Davemichels

Just days after Apple revealed the new, improved MacBook, Google has unearthed its own refreshed laptop: the new Chromebook Pixel. Incredibly, not only is Google’s new flagship computer a solid upgrade from its predecessor, it looks like it might actually outclass the new MacBook.

The Pixel’s Power

When the original Chromebook Pixel came out in 2013, we marveled at Google's gall in charging over $1,300 for such a modestly powered computer. With only 4GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and dismal five hour battery life, there wasn’t much you could do with a Pixel that you couldn’t do better on a different machine for the same price—or much less.

See also: Chromebook Pixel: Why It Hurts To Slam Beautiful, Unnecessary Hardware

About the only saving graces for the original Pixel were its dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU and its hi-res 2560×1700 pixel screen. Even still, dropping over a grand on the first Pixel seemed like an extravagant waste of money.

The new Pixel, however, fixes three of its predecessor’s biggest flaws: It’s more powerful, more efficient, and much more affordable. Weighing in at a mere 3.3 pounds, the most basic version of the new Pixel doubles the power of the previous iteration with a quad-core i5 and 8GB of RAM.

It’s still stuck with 32GB of internal storage, but instead of five hours of battery life, Google promises that the Pixel 2 will squeeze out a full 12 hours  under normal usage. It’s also got the same 2560×1700 resolution, plus a touchscreen.

All those improvements come with a slashed price of $1,000. Another $300 upgrades the i5 to an i7, and doubles the RAM and SSD capacity to 16GB and 64GB, respectively. That’s a lot of bang for a very reasonable buck.

Ports: Important!

The new MacBook, by comparison, falls short in a few important areas—though it’s not without its edges. Its introductory model kills the Chromebook Pixel with 256GB internal storage, and the two machines pull even with 8GB of RAM.

After that, though,the Pixel wins on every score.

The MacBook's 2304×1440 "retina" display, for instance, falls just a little short of the Pixel. The two-pound Apple machine runs on the dual-core Intel Core M CPU, which is more than half as slow as the quad-core processor inside the new Pixel. Gizmodo calls it “one part laptop” and “one part tablet,” explaining that it makes the MacBook one big step closer to simply being an iPad with a keyboard.

And despite being absolutely stuffed to the gills with batteries, Apple only promises nine hours of battery life on the new MacBook.

Meanwhile, one of the most derided changes Apple made to the new MacBook is another area where the new Pixel wins hands down: ports. As you may have heard, the MacBook has one—one measly USB-C port that supports charging, video output, and flash storage. Unless you buy a dongle adapter, you’re stuck with the one. Meanwhile, the Pixel has two USB-C ports alone, plus another two USB 3.0 ports, and an SD card reader. You’ll be up to your armpits in ports.

Worst of all, the least tricked-out MacBook costs $1,300—the same price as the most powerful Pixel. Another $300 upgrades the Intel Core M processor from 1.1 GHz to 1.2 GHz and doubles the storage to 512GB. But there’s no way to upgrade the RAM at all. With external and cloud storage so cheap and easy to buy, why should three bills provide such a small upgrade?

Amazing as it sounds, Google’s new Chromebook Pixel easily outperforms Apple’s Macbook in just about every way that matters—and it costs less to do it, too. As Google’s Chromium OS finds more developer and app support, Apple may have a tougher time beating back its rivals as the years go on. Especially if it insists on forcing huge performance sacrifices on its computers in the name of simply making them thin. 

Corrected, 4pm PT: A previous version of this story misstated the comparison of MacBook vs. Pixel screen resolution.

Images courtesy of Google

Andreessen Horowitz analyst Benedict Evans has a blog post on why Apple is bothering to sell a $17,000 gold Apple Watch. 

After all, not many people are going to pay $17,000 for a gold Apple Watch. People who would pay $17,000 for a watch are more likely to buy a mechanical watch, which will hold its value longer and is valued based on its mechanical movements. 

