance Apple whiffs on his estimate of Apple selling 24 million watches in fiscal year 2016.

Early reviews of the watch have been tepid. While most reviewers say they like the watch, digging into the specifics of those reviews reveals a slew of complaints. Apps are slow or useless. Business Insider's executive editor, for instance, sold his watch after just a month with it. 

The watch doesn't really do much to enhance the phone. Even from a fashion perspective, Hargreaves notes it seems "to be leaning a bit too much toward 'calculator watch'".

Add it all up, and there's good reason to start worrying about whether or not the watch is going to be a home run. 

SEE ALSO: We interviewed Jack Dorsey and Dick Costolo — here's what they had to say

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

LastPass, a popular password manager program, just admitted it's been hacked.

In a blog post published today, LastPass’s Joe Siegrist writes, "The investigation has shown ... that LastPass account email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts, and authentication hashes were compromised."

LastPass works by having users choose one strong master password that they must remember. When they log into LastPass, they use this strong authenticator to gain access to a list of all of their other passwords, which are stored in encrypted form on LastPass' servers. 

LastPass’ servers do hold a list of all of its users passwords, but because they are encrypted (meaning they are heavily ciphered making it nearly impossible to crack), it's highly unlikely any hackers would be able to decrypt LastPass' password trove. 

Further, the encryption and decryption happens on the users' devices, meaning that LastPass has no way to access any of its users' non-ciphered passwords.

It's important to note that this breach does not mean that hackers have full access to the passwords of every LastPass user. What it does mean, however, is that if users use a weak master password or have used the same password for another website, there’s a likelihood that hackers could gain access.

To fix this, all LastPass users should change their master password if it is weak. Also, users should implement multi factor authentication, making it even harder for hackers to gain access. 

Users, however, need not have need to change the passwords stored in LastPass. 

Business Insider reached out to LastPass and will update the post when we learn more.

SEE ALSO: 7 easy ways to avoid being hacked

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NOW WATCH: The 12 best new features coming to the iPhone

After about seven months of silence, a probe that landed on a comet back in November has finally woken up and established communication with the spacecraft orbiting the comet.

The European Space Agency (ESA) made history when it became the first to send a spacecraft into orbit around a comet in November, 2014.

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft then attempted to land a probe called Philae on the surface of the comet.

But ESA lost contact with Philae when it landed on the comet too hard, bounced high into the air twice, and landed in the shadows under an outcrop of the comet.

Philae operates on solar power, so with no sunlight shining on it, it went into hibernation mode.

It was able to get about 60 hours of work done before shutting off, but scientists were worried that was all it would be able to do, since it landed in a shady area of the comet, unable to get enough sun to recharge its batteries. Philae took close up photos of the comet and surface samples before powering down. 

All ESA scientists could do was wait and hope that the comet would turn toward the sun enough so that Philae could charge up her batteries.

Early in the morning on June 14, (late afternoon on June 14 European time) Philae's social media team sent a message after they heard from the probe:

The data from Philae shows the probe has been awake for a while, but just now got charged up enough to beam a message.

The probe is designed to take samples and map the surface of the comet, but Philae can't get back to work right away. ESA scientists need to double check all its instruments and make sure everything is running smoothly:

The initial data looks promising though, according to ESA.

"Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available," Philae Project Manager Stephan Ulamec said in a press release. "The lander is ready for operations."

ESA will post more information as it becomes available, but it looks like we'll get to learn a lot more about Rosetta's comet.

The data from Philae may help scientists figure out exactly what went wrong with the landing and where on the comet Philae ended up. 

SEE ALSO: First Images Of Comet From The Philae Lander

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to slingshot with a parachute out of a hot air balloon at 16,000 feet

I've written about how many baristas screw up cappuccinos (which could be one reason why Starbucks took them off the menu, reported here first).

At the same time, I've wondered if machines could make espresso drinks better than humans. It turns out they can.

Julian Baggini wrote two years ago in Aeon magazine about how (then) more than 15 Michelin-starred restaurants in London used Nestle's Nespresso machines, as did more than 100 Michelin-starred restaurants in France and more than 20 Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy, with many others using espresso machines from Illy, Kimbo, Lavazza, and Segafredo. Those are some of the fanciest restaurants in the world choosing to use a capsule espresso machine rather than leave coffee to baristas.

Baggini held a blind taste test between a Nespresso and the espresso served by a barista in a two Michelin-starred restaurant. The Nespresso won hands down:

The traditional house espresso scored 18 points, and was the favourite of one taster. But the clear winner with 22 points was the Nespresso, which both scored most consistently and was the favourite of two of the four tasters. Of course, these were just four people’s opinions. But their consensus fits the judgment of top chefs and Nespresso’s own extensive testing, which must have been conclusive enough for them to have the confidence to agree to my challenge in the first place.

It's not surprising when you think about it that a vacuum-sealed dose of perfectly ground beans run through a finely tuned machine would beat a drink that was subject to endless human error.

Baggini writes:

Technically, it’s relatively easy to get hold of the best coffee beans, roast them at the right temperature for the right time, grind them to the right fineness, and then vacuum-seal the right quantity for one shot. From that point on, the coffee will not degrade, effectively being as fresh once the machine pierces the capsule as it was when it went in. Then it’s a matter of hiring leading coffee experts, throwing millions of pounds of R&D at a crack team of engineers, and building a machine that will force the right amount of water through the coffee at the right temperature and pressure.

In theory, that is bound to result in a better brew than the traditional process, which, for all its romance, is full of opportunities for degradation and mishap. A bag of beans, once opened, will start to lose its flavour very rapidly once it is ground. Calibrating temperature and pressure is also difficult and subject to human error. While the capsule always contains exactly the same amount of coffee, the amount the traditional barista places in the portafiltro, and the degree to which is it compacted with the tamper, will always differ slightly. Most cafés do not get every step right, and they only get away with it because most people drown their espressos in steamed milk.