Evans' theory is that the $17,000 Apple Watch is a form of marketing for Apple. It creates an air of luxury around the rest of the Apple Watch line, which helps make the watch distinct from other smartwatches on the market.

He likens it to Apple's stores, which act as giant, profitable advertisements for Apple in big shopping areas. 

Here's Evans: 

Apple stores are huge rich-media billboards on every major shopping street in the developed world: I can't think of any other company that has shops as big as that in such premium locations in as many places. Apple retail is a self-funding marketing operation. So too, perhaps, is the gold watch. Apple might only sell a few tens of thousands, but what impression does it create around the $1,000 watch, or the $350 watch? After all, the luxury goods market is full of companies whose most visible products are extremely expensive, but whose revenue really comes from makeup, perfume and accessories. You sell the $50k (or more) couture dress (which may be worn once), but you also sell a lot of lipsticks with the brand halo (and if you think Apple’s margins are high, have a look at the gross margins on perfume). 

Another small point from Evans that has been lost in all the hype around Apple's expensive watch. At $349, the entry-level Apple Watch is the cheapest price Apple has ever offered for a new product.

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NOW WATCH: Here's Tim Cook answering all your questions about the Apple Watch

IDC has scaled back its five-year forecast for the tablet category, while also giving the iPad a dismal market share forecast.

By Tsahi Levent -Levi
Companies tapping into WebRTC's potential are really at the mercy of the primary browser vendors.

The companies launched a new platform that combines the Microsoft Azure Pack with networking devices and servers from Cisco's ACI.

Facebook just made major progress in its plans to build a whole new kind of computer network.

This news should be making Cisco very antsy.

On Tuesday, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure, Jason Taylor, made several announcements at the Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose spelling out how the company could topple Cisco’s dominance of the $23 billion Ethernet switch market. He said:

1. The radical new network switch that Facebook invented called the Wedge for its own networks is now for sale through a company called Accton.

2. Those that buy the switch have a choice of two software vendors, both direct competitors to Cisco: Cumulus and Big Switch. Cumulus is particularly interesting. It is a startup founded by ex-Cisco engineering star, JR Rivers. Big Switch is a player in a new technology called “software defined networking” that takes on Cisco.

In other words, you can buy this alternative switch to Cisco, buy and load software, and plug it in.

3. Facebook has arranged it so anyone can easily create their own Ethernet hardware switches. Only the biggest enterprises would want to do this. But any startup with an idea of how to take on Cisco now has a shortcut through the hardest, most expensive part.

To be specific: Broadcom has entered into an agreement with Facebook’s Open Compute Project, to open source some of its networking chips (a program called OpenNSL).

Broadcom makes the networking chips that just about all the networking hardware vendors use, including Cisco (although Cisco also designs its own custom application-specific integrated circuit, ASIC, chips, a difficult and expensive thing to do). There’s a big trend in the industry to get away from custom ASICs such as the type Cisco makes and toward standard ones, mostly from Broadcom. That’s how Facebook and many others can offer network switches inexpensively.

And Broadcom is standing by to plug these chips into own competitor to Cisco, a switch called StrataXGS.

4. Facebook is also giving away for free the software it invented to run on its Wedge using the Broadcom chips. 

5. AND Facebook is also giving away the software it invented to watch these switches and sends alerts if they experience problems. This is a project called OpenBMC.

With this, Facebook is offering a truckload of technology that lets anyone roll their own networking hardware and, more or less, become their own Cisco.

Of course it’s not that easy

Computer networking engineering takes a special kind of genius. That’s why Acton, Dell, HP and Juniper are also standing by to sell ready-made versions.

All of this is part of the Open Compute Project, spawned by Facebook a few years ago to revolutionize the way computer hardware is designed, built and sold.

It has since become an industry phenom with huge companies involved including Apple, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, BofA, Capital One, Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity.

What does Facebook get out of this?

It gets a community of hundreds of companies and thousands of engineers freely helping it build faster more efficient software to run its data centers.

Taylor says Facebook has saved over $2 billion in the last three years thanks to OPC.