It's just another thing that machines can do better than humans. All told we're better off to have this technology, created by human ingenuity, though some companies, such as Starbucks, risk falling on the wrong side of the disruption.

SEE ALSO: We've reached the point where technology destroys more jobs than it creates

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NOW WATCH: It's official: Michael Kors isn't cool anymore

Only 1.5% of the population knows about the communication platform Slack — but the company's chief marketing officer, Bill Macaitis, doesn't think Slack has any competition.

"We don't necessarily feel we have competitors," Macaitis said. "There really hasn't been a company that has come along and focused on messaging and the integration like Slack has; we're at the front of a new category."

Slack is a chatroom for offices, and it allows coworkers to communicate by sending individual and group messages. Slack also has a mobile app, enabling coworkers to stay in constant communication, whether they are in the office or not. 

Businesses that use Slack typically see internal company emails reduced by 80% to 100%, Macaitis told Business Insider. "Slack is the new productivity," CiteWorld said.

 

 

The platform is not the first to try to disrupt the online communication space. For example HipChat, a team messaging platform that launched in 2010, has a similar service but with 30 integrations to Slack's 100. 

In fact, Slack's "integration" is what separates it from similar platforms. Slack users can easily use popular services like Google Drive to share documents, GitHub to review software codes, and Giphy to send images of dancing cats, without ever leaving the platform. 

Currently, there are 80 integrated third-party programs within Slack. By the end of the year, Macaitis and Slack are aiming for 300.

 

Also, Slack enables users to create groups based on their department — and extracurricular interests. For example, if a company has a lot of Yankees fans, they can create a Yankees fan group within Slack to chat about the team.

Macaitis joined Slack as CMO in December of 2014, becoming the company's,"marketing employee number one," he said. Since then, he has been focusing on expanding Slack's user base while maintaining quality of experience.

Among the initial things Macaitis did at Slack was conduct a major study to find out exactly how many people were already aware of the platform, which is when he determined that only 1.5% of the population is aware of the service.

 "We live in a tech bubble, but as you expand outward there is still a lot of work to do, to grow," Macaitis said. "That's where we look at marketing to move into new verticals, geos, and segments."

To do this, Slack relies heavily on those users. "We’re really focused on making sure that everyone who comes in contact with Slack has a great experience and recommends it to other people," Macaitis told BI. 

As shown by Slack's Twitter "Wall of Love," a page devoted entirely to pro-Slack tweets, this focus is paying off.

 

 

The platform is designed to be "customer-centric," Macaitis said. "We want to know what our customers want and how to deliver a great experience every step of the way. That's what great about not having to be competitor-centric."

Macaitis will be discussing these and other elements of Slack's marketing strategy at the Northside Festival's Innovation Conference in Brooklyn today on a panel entitled, "An Unexpected Challenge: How to Market the Next Big Thing." 

SEE ALSO: Slack — the messenger app that's changing the workplace — just got even better

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NOW WATCH: Forget the Apple Watch — here's the new watch everyone on Wall Street wants

The CEO of the media giant will hand that title to his son James.

The Surface Hub, Microsoft’s newest large-display product for whiteboarding and video conferencing, will officially be available for businesses to order starting July 1. The product, which was first revealed at a Microsoft event in January and covered in detail in Re/code’s Future of Workspaces story, will come in two sizes: 55 inches ($6,999) and 84 […]

The next time you stay at a hotel, you may be able to stream Marvel's "Daredevil" on the TV in your room instead of on your phone's tiny screen.

Marriott Hotels said on Wednesday that it's adding a Netflix app to in-room TVs in some of its hotels.

That means that guests who stay at any of the six hotels that now have the Netflix app on its in-room TVs — more are rolling out this summer and over the next 18 months — will be able to sign into their own Netflix accounts to stream.

People staying at the hotel only have to sign into their accounts once while they're at the hotel, and they'll stay signed in throughout their stay. Since they'll be streaming from their own accounts, they'll be able to start shows where they left off as well as see the recommendations tailored to them, just like they'd see on any other device they use to watch Netflix.

Guests are automatically signed out of their Netflix accounts when they checkout.

For now, Netflix on the in-room TV is only available at six Marriott hotels in the US, in cities like New York, San Jose, CA and Bethesda, Md., but the company says it'll offer Netflix in close to all of its 300 hotels in the US by the end of 2016. 

It's a smart move for both Netflix and Marriott. It makes the hotels more attractive to guests, because it'll be easier to watch Netflix on the biggest screen in the room. It could also help drive Netflix subscriptions, as the company will be offering its usual free 30-day trial to guests that aren't yet members. And that same promise of a free 30-day trial is an attractive prospect to people looking for hotels with good entertainment options for their next stay. And that's sure to add to the already more than 40 million paying Netflix members in the US.

People already regularly stream video from services like Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, and HBO Go while they're in hotels, which has helped hasten the decline of in-room hotel entertainment companies like LodgeNet, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013.

The announcement comes as traditional TV viewing and ratings are down in the US and streaming video is rising.

On Wednesday, Netflix stock surged to a new record high of $692.

This year alone, the stock has more than doubled and from its bottom of around $60 per share in late 2011, the stock is now up better than 600%.

SEE ALSO: This is the best time to quit paying for TV, and it’s only going to get better

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NOW WATCH: The first TV ad for 'Spectre' gives us our best look at the next Bond movie yet

By Michelle Burbick
This latest cloud service aims to improve the customer experience.

No, Chromebooks can't yet run Skype natively. A Google tool to package Android apps for Chrome OS, however, is a handy workaround for Skype on your Chromebook.

Avaya, the IP PBX product and services company, acquired Esna, a successful innovator of integration of Unified Communications with "business applications." So, what’s the deal and what’s the big deal?

By Dave Michels
Calendar interoperability has led to a huge productivity leak that grows ever bigger as teams become more distributed and collaborative.