Cisco CEO is nonchalant

Cisco CEO John Chambers says he's not worried that Facebook’s plans will hurt its dominance of the $23 billion Ethernet switch market in any major way.

Cisco calls the switches from Facebook, Cumulous and others "white label," "white box" or "merchant silicon-based switching," networks, which means they use standard chips, mainly from Broadcom.

Cisco CEO John Chambers says Cisco is going to "crush" the kind of thing that Facebook is doing, because Cisco offers more than just network switches. It offers its customers a whole suite of stuff with their networks, such as computer security. It also makes some of the most reliable, best performing hardware on the market.

Cisco has also joined the OCP. It will be interesting to see what Cisco does with the membership and if it contributes any technology to the project.

Chambers is right that customers won’t quickly or lightly ditch their Cisco networks for this kind of thing. But they’ll be watching and experimenting.

SEE ALSO: Cisco CEO — we're going to 'crush' Facebook's networking plans and 'have fun' beating VMware

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NOW WATCH: 'Shark Tank' Investor Daymond John Reveals The Key To A Good Business

Enghouse Interactive, developer of a comprehensive portfolio of unified communications (UC) and contact center solutions, this week introduced PRC 3 to version 9 of its Contact Center: Enterprise (CCE), a highly scalable, flexible omni-channel offering ideally suited for on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.

By Kevin Kieller
Microsoft Lync deserves consideration as a platform for enterprise-grade contact centers.

Sorry, Tim: A study conducted by anti-fraud startup Trustev finds that almost 80% of people with iPhones that can use Apple Pay (the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus) still haven't even tried it yet. 

Naturally, it's still early for Apple Pay, given that only the latest iPhones can support Apple's electronic wallet service. But if one thing was clear from Tuesday's Apple Watch presentation, it's that the geniuses at Cupertino have placed some high hopes on the payment platform — hopes that probably haven't yet been fulfilled, given that CEO Tim Cook didn't mention any specific Apple Pay numbers while on stage, even though the service is now supported by more banks and retailers.

In its study, which surveyed 1000 iPhone owners in the US, Trustev found that 79% of iPhone 6/6+ users just hadn't tried Apple Pay at all. The other 21% still used cash or cards most of the time — 2.1% of people who gave Apple Pay a shot are self-described "super-users," who pay with it 10 or more times a week, but 80% of those adventurous spirits use it three times a week or less. And 30% of those who gave Apple Pay a shot now use it never, according to the study.

"It also points to a broader issue: maybe paying with cards is just not that painful. For years, techies have been pitching e-wallets to consumers, but they don’t seem interested. Even after Apple has launched by far the most elegant version to date, consumer adoption is light,” writes Trustev CEO Pat Phelan in a blog post. 

The people who do use Apple Pay say they use it because it's cool (40%) and because it's convenient (63%), but didn't care about security or the ability to not take your wallet out. That's bad news, because both security and not having to fish around in pockets are both key parts of Apple's sales pitch for using Apple Pay on the Apple Watch. 

This study comes with the usual caveats, insofar as 1,000 iPhones is a small sample set compared against the millions in the wild. And maybe the Apple Watch will change everything, as Apple promises. But it's enough to give some credence to the idea that Apple Pay just isn't catching the world on fire.

One more thing: Those who used Apple Pay the most, per Trustev's study, were middle-aged: Specifically, 35-54, split pretty evenly between men and women. 

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NOW WATCH: Here's Tim Cook Explaining Why Apple Pay Will Change The Way You Buy Everything

Microsoft has been telling us for eons that it is eating Google Apps' lunch, but hasn't backed that up with cold, hard figures.

Now, all of a sudden, sources all over the tech industry are noticing that Office 365 is everywhere.

And it's all because of one thing: Microsoft is telling customers to move their email to Microsoft's cloud instead of buying another Exchange server and hosting email in their own data centers, says Todd McKinnon, co-founder and CEO of Okta.

Office 365 usage has 'skyrocketed'

Take Okta, for example. Okta offers a security service that helps companies keep track of employee passwords and accounts to all the cloud services the enterprise uses.

It has over 2,000 customers tracking 4 million users, cofounder and CEO Todd McKinnon tells us.

"Over the last six to nine months, Office 365 usage has skyrocketed," he told us. "We see it on our network. We see usage of applications."

Up until last October, Google Apps was more popular, he said, and Salesforce and Box were the most popular apps used at work.

That's all changed. "Office 365 hasn’t quite taken over Salesforce.com yet, but it probably will in the next few months," he says.

This is happening because Microsoft "is going around to every organization in the world and saying, 'hey, you know your email, you're on-premise Exchange server? You need to move that to the cloud. And here's financial incentives to do that." (Here's some details on how Microsoft is structuring those financial incentives.)

"It's like a tidal wave," McKinnon says. "Every company is looking to solve identity and mobility challenges because Microsoft is telling them to move email to the cloud."

Others see Office 365 everywhere, too

Okta is not alone in telling us this. Security service BetterCloud, which was 100% focused on security tools for Google Apps, just launched an Office 365 beta two weeks ago because it was getting so many inquiries from companies asking it for Office 365, a spokesperson told Business Insider.

Ditto for BitGlass, which also offers security services for Google Apps, Office 365 and Salesforce. In a survey of 81,000 users conducted a year ago, it found that Google Apps was far more popular, accounting for 16% of user's email, compared to Office 365 at not quite 8%.

In a survey it plans to release next week, the company revealed to Business Insider that Office 365 has now overtaken Google Apps in terms of usage.

"Office 365 has surged ahead of Google in the enterprise and is dominating future enterprise deployment plans (29%) versus Google Apps (13%)," a spokesperson told us.

To be sure, Office 365 is not taking market share away from Google Apps, but from old-school email software, mostly Microsoft Exchange.

Whereas about one-quarter of users Bitglass surveyed last year had email in the cloud, 42% of them are using cloud email this year.

Why is Microsoft winning? Workers like the Outlook email program, and they get that same Outlook look and feel with Office 365, McKinnon says.

SEE ALSO: Satya Nadella is cleaning up Microsoft's 'dirty little secret'

SEE ALSO:  15 amazing features in Google Apps you probably don't know about

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Apple, the world's most valuable company, will be calculated in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index starting later this month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The move has been a long time…

Google's product chief Sundar Pichai made waves earlier this week when he announced that Google is getting into the wireless industry.

It will become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which buys wireless space from big carriers like AT&T, then resells it to customers. The network is slated to launch in coming weeks, and one big goal is to let users switch between cellular and local wi-fi networks more easily.

But there's a big gotcha, according to the Wall Street Journal: It will only work on one phone.

Specifically, the Google Nexus 6, which came out last October. It's manufactured by Motorola, the wireless handset maker that Google bought in 2012 then sold last year to Lenovo.

So this does indeed look like a "small-scale" experiment, like Pichai promised.

But Google often does this. The Nexus phones themselves are there mainly to demonstrate Google's vision of an ideal Android phone, running the latest version of Android and all of Google's chosen apps. 

Similarly, Google launched its super-fast internet access service, which uses fiber optic cable to the home, in Kansas City, Kansas, then has gradually expandd it to the bigger KC in Missouri, plus Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah.

 

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NOW WATCH: Why there are 3 different ways to say 'love' in China

Google is delaying plans to encrypt all new Android phones by default, Ars Technica reports, because the technical demands of encryption are crippling people's devices.

Encryption slowed down some phones by 50% or more, speed tests show. 

In September 2014, Google — along with Apple — said that it planned to encrypt all new devices sold with its mobile OS by default. This means that unless a customer opted out, it would be impossible for anyone to gain access to their device without the passcode, including law enforcement (or Google itself).

This hardened stance on encryption from tech companies came after repeated revelations about the NSA, GCHQ and other government spy agencies snooping on ordinary citizens' data.