Microsoft is making changes to its Office 365 interface, including the integration of Skype for Business conversations, for business customers over the next several months.

Cisco's giant customer conference, Cisco Live, began Monday in San Diego and was the last time outgoing CEO John Chambers would impart his vision in a keynote speech.

And was it ever a speech, filled with fire-and-brimstone predictions.

The upshot: Chambers, Cisco's CEO of 20 years, says more than one-third of businesses today will not survive the next 10 years. The only ones that will survive will turn their companies into digital, techie versions of themselves, and many of will fail trying.

"Forty percent of businesses in this room, unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years," he told the 25,000 attendees, adding that 70% of companies would "attempt" to go digital but only 30% of those would succeed.

"If I'm not making you sweat, I should be," he said.

"It will become a digital world that will change our life, our health, our education, our business models at the pace of a technology company change," Chambers said. He warned companies that they could not "miss a market transition or a business model" or "underestimate your competitor of the future — not your competitor of the past."

"Either we disrupt or we get disrupted," he said.

Startups want to upturn every existing business, including taxis (Uber), hotels (Airbnb), and banking, Chambers said.

He quoted JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's annual letter to shareholders, in which Dimon warned that "Silicon Valley is coming." Dimon meant that startups were creating new banking apps for everything from loans to payments.

Cisco's own painful reorg

Chambers talked a lot about the painful transition that Cisco underwent over the past three years, which culminated in a massive reorganization of its 25,000-person engineering team in which "24 of 92 leaders" were let go.

He said similar reorgs took place in the sales and administrative ranks.

Cisco has "changed 41% of our client-interfacing execs," he said. "We had to change or we would have been left behind."

Chambers said the company had cleaned up its 62 business units — product-oriented fiefdoms and silos that had sprouted up from Cisco's love of acquisitions. He reorganized them into two huge groups: enterprise and service provider. The divisions now make 18 product "families," and all of those products must work together.

"We had to tie together our silos, we had to change our culture, we had to lead by example," he said.

And we'll see if Cisco is done. On July 26, Cisco will get a new CEO, Chuck Robbins, who has been hinting that he plans to tighten the belt even further.

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NOW WATCH: Why battery technology is still one of the biggest challenges for engineers

A big upgrade from Xs and Os on a chalkboard.

“It’s the beginning of an amazing moment for our industry."

Slack is changing the workplace as we know it. It eliminates a ton of email and allows people to easily work together remotely through chat rooms and DM's with unique functionality.

Many call it the fastest growing business app ever. Since its official launch in February 2014, Slack has seen unbelievable growth, racking up 750,000 daily active users, a 50X jump.

The company recently rolled out its big 2.0 update and there are a ton of under the hood and feature-driven updates for mobile that are going to make it a lot easier to use.

A few of the highlights:

• Messages will load faster with offline support. This is helpful, because Slack always has to connect when you open it and that can take more time than you'd like occasionally.
• Links open within the app rather than kicking out to an external browser.
• New team directory and channel member search. Not everything you need is always right in front of your face on mobile Slack, so having this feature more accessible is helpful.
• Search for channels and DMs by tapping the “+” buttons in the left-side menu. Should make it much easier to quickly find where you're going, which is helpful in a small screen environment.
• Slash (/) commands now autocomplete which is definitely a feature missed from the desktop app. There's a lot of slash-commanding in Slack if you really want to dig into it.
• Tons and tons of speed improvements and bug fixes.

Here's the full list from the iOS app store:

What's New in Version 2.00

- Short version: While on the surface it may look the same, the app has undergone a thorough rebuild from the ground up, making the experience better in myriad ways. Using it is just nicer.

- Long version with added coruscation and explanatory detail…
- Offline support! Messages will now load faster on launch than you ever dreamed possible and remain available when you’re offline.
- A clutch of totally awesome pumped-up performance boosts, including noticeably reduced memory usage and killer speeds throughout the app. Crushed it.
- No more jumping around: You can now open links using an in-app web browser. (Settings > Web Browser > In-App Browser) (Better iPad support coming soon).
- You can now long press on URLs to summon a share sheet, then open the link in an app of your choice (Evernote, Wunderlist or Instapaper, for example), or "Add to Reading List" and save for later. Deferred gratification has never felt better.
- Swishier team switcher page with bonus team icons and a better unread message indicator.
- Sometimes bigger IS better. As proof of this, image previews in channels, groups and DMs are now more pixel-packed.
- Super-responsive swiping when opening the left and right-hand menus.
- Left-handers! Super-responsive swiping when opening the right and left-hand menus.
- A new team directory and channel member search has been added.
- Messages now behave more reliably, even on a spotty network connection. If a message fails to send, you can now try, try, try again (and, with any luck, succeed).
- You can now search for channels and DMs by tapping the “+” buttons in the left-side menu (you can still use the wondrous Quick Switcher by swiping right again, of course).
- Slash commands now autocomplete. And have help text. Or something. Anyway it's p cool. /shrug
- If you have an email account set up in the native Mail app, you can now report issues directly by opening the right side menu > Settings > Submit Feedback. Support for other mail apps coming soon.
- And many other small changes to the back end, meaning the game is irrevocably changed, and the iOS app will never be the same again. Basically, what Star Wars did for sci-fi, we've done to our app. But without Jar Jar Binks.

- Fixed: typing would occasionally become slow and unresponsive, which was frustrating if typing was the main thing you wanted to do, and, let's face it, it usually was. The keyboard is now securely swift.
- Fixed: if you launched the app to a channel with unread messages we wouldn't mark the channel as read even where we should've, because you'd read'em.
- Fixed: the app would crash when opening "Recent Mentions" from the right side menu if you had a recent mention in a file comment.
- Fixed: a few other frequent crashes for iOS 7 users should now be less frequent (or, preferably, completely absent).
- Fixed: We fixed the thing where we'd mention we'd added support for exciting upcoming features in release notes but wouldn't say what those were. That was impolite, and doesn't happen any more. (Except to note that in this build we totally have, and still won't).

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The crazy story behind Slack, the app taking over offices everywhere

Google's European chief has admitted that the company screwed up in Europe.

The search giant has a strained relationship on the continent, facing a litany of complaints and accusations on issues ranging from alleged tax avoidance to anti-trust allegations.

In response, the Californian company shook up its operational structure in February 2015 — unifying the previously separate units Northern and Central Europe, and Southern and Eastern Europe along with the Middle East and Africa. They were brought under the control of Matt Brittin, who was appointed "President of EMEA Business and Operations" — a newly-created title.

Brittin has now spoken up, giving his first public interview to Politico since his promotion. The 46-year-old former Olympic rower is candid and conciliatory about the company's struggle to see eye-to-eye with European authorities: "We don't always get it right."

"As far as Europe is concerned: We get it. We understand that people here are not the same in their attitudes to everything as people in America." Brittin identifies a failure of communication as part of the reason relationships have deteriorated: "We just didn't have the people on the ground to be able to have some of those conversations as we grew."

Google's position in Europe is a curious one. It dominates the search market — far more than it does in the US, its home market. In America, it holds a (desktop) search share of around 77%, according to StatCounter, while in Europe, it's more than 91%. But despite this — or perhaps because of it — the company has become the subject of considerable ire from authorities.

The issues that Google faces scrutiny over include:

• Accusations of tax avoidance. Google — along with other Silicon Valley giants — has been attacked over financial arrangements that significantly lower its tax bills. Matt Brittin — Google Europe's new boss — was infamously grilled by British MPs over the issue (see below).
• The right to be forgotten. Following a ruling in May 2014, European citizens can appeal to Google to have "outdated" or "irrelevant" information removed from search listings about them. Google fiercely opposes the ruling, but it has implemented the takedown system.
• Antitrust allegations. Google dominates the European search market, with a marketshare of upwards of 90%. The European Commission has an antitrust investigation underway into Google. And in November, the European Parliament took the unprecedented step of voting to break up Google and split off its search arm. The vote was non-binding but it illustrates the level of animosity towards the search giant.
• Publishing conflicts. Spain recently attempted to charge Google for linking to articles by Spanish publishers. Google refused to pay up, instead closing down its Google News service in the country.

Brittin — unsurprisingly — disagrees with the accusations of anti-trust conduct. "There is no evidence that consumers have been harmed here," he told Politico, "and actually no evidence that complainants have been harmed." Furthermore, "there has never been a more competitive time than this in terms of the choices that consumers have."

Google clearly hopes that Brittin's appointment can help to turn the page. He says his employer wants "to be pragmatic and get to a point where we can continue to invest in building great products for everyone."

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NOW WATCH: This is the Chinese version of Google Glass and it's only a fraction of the price

When Mary publishes on SlideShare, millions follow.

Mary Meeker of KPCB had just released her mid year free analysis of internet trends. All 196 pages of it. At the time of writing, there are over 1.6 million views (!) reported on this deck. There are many gold nuggets in there and stats for those in love with numbers. Jett Mall of Unify does a good job at analyzing the impact of these trends on UC. I want to do the same for WebRTC. The tidbits I’ll share here don’t tell a coherent story as they are sorted by way of appearance in the slide deck.

WebRTC Increases the Impact of the Internet in new verticals

In a recent analysis I did on the 600+ WebRTC vendors that I follow, it was interesting to see that the two more notable verticals are education and healthcare. These are two of the verticals where the Internet impact to date hasn’t been big enough yet. Will WebRTC improve that? Probably yes.

The Shift from Static to Actionable Ads is Just Beginning

With the new Buy buttons being added to ads, it is not hard to imagine sales oriented contact centers attempting to get people into a conversation before landing on their website – via an ad. This hasn’t happened yet, which to me is surprising.

Should WebRTC Video go… Vertical?

Most WebRTC services today that have video calling support in them are focused mostly on the traditional horizontal viewing. Should developers start working on “vertical-first” user experiences and not only mobile first ones?

Virtualizing the Physical Contact Center

While the trend is to go self-service in support and contact centers, it will be hard to cancel the human touch required. WebRTC in contact centers today enable removing the brick and mortar part of it and enable agents to work from anywhere – something that was impossible/limited before.

Messaging is Key

Check out slides 46 to 56. Search for Unified Communications, Voice, Video. You won’t find it. And yet, they are winning the world. And yes. They have voice and video. Oftentimes, curtsey of WebRTC.

Note 4 key factors here:

1. Messaging should be coupled with Notifications
2. These are communications hubs and operating systems
3. They are context-persistent
   • History is important
   • WebRTC enables passing context… and making use of it
4. Presence has left the room. As we are ever-present, the old presence paradigm is now less important

India and China – not only developers

In many cases, WebRTC in India was all about companies in India developing services to be used in the US and Europe.

Today, there is a growing trend of Indian vendors developing services for local markets in India, using WebRTC in the process. There are two main challenges here:

1. Bad internet connectivity and quality
2. No WebRTC PaaS players that cover the region of India adequately

There’s an opportunity here, but it will mostly be mobile (check slide 169 in the deck).

As for China, I have less visibility there.

Diversity of Thought is Important for WebRTC Use Cases

The best teams I’ve seen using WebRTC are those that aren’t VoIP developers in their vocation and calling. They come from a specific vertical. They know it in depth. And they are trying to find new technical solutions to it. WebRTC is means to an end for them – a small piece of a larger puzzle.

 

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

You can find the full deck of slides here:

The post How WebRTC fits into Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

Apple is getting serious about the smart home. But there's one glaring problem. Consumers don't want one — at least not yet.

Earlier this week, a slew of products that are compatible with Apple’s HomeKit were revealed. HomeKit is Apple's platform that will let hardware manufacturers make devices you control over the internet with your iPhone. In addition, a company support page was discovered Wednesday that pretty much confirms Apple TV will serve as the hub for Apple compatible smart home devices.