Default encryption has infuriated authorities. One US cop said that the iPhone would become "the phone of choice for the paedophile" because law enforcement wouldn't be able to access its contents. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has floated the idea of banning strong encryption altogether — though the proposal has been slammed by critics as technically unworkable.

Apple rolled out default-on encryption in iOS 8 back in September. Google's Android Lollipop system was first released in November — but because the phone manufacturers, rather than Google itself, are responsible for pushing out the update, it can take months for a new version of the OS to reach the majority of consumers.

But as Ars Technica reports, Lollipop smartphones are now finally coming to the market, and many do not have default-on encryption. So what's the reason? The devices couldn't actually handle it.

Speed tests show that even Google's flagship phone, the Google Nexus 6, suffers serious slowdown when encryption is turned on. A "random write" test measuring writing data to memory showed that the Nexus 6 performed more than twice as fast with encryption switched off — 2.85MB per second as compared with 1.41 per second with it on. The difference was even more striking in a "sequential read" test to measure memory reading speeds. An unecrypted device achieved 131.65MB/s; the encrypted version managed just 25.36MB/s. That's a third of even the Nexus 5, the previous model, which came in at 76.29MB/s.

As such, Google is now rowing back on its encryption stance. Its guidelines now say that full-disk encryption is "very strongly recommended" on devices, rather than the necessary requirement promised. Users can still encrypt their devices (even if it slows them down), but it won't happen by default.

Google says it still intends to force it in "future versions of Android".

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NOW WATCH: Police are pleading with Google to ditch a feature in its Waze app that could help terrorists

Users of Google's Inbox email system will see some similarities, as both draw from Google's Material Design language.

Android for Work is the latest buzzword among the halls of Google these days, at least among the "For Work" team at Google building products for businesses.

On Wednesday, Google made yet another announcement: that it has added a bunch of Android for Work features to its paid version of Google Apps as well as its paid version of its cloud service, Google Drive for Work.

These features will help businesses manage how employees access sensitive data or apps on their smartphones, part of a trend called "mobile device management" (MDM).

Even though Google calls this Android for Work, the good news is that, most of these features cover both Android and iOS devices.

This means that if your company uses Google Apps, your IT department can set up some controls to protect your work email and documents, even if you own your own phone and just use it occasionally for work.

The IT department, for instance, can tell employees to create a separate "work" login on their phones and this will be used to access the company email and other Google Apps documents. Even if IT doesn't mandate a separate work profile, they can encrypt work email and documents, and wipe the device remotely of that stuff if the device is ever lost or stolen.

The work profile can also be set up to show off your company's own corporate app store, if your company has set that up. Google calls this feature Google Play for Work. It allows companies to show which apps they have licensed for employees. When you log into your company app store, you see only the apps you are approved to use.

Google announced most of these Android for Work features last week, as well as a bunch of partners that have made their enterprise apps work with this new secure version of Android.

But by making Android for Work part of Google Apps and bundling in MDM, Google is making both Android and Google Apps a better deal for businesses.

Many large companies already have sophisticated MDM apps from companies like IBM, SAP, BlackBerry, or specialty MDM providers like MobileIron or Good Technology. But small to mid-sized companies – the businesses most likely to be using Google Apps – often have no MDM protection at all. So this is a smart move by Google to bring them into the fold, while also making Apps and Android safer and more attractive to businesses of all sizes.

SEE ALSO: Satya Nadella is cleaning up Microsoft's 'dirty little secret'

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NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

By Dave Michels
Collaboration companies will share their approaches to real-time communications, UC federation, presence, and more at the Enterprise Connect 2015 Innovation Showcase.

Get ready to learn how to pronounce a new Chinese brand name: Huawei.

The Chinese telecom firm had a surprise hit at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week with its stylish Huawei Watch. And that looks like only the beginning of a much bigger push to entrench itself in popular consciousness as a maker of consumer smartwatches and smartphones via "traditional advertising, online promotion and sports team sponsorships," as its U.S. spokesman told Reuters.