But just because Apple’s getting into the connected home business doesn’t mean consumers are ready to make the investment to control lights and other appliances over the internet.

“It’s not like it’s going to unleash some crazy pent up demand. I still think this is something that is going to roll out incrementally," said Frank Gillett, a technology analyst at Forrester Research, in an interview with Business Insider.

“People are interested in convenience and easy-to-use things. Convenience and easy to use aren’t necessarily equivalent to a lot of the existing connecting home products...you can't buy one product and make your home smart,” he said.

In fact, only about 13% of U.S. households with broadband report owning at least one smart home device and only 7% have their smart devices connected to a centralized controller, according to a report published by Park Associates and the Consumer Electronic Association last year. A whopping 62% are unfamiliar with smart home products, according to the report.

Two of the big reasons smart home adoption hasn't taken off is because upgrading to smart home technologies is expensive and difficult. Those looking to connect their current home either have to buy a gadget to connect existing home devices, like a smart power outlet, or replace appliances and other devices with brand new smart items.

This adds up quickly and can be a headache to set up, Gillett said.

Yet, despite the obstacles in the space — Apple, Google, Samsung, and other tech companies are making an aggressive push to address the issues in transforming homes into the ultimate smart system. 

Apple, for example, may help ease the pains of implementing smart home technology by rolling out an app that could be used to control all smart home appliances that are compatible with HomeKit. The app is rumored to be called Home and would enable users to control all of  their devices from the app or use Siri to control connected gadgets.

Last week at Google's I/O developers conference, the search giant announced two pieces of software aimed at making smart home adoption easier. The company revealed Brillo, a smart home operating system, and Weave, a common language for devices to communicate with one another. Much like Apple has set certain criteria for devices to be HomeKit compatible, Weave devices will have to go through a certification program to ensure they work correctly. 

In January, Samsung announced that all of its gadgets from TVs to toasters will be able to connect to the internet within five years.

So why are these companies putting in so much effort when there's currently so little demand? Because even though mass adoption of smart home technology is likely still a ways off, tech giants see a massive opportunity to get in on a budding market early. 

The US home automation market is estimated to go from almost $6.9 billion in 2014 to $10.3 billion in 2019, according to BCC Research. While growth in the space isn't expected to be as dramatic as smartphone adoption when Apple entered the market, the growth will be steady and long-term. 

"In our survey data somewhere between eight and 16% of adults who were surveyed are using some kind of connected at home gadget and I expect that to keep growing gradually," Gillet said.  "I do expect the support and endorsement of Apple to increase interest and exploration, but I think that it will still be something that is gradually accepted."

SEE ALSO: How Apple HomeKit devices will work

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This robot chef can cook any type of dish

Incoming Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins is wasting no time showing the world that he's going to grab Cisco by the horns and make it his own.

As expected, today he announced sweeping changes to the executive ranks, with some big surprises.

These are the names that are out of the new administration: 

• Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's CTO and Strategy Officer
• Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s Chief Globalization Officer;
• Edzard Overbeek, Senior Vice President of Cisco Services;

These are the names that will lead the new administration:

Hilton Romanski is taking over Warrior's role as CTO and strategy officer. Romanski was working as Cisco's deal-maker responsible for some of Cisco's biggest, most strategic purchases, such as Sourcefire, Meraki, and Airespace.

Ruba Borno is a new hire from The Boston Consulting Group.

She will become VP, Growth Initiatives and Chief of Staff. Borno holds a Ph.D in electrical engineering and has been an Intel fellow at the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. So she's got game in the kind of tech Cisco builds.

It looks like Borno's role will be to serve as Robbins' consultant on how to manage and possibly re-organize Cisco's massive 70,000-strong employees, and be someone who came from outside the John Chambers era.

Pankaj Patel has been confirmed as the leader of Cisco's enormous 25,000-person engineering team.

Cisco just spent two-years changing up its engineering under Patel, culminating in a massive re-org last fall, designed to eliminate product fiefdoms and to create groups that are supposed to work together. It would have been risky for Robbins to have cut Patel at this juncture.

Rebecca Jacoby has been promoted to Senior Vice President, Operations.

Jacoby was formerly CIO meaning she ran all of Cisco's internal IT. She is very well-known and well-liked in the industry at large, frequently on the speaker circuit. Guillermo Diaz has been named the new CIO reporting to her. In addition to running IT, she's running operations and supply chain.

Chris Dedicoat is taking over Robbins' old role as head of worldwide sales, as previously announced. He was running European sales under Robbins, so Robbins knows him well.

Joe Cozzolino, senior vice president, services. He was previously running Cisco's Service Provider Video Infrastructure Group, a critical unit of potential growth as service providers spend millions to upgrade their networks to handle the world's YouTubes, Netflix and Facebook videos. But there are a bunch of new, competing technologies to help them do so, so this unit  had been hit-and-miss on sales and growth.

Francine Katsoudas will continue running HR.

Karen Walker will continue running marketing.

Mark Chandler will continue to be Cisco's top lawyer.

Kelly Kramer will stay as CFO. She took over last fall replacing 10-year CFO Frank Calderoni at the height of Cisco's multi-year internal reorganization.

Surprise exits

The biggest name on the out list is Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's CTO and Strategy Officer. She is  well-known and well-liked outside the company as a visionary, and known inside the company for pushing innovation.

We expect headhunters are pounding down her door right now. We wouldn't be surprised to see her land a CEO role somewhere else.

Wim Elfrink is known for opening the global headquarters in Bangalore, India and he helped Cisco establish a new unit to take on the Internet of Things, which is Cisco's Next Big Thing. But he wasn't that unit's leader. That's the job of Cisco Rob Soderbery.