See also: Huawei Just Made The Best-Looking Android Wear Smartwatch Yet

On top of that, Kevin Yang of iSuppli’s China Research division claims (via CNET) that Google has tapped Huawei to make the next iteration of its Nexus smartphone line. If true—and if the resulting phone is a good one—that could give the company significant cred with tech-savvy shoppers.

In other words, there's suddenly a lot going on with Huawei. (Oh, and that pronunciation? Try WAH-way.)

Who Is Huawei?

Though the buzzy Huawei Watch may be the first time U.S. consumers have heard of the company, Huawei has produced telecom equipment in China since the late 1980s. Founded in 1987 by a former engineer in the People's Liberation Army, the company was born of a Chinese government initiative to build up domestic technological infrastructure.

Much of Huawei’s early business centered on building phone and Internet infrastructure throughout the nation, making it a rough analogue to Cisco. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Huawei had started expanding operations into other territories, supplying technology for new mobile networks throughout Asia, Europe, and Australia.

In 2009, Huawei unveiled its first Android smartphone. Since then it’s built an impressive lineup of low- to mid-tier Android and Windows Phone handsets, although its efforts to gain a foothold in the U.S. market haven't gotten it very far yet.

A Little Trouble From Big China

The company has faced other headwinds, particularly involving repeated—though never clearly proven—charges involving the security of its telecom equipment. In 2012, the House Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Huawei of providing the Chinese army's cyberwarfare unit access to its networking equipment.

Huawei denied those assertions, although suspicion that the company maintains surreptitious connections to the Chinese government continues to dog its U.S. business efforts. Ren even reportedly said in 2013 that Huawei planned to exit the U.S. market rather than be stuck "in the middle of U.S-China relations."

But that's all in the past. A White House review of allegations against the company found no clear evidence that Huawei had spied for China, and the company later backtracked on its threat to leave the U.S.

On a separate front, Huawei has run into  intellectual property issues. Last year T-Mobile took Huawei to court over allegations that the Chinese company had stolen its cell phone testing technology. Prior to that, it's been hit with similar IP lawsuits from the likes of Motorola and Cisco, to name a few.

Watch Out

Despite its turbulent relationship with the U.S., Huawei's recently revealed smartwatch could mark a turning point for the company. The Huawei Watch looks like a premium device and resembles nothing else on the market, although it's still not clear how well it works or how long its battery will last.

The Apple Watch is on its way this April, and it’s a beautiful piece of tech. The Huawei Watch, meanwhile, could give Apple a run for its money in terms of design and style. It boasts a popular round-face design, sapphire display, premium metal body construction, and a heart rate monitor. In short, the Huawei Watch looks like it’ll do everything the Apple Watch will do—just for Android.

This is the first device to come out of Huawei that's made anyone look twice at the company. If it's priced reasonably and can actually make good on its promises, the Watch could change Huawei’s reputation as a maker of less-than-impressive devices. And it could give Google a shiny new weapon in the coming wearable war against Apple.

All in all, whether it’s behind the next Nexus or not, you’d better learn how to pronounce “Huawei.” You’ll be saying it a lot more pretty soon.

Photos and logo courtesy of Huawei

Matt Burns / TechCrunch:
Acer launches new CXI Chromebox with fourth-gen Intel Core i3, up to 8GB RAM, 4k monitor support, $350 for 4GB RAM, $400 for 8GB  —  Acer Outs A Pricey Chromebox With 8GB Of RAM, 4k Monitor Support  —  There are not many options for computers running the Chrome OS in desktop form.

Mike Ey, a project designer working on Microsoft’s futuristic Hololens augmented reality headset, was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Saturday morning. He was 30.

According to Seattle police speaking to local station Kiro TV (via Kotaku), Ey was driving on the highway when he was rear-ended by a speeding car traveling “over 100 miles an hour on State Route 520.”

The driver of the speeding car, Robert Malsch, tried to escape the ensuing wreckage, but Redmond police managed to track and catch him with a police dog. Malsch currently faces charges of vehicular homicide and felony hit and run; a King County judge on Monday ordered he be held on $100,000 bail.