Edzard Overbeek has been at Cisco for 15 years, most recently running Services. Prior to that he was running Cisco's Asia Pacific sales, and was Robbins counterpart and, perhaps, internal rival in the company's sales world. Overbeek's career rose under Chambers and now Cisco is Robbins' baby.

Cost cutting versus strategy

Cisco has mostly grown through acquisitions over the past decade, which does tend to create a messy organization of people and business units that still "belong" to the companies that were bought.

Robbins has repeatedly said  that he wants to get Cisco's sprawling 75,000 employees and 18 different product categories into a leaner, meaner machine.

His new team is full of leaders that have cut costs, as opposed to leaders known for their vision.

We wouldn't be shocked to learn that Robbins first acts as CEO will be to weed out some of those underperforming products and cleaning out some of those teams.

Now everyone is waiting to hear if Robbins will institute more cost cutting, including layoffs. Cisco has had annual layoffs for the past four years.

But he can't just cut his way to a vibrant company.

The company's bread-and-butter networking industry is under attack as new software makes networks cheaper to build and run. He's got to start articulating how Cisco will survive this trend, and what the new Cisco will become.

SEE ALSO: Cisco pays millions to the two executives that just resigned

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There's a nasty new bug going around Skype, VentureBeat reports — it's an 8-letter message that can break the recipient's app so badly they need to totally reinstall it.

It's similar to another bug currently at large on iPhones. Receiving a certain string of unicode characters on iOS can cause Messages and other apps to crash, and even force the device to reboot entirely.

The bug is caused by a failure to render the unicode characters properly.

Now, a similar bug has been discovered on messaging app Skype, and it's even more disruptive. While the iOS bug can be fixed, the Skype one can crash the recipient's app permanently. VentureBeat reports that in a forum post (that has since apparently been deleted), a user writes that "clearing chat history not helps, because when skype download chat history from server, it will crash again."

In short, the offending message will crash the app when received, and it can't be deleted because Skype helpfully backs everything up — meaning that the app will continue to crash, forever. It apparently affects Android, iOS, and older versions of Windows, but not OS X or modern Windows. Business Insider tested the bug and confirmed that it works.

To be able to re-use Skype, users need to get the sender to delete the message on their end so that they can then delete their message history and reinstall the app completely.

Here's the offending message:

http://:

Skype told VentureBeat that "We are aware of the problem and are working to provide an resolution." Business Insider has also reached out and will update this story when Skype responds.

A second test from Business Insider found that the message has been replaced with "This message has been removed." — suggesting Skype is now automatically censoring it.

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NOW WATCH: A bunch of teens used Skype to meet and learn from kids from all over the world

As we noted yesterday, rather than allow real (and important) amendments to be added to the USA Freedom Act, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "filled the tree" with his own amendments that would have stripped out the few small, but important reforms in the USA Freedom Act. Thankfully, however, this afternoon, all of his amendments failed pretty conclusively -- allowing McConnell to then give a ridiculous speech on the floor of the Senate about how upset he is that the President has made us all less safe in this time of mounting threats (note that it's always a time of mounting threats). He also repeated an Associated Press headline about how the expiration of Section 215 was "a resounding victory for Edward Snowden" as if that was an insult, and then noted that it was "also" a "resounding victory" for terrorists who wished to harm us. In other words, a bunch of fear-mongering garbage.

After that, the full vote was taken, and the USA Freedom Act passed by an overwhelming margin, 67 to 32. The bill is likely to be signed by the President within the next few hours, if not sooner.

I know that some people don't like the USA Freedom Act, but it does include many useful reforms as a starting point. But that's it. Real reform to the surveillance state just happened. That's worth celebrating. But it's only a first step and it's not nearly enough. A lot more needs to be done, starting right away. Stopping abuses under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and Executive Order 12333 are the next things that need to be taken care of, but there's a lot more beyond that. This is a real step forward in preventing abusive surveillance, but it's just one step.

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The human brain is perhaps the most complex biological structure in evolutionary history. Yet, it's surprisingly easy to trick our brain into perceiving something one way, when in reality it's another. And scientists are only just now figuring out how some of these tricks work.

They're called optical illusions, and they can teach us a great deal about how our brain and eyes work together to understand the world around us.

Here are 10 of the craziest optical illusions and how they work:

1. Peripheral drift illusion

Despite the swirling and twirling you think you see, this is a completely still image. It's an example of peripheral drift illusion, which refers to any optical illusion that our brains perceive as moving but, in reality, is still.

The human brain, although highly sophisticated, processes information in a very basic way: As we move our eyes from left to right, we pick up visual cues both directly and in our peripheral vision that our brain then processes piece-by-piece — not continuously.

And because our brains process high-contrast elements, like black on white, faster than low-contrast ones, like black on grey, that lapse in mental read time is ultimately what causes the apparent motion.

In a 2012 study, researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, reported that subjects looking at the picture above only saw apparent movement if their eyes were actually moving. When the subjects maintained a steady stare at a single point, the apparent motion ceased.

2. Ames room

This is an example of an Ames room that was first invented by American ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames, Jr. in 1934. This room toys with our brain's sense of perspective.

Almost any room we enter is either square or rectangular-shaped, meaning opposite walls are parallel to each other and meet at 90 degree angles. However, an Ames room is shaped like a trapezoid.

The far-left corner is farther from the camera than the far-right corner. So, as the man walks across the room he appears to grow in size when in reality he's just moving closer to the camera.

3. Hybrid image

The longer you see this image the more it looks like Albert Einstein instead of Marilyn Monroe, so you might think it's just a skewed photo of the famous physicist. But that's the illusion!

This is an example of what is called a hybrid image that imposes one image on top of another. So, in fact, you are seeing both Monroe and Einstein. The trick is that the image of Einstein shows more detail than the image of Monroe.

The farther an object is from us, the blurrier it appears. Therefore, our brains instantaneously process the blurry image of Monroe when the object is small and apparently far away, but as it comes closer, our eyes and brain recognize the more detailed image of Einstein.

4. Geometrical optical illusion

This example is just one of many types of geometrical optical illusions, wherein our brains fail at one of the most fundamental tasks: recognizing straight lines.

In case you're wondering, the only thing changing in this picture is the addition of the diagonal lines. The plank is not actually tilting to the right, despite what your brain is telling you.

There's no single explanation for why we perceive an imaginary tilt here. One possible reason could be related to a theory that researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York first proposed in 2008:

Rensselaer suggests that in the 0.1 seconds it takes our brains to process the light that hits our retinas, humans actually predict what we think we should see. Although, this does not clearly tell us why we only perceive the tilt once the diagonal lines are introduced, Rensselaer's "foresight theory" can explain another type of geometrical optical illusion called Hering illusion.

5. Dragon illusion

Originally designed by the late American magician and writer Jerry Andrus, this optical illusion is a true work of genius. It does not use any holographic trick or clever camera work.

This type of optical illusion, similar to the Ames room, plays with our brain's sense of perspective: the dragon's face looks like it's sticking out toward us because, after all, we know from a life time of experience that faces stick out instead of cave in.

But the exact opposite is actually the case here, as Slate science writer Phil Plait explains on Bad Astronomy. Regardless of what you perceive, the entire face of this dragon is inverted making everything backwards: For example, the right eye is actually farther away from us than the left eye, and it's this inversion that confuses our brains and makes us think the dragon is constantly, hungrily staring us down.

You can make this illusion yourself very easily. There are numerous templates online where you simply print and cut out the shape and then fold it according to the directions.

6. Shades of gray illusion

In 1995, an MIT professor of vision science, Edward Adelson, proved with his Checker shadow illusion that the human brain is easily fooled when asked to determine the true color of anything in shadow.

His experiment suggests that the human brain has a hard time perceiving slight changes in shade of the same color, like gray in the above example. Therefore, the brain is forced to guess or interpret the color we either think we see or want to see.

The best way to do this is through context, by comparing the color in question with other surrounding colors. Obviously, it's easy to trick our brain with the right setting.

7. Reversible image

If you look at this infamous optical illusion long enough, you should actually see the woman change the direction that she's spinning and the leg she's standing on. This mesmerizing optical illusion was first made in 2003 by web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara. If you're seeing her rotate clockwise on her left left leg, you're not alone. In an online survey of 1,600 people, two-thirds said they initially saw her spinning clockwise.

Because we can easily perceive the figure to be spinning one way and then the next, this is called a reversible illusion – the most famous of which is the Necker cube.

What makes it possible is the fact that the twirling figure is completely black and offers no sense of depth such as shading or shadows on her body. Both her arms and legs seemingly pass through her body, so a distinct direction of motion is ambiguous.

Some people have a harder time seeing her change direction than others. One way to see the change is to take your direct gaze off of the figure so you can only see her in your peripheral vision.

8. The Dress

You're probably familiar with this infamously confusing dress that first appeared on a Tumbler page last February. The colors of the repeating stripes on the dress are black and blue, but many of us perceive the colors gold and white.

It's this difference in opinion that had the entire internet talking and wondering about this optical illusion. Like the twirling woman in the previous example, this is an example of a reversible image where some people can see both sets of colors while others can only perceive one set.

However, this optical illusion is unique because it's the only known reversible image that deals with colors. Plus, there's a right answer to this illusion whereas there is none for the spinning dancer.

Neurologists are now trying to understand the reason behind this shocking phenomenon. So far, a few papers that explore possible explanations, have been published.

9. Curious cat illusion

Is the cat going up or down the stairs? That's the big question everyone was asking themselves in April when this optical illusion went viral. Unfortunately, there's no set answer because there are compelling arguments for both sides.

To answer the question, people again use their brain's sense of perspective as well as draw from a lifetime of experience with stairs. For example, people examine dark smudges in the grainy image that could be shadows that would position of the cat's body.

Business Insider's Megan Willett, for example, is certain that the cat is going downstairs and you can all about her detailed argument in her post "The cat is definitely going down the stairs — here's how you can tell."

10. Flattened moon illusion

Believe it or not, that's a real photo of the full moon taken in 2012 by an astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS). This is a different type of optical illusion in that what you see is not generated by tricking the brain. Rather, it's a trick of the light that is reaching astronauts' eyes (and camera).

When the moon and the ISS are on opposite sides of the Earth, the sunlight that bounces off of the moon and heads toward the ISS must first travel through Earth's atmosphere. During its journey, the light interacts with particles in the atmosphere that bend the light, similar to how water distorts light and why objects underwater look larger.

But light from the top-half of the moon travels through less atmosphere than the bottom half, which is physically bent upward to reach astronauts' eyes and is why the moon appears squashed from the bottom-up.

CHECK OUT: Shocking photos of the flying 'Devil Ray' fish that completely mystify scientists

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The mastermind behind the world's largest online narcotics emporium has been sentenced to life in prison without parole in a case that could set new legal precedents. 

Judge Katherine Forrest noted the case against Ross Ulbricht, 31, was "unprecedented" though she did say to him, “You are no better a person than any other drug dealer." 

Forrest also emphasized that anyone who intended to fill Ulbricht's shoes and continue the Silk Road operation should know their actions will be met with "extremely serious" consequences.

There were two reasons this case was unprecedented:

• It's the first time the government used the term "money laundering" to include digital currency.
• It was one of the first times an individual was charged for building a website. The trial could open the door to criminal liability for web hosts, who are supposed to be protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act. 

The challenge for the prosecution was to prove that Ulbricht was in fact Dread Pirates Roberts — the person who was running the black market e-commerce site Silk Road when the FBI shut it down in 2013.

Throughout the trial, the unprecedented question of how far the government may go to uncover internet users' identities gave the defense a potential advantage. The FBI, the defense argued, infiltrated Silk Road's servers in a warrantless hack, which was tantamount to an illegal search. For its part, the prosecution claimed they simply had a "lucky break" when an error in the Silk Road page leaked the IP address linking Silk Road servers back to Ubricht.