Friends of Ey called the late software engineer “tremendous” and “reliable”; his girlfriend, Kelley Piering, told Kiro TV that the HoloLens project he was working on was “the coolest thing ever.”

“It’s looking at the future while holding the present,” she said. “Mike said it wasn’t perfect but it was going to be one day.”

According to his Facebook page, Ey joined Microsoft as a software engineer in June 2013. He previously studied game design and development at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT); he graduated from there in 2010. 

Our thoughts and condolences go out to Ey’s family and friends during this difficult time.

SEE ALSO: I just tried Microsoft's remarkable holographic headset — here's what it's like

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Leonard Nimoy passed away February 27, but his role as Spock in the beloved "Star Trek" TV series and movies have inspired, and will continue to inspire many people to pursue science.

Nimoy received a public outreach award for the role in 2010 from the Space Foundation.

Nimoy appeared on singer Pharrell William's show ARTST TLK back in 2013 to talk about how Star Trek has stirred people's curiosity about science.

Nimoy said one of his favorite things about his character Spock was how the role inspired many to pursue careers in science.

"One of the greatest satisfactions with being involved with Star Trek and the Spock character is the feedback I get from a lot of people who say 'I went into the sciences because of you and Spock and Star Trek,'" Nimoy said.

Nimoy said he thinks the show was so influential because it sparked people's imagination.

"It was intriguing for young people, it opened up minds for young people," Nimoy said. "And that's very rewarding, that's the greatest feedback."

Nimoy and Williams also had a bonding moment over their shared love for the famous astronomer and science educator Carl Sagan. Nimoy admits that he failed high school chemistry, and Williams said he wasn't interested in science at all either until reading Carl Sagan's science fiction novel "Contact."

Sagan also hosted the original Cosmos TV series — a show that explains the scientific wonders of the universe for a general audience.

"Sagan is a great teacher," Nimoy said. "Sagan leads you into the heart of mysteries and gives you a chance to get inside of it and be surrounded by it."

You can watch the full conversation between Nimoy and Williams below:

SEE ALSO: Scientists Race To Prove The Existence Of 'Star Trek' Antimatter

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NOW WATCH: Neil deGrasse Tyson Tells Us Why 'Star Trek' Is So Much Better Than 'Star Wars'

During a visit to Silicon Valley earlier this month, President Obama described himself as “a strong believer in strong encryption.” Some have criticized the president for equivocating on the issue, but…

Most people know John Thompson as the chairman of Microsoft and iconic decade-long former CEO of Symantec.

He also spent 28 years with IBM, rising from salesperson to a top executive, in charge of IBM Americas.

While that seems like a career enough for any human, it's not for Thompson. He's still going strong as the CEO of a fast-growing San Jose, California, startup called Virtual Instruments.

What do all of those jobs have in common? Travel. And lots of it.

Thompson's schedule is downright nuts, he told us in an interview.

In a two-week period in February, he will travel from the Bay Area to Detroit to Toronto back to the Bay Area and then to New York, London and to Columbus, Ohio with his wife, "to see our granddaughter in her first play." Then back to the Bay Are for one night, and then off to Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong for ten days. And in between, he'll romp off to Seattle for a Microsoft board meeting.

Does he ever suffer jet lag?

Nope. "Jet lag is psychological," he tells us, "If you don’t think you’re gonna have jet lag, you won’t."

That said, he does have a few strategies for avoiding it. There's the classic one: "live on local time," he says.

The key tip to that is to sleep on the plane before you arrive.

"Let’s just take my trip to Europe next week. I get on the plane, I take two Excedrin PM, and I go to sleep. And I wake up and it’s typically 10:30, 11 o'clock in the morning in London, and I work all day. You don’t take a nap, you take a shower, you go to work and you work all day, and you run your body on local time."

The other tip is also essential. "At some point over the course of about 2 or 3 weeks, you do need to kind of catch up," he says. So plan on taking your nap and/or going to bed early for a night or two every few weeks.