Because all Silk Road transactions were made anonymously using Bitcoin, the government also expanded the statute of money laundering to include digital currency for the first time. In witness testimony, Homeland Security agent Jared Deryeghiayan noted that Silk Road gave vendors the option of selling their bitcoins for cold hard cash — a liquidation process the prosecution described as laundering.

As a result, the judge also ordered during sentencing that Ulbricht forfeit $184 million dollars. The government estimated that Silk Road made a profit of almost $200 million, and over $1.2 billion in illegal drug transactions were made before the site was shut down in 2013. 

Ulbricht's defense, who objected to the use of the term "money laundering," tried to get out of the laundering charges last year by claiming that Bitcoin is not real money. The judge didn't buy it, however, ruling that "Bitcoins carry value — that is their purpose and function — and act as a medium of exchange." 

Ulbricht's supporters have expressed fears that his conviction could open the door to criminal liability for web hosts, thereby curbing online freedom of speech. Ulbricht's family has said that Ulbricht should be protected under the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects ISPs from liability for the user content they host in order "to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the internet ... unfettered by Federal or State regulation."

Ulbricht was convicted in February of all seven counts including trafficking drugs on the internet, narcotics-trafficking conspiracy, running a continuing criminal enterprise, computer-hacking conspiracy, and money-laundering conspiracy.

While Ulbricht's defense attorney, Joshua Dratel, never denied that Ulbricht had founded Silk Road, he argued that Ulbricht left the site at its peak for quite some time and only rejoined right before his arrest.

Dratel repeatedly claimed that somebody else took over the site after Ulbricht started and expanded it into the massive narcotics emporium it became. However, the defense struggled throughout the trial to come up with alternative "DPRs" — especially as the journal entries and chat logs found on Ulbricht's laptop (in which he refers to Silk Road as a "criminal enterprise") continued to incriminate him.

Throughout the trial, the prosecution, led by Assistant US Attorneys Serrin Turner and Timothy Howard, attempted to characterize Ulbricht as a ruthless drug kingpin who was "motivated by greed and vanity," and whose website resulted in countless addictions and multiple drug-related deaths because of the ease with which it allowed people to purchase drugs.

Parents of drug overdose victims who spoke at Ulbricht's sentencing noted how Silk Road's combination of accessibility and anonymity proved deadly for their sons. One of those sons overdosed on heroin, and the other suffered fatal head trauma after taking a synthetic drug and jumping off a building.

The drugs that ultimately led to their deaths, their parents said, were purchased on Silk Road.

Shortly after his arrest, Ulbricht was accused of hiring assassins to murder six targets that threatened the existence of Silk Road. The prosecution — led by Serrin Turner — alleged that files were collected from Ulbricht's laptop detailing his plans to kill staff members he suspected were stealing money or leaking clients' information.

The prosecution never officially filed the murder-for-hire charges, but Ulbricht was denied bail on the basis of these accusations and the judge stated Friday that there was "ample, unambiguous evidence" based on his own journal entries and the chats he had with hitmen that Ulbricht "paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the murders."

In a heartfelt letter to the judge before his sentencing, Ulbricht wrote that his motivations were more ideological than financial. 

"I created Silk Road because ... I believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren't hurting anyone else," he wrote. 

He reiterated that belief Friday when he addressed the court directly, but added a caveat: "I've changed," he said, "I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path."

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By Dave Michels
The company gains respected cloud integration platform, with eye toward facilitating communications-enabled business processes and applications.

​A free upgrade option that's slated to accompany the launch of Windows 10 will be great for consumers, but it's putting the PC market in a pickle, says IDC.

Exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a "total hero," according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

In an interview with Arabian Business, Wozniak expressed his strong support for Snowden, who is currently living in Russia after leaking thousands of documents to journalists about the technical capabilities of the NSA.

The whistleblower's revelations about the US spy agency's mass surveillance program ignited global debate about the acceptable limits of government snooping — but also drew heavy criticism from some.

Wozniak, though, is effusive about the 31-year-old contractor-turned-fugitive's actions. "He's a hero to me because he gave up his own life to do it... And he was a young person, to give up his life. But he did it for reasons of trying to help the rest of us and not just mess up a company he didn't like."

Wozniak thinks that Snowden is a "total hero ... Not necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional."

Wozniak has previously compared Snowden's actions to those of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. He also feels "a little bit guilty" over the ways that the technologies he has helped build have been used to spy on people, the Guardian reported in 2013.

He also discussed privacy more broadly with Arabian Business, saying there was a massive missed opportunity to hardwire strong encryption tools into operating systems. "At that point in time, if Apple and Microsoft had built [encryption software PGP] into their operating system, it would have been a permanent part of email and all email would have been secure ... Now we're talking about making laws that you cannot use encryption. It's almost like you can't have any secrets anymore. And the modern generation just accepts this as the status quo."

Wozniak views Apple, the company he helped build, as having one of the strongest privacy records. While "companies like Google and Facebook are trying to make money off knowing things about you," the co-founder argues, "Apple is only making good products that you can choose to buy if you want, so I look at Apple as being more the protector of privacy than anyone else."

Along with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, Steve Wozniak helped create Apple in 1976. While Wayne left the company within a year, Wozniak was behind the technical innovation and developments responsible for much of the company's early success, finally leaving the company in 1985.

Wozniak remains an outspoken member of the tech community, often giving interviews on topical issues, ranging from Apple's rumoured development of an electric car (he thinks the automotive industry "is perfect territory for a company like Apple") to the potential threat of AI ("computers are going to take over from humans ... no question").

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Hyundai is the first automaker to offer Android Auto in production vehicles.

By Beth Schultz
Merged company aims to take team collaboration to the next level.