And the best tip of them all: own your own plane.

Thompson, who was one of the highest paid tech execs in the industry during the heyday of Symantec, does own a plane.

But, interestingly enough, he doesn't tend to use for the trips that can cause jet lag, he says.

"When I travel internationally I take commercial flights. I often take commercial flights here in the US. I don’t use my plane for every trip that I take, it depends upon how many stops that I’m making, and that kind of stuff. If it’s a simple go to New York and back, a commercial flight is just as fine."

SEE ALSO: Microsoft chairman John Thompson tells us about his insanely fabulous life and his $100 million startup

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NOW WATCH: The science behind why technology is so addictive

Aruba CEO Dominic Orr will take over HP's networking business.

By Michelle Burbick
Respoke helps developers more easily add secure communications to Web and mobile applications.

At MWC 2015, the tech giant has confirmed plans to enter the network operator industry.

Ikea announced Sunday at Mobile World Congress it is introducing its first furniture line that offers wireless charging for phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

Ikea’s furniture, which it calls its “Home Smart” line, will integrate the popular Qi wireless charging technology into special “charging pads” on the furniture. People will then be able to buy and assemble the furniture and leave their Qi-supported devices on those pads for a quick battery charge. 

Smartphones that don’t support Qi will be incompatible with this furniture. The Qi wireless charging technology is controlled by the Wireless Power Consortium, which boasts 200-plus members including Samsung, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, HTC, Verizon Wireless, and others.

More than 80 different smartphones offer support for Qi, which is currently the most used wireless charging standard in the world. It works thanks to embedded magnetic coils that generate a small electromagnetic field — smartphones and tablets that support Qi then convert this field into energy to replenish the device’s battery.

Ikea says it will launch this new furniture line, which will include desks, lamps and bedside tables, in North America and Europe in April. 

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When Google first announced its ambitions to use high-altitude balloons to beam internet to the most remote parts of the world, it seemed like a pie-in-the-sky kind of idea. 

About four years later, Project Loon is starting to look a lot less crazy. 

On Monday, the company's "floating cell towers in the sky" are capable of staying aloft up to six months and Google envisions its efforts eventually turning into a business that could make tens of billions of revenue dollars a year, according to The Verge's Ben Popper. 

Google will partner with telecommunications companies, beaming their LTE services to places they don't usually reach, via the balloons. That saves the companies from having to build out their own infrastructure like cell towers or fiber optic cables to reach remote areas.

Google has already run tests with several different telcos — Vodafone in New Zealand, Telstra in Australia, and Telefonica in Latin America — and is working on commercial deals with other new network operators.

Google will split the revenue from any new customers with the telecommunications company providing the LTE spectrum. 

Here's how Project Loon lead Mike Cassidy describes it to The Verge:

"Think about it — with 4.5 billion people without internet access, take 5 percent; you’re talking 250 million people," he says. If those people pay just a small portion of their monthly income, say $5 a piece, "you’re going to be in a billion dollars a month in revenue, tens of billions a year in revenue. So it’s good business, too."

Right now, each of Google's balloons cost tens of thousands of dollars to fly, but as Google pushes its research forward, that price will likely go down. Google believes Project Loon could be an enormous business — even bigger than YouTube, which currently pulls in about $4 billion in revenue per year.

Cassidy also pointed out that developed regions could be interested in Project Loon's services, too: Google met with Japanese officials interested in the project's potential for providing Internet service if infrastructure was ever compromised due to another typhoon. 

Although many people consider Google X (the branch of Google sprouting projects like smart contacts, self-driving cars, and Project Loon) as just a research lab for moonshot ideas, Cassidy made sure to dismiss that idea. 

"Very early on in the project analysis it has to have a viable business model," he told Popper, "And they are tough on the business model." 

Read the whole Verge piece here. 

Project Loon stands to be an enormous business for Google. (YouTube currently pulls in about $4 billion in revenue per year.) 

SEE ALSO: Google just paid $25 million to buy the entire '.app' web domain

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NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

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