Davemichels

In this Industry Buzz podcast, Dave Michels moderates the UCStrategies version of the "Yes or No?" game. Dave reads a unified communications-related statement and calls on UC Experts to offer opinions on whether the statement is accurate or not. Participating this week are Experts Michael Finneran, Marty Parker, Steve Leaden, Art Rosenberg, Kevin Kieller, Roberta Fox, and Martin Steinmann.

VMware's financial results were better than expected and CEO touts the company's product lineup.

If security is the first, second and third priority for your business, then does a Vancouver startup have a collaboration suite for you.

Witkit, founded three years ago by serial entrepreneur Sean Merat, aims to offer multiple enterprise software functions—messaging, groups, file-sharing, etc.—under one roof. Most important, it plans to do so securely, by encrypting your data so that neither the company nor anyone else can read it.

Why a suite? Merat said that in the course of running prior companies, he felt overwhelmed by the number of disparate solutions for work collaboration. 

"There were too many solutions," he said in an interview with ReadWrite. "Stuff like Hipchat, Dropbox, Evernote.... Individually they're all great, but the problem becomes when you're trying to juggle too many things." So together with two co-founders, Sohrab Merat and Ma'en Haq, Merat started Witkit.

Security First

This concept isn't brand new—Huddle, for instance, is also based on an all-in-one functionality. Where Witkit plans to make a name for itself is security—in particular, by encrypting all data on the user end (using a technique the company too-cutely calls "Witcrypt") and storing it on the Witkit server in protected fashion. 

What that means, a Merat explained in a Witkit press release (no link), is this:

Witcrypt technology ensures that the encryption and decryption of user data is only done on user devices locally. All data that is sent to the Witkit servers is fully encrypted and can only be decrypted by the user's WitCrypt passphrase.

In his interview with ReadWrite, Merat argued that end-to-end encryption for all functions of a work suite—file sharing, group discussions, calendars, cloud storage, instant messaging, etc.—is Witkit's main selling point. With all data encrypted, he said, a company or organization could have online group discussions with members from outside that company as well as internal discussion channels without worrying about compromising security. Witkit calls these virtual discussion spaces "kits."

Locked In A Box

Of course, the drawback of any suite like this one is that you have to be happy with all the components. If you like Witkit's security and calendar but aren't crazy about its messaging, you're still stuck with it. And at this point, it's impossible to say how Witkit's individual services stack up.

But Navid Soofi, the founder and president of Qube Film studios in Vancouver, has been using Witkit in a beta form for several months. The security aspect of it has been the primary allure.

"Cyber security has been a very prominent concern in my industry the past few months," Soofi said in an email interview, making an obvious allusion to the major Sony hack in December. He continued:

My team and I have been actively looking for secure ways to sync files, records, documents and conversations. I can confidently say that Witkit fitted the bill perfectly. Our IT team has gone through the security code that has been made public by Witkit and reassured me that our conversations, contracts and footage would be as secure as keeping everything offline.

Merat said Witkit is in the process of having its code, which it has also posted on Github for public perusal, audited by another company for any vulnerabilities. Witkit has no definite plans for making money quite yet. Right now, all the features and storage will be free. 

"We can confidently say that we're not going to charge for what we're offering today," Merat said. "The base functionality up to 50GB will always be free." He said the company would wait to develop a strong user base and develop revenue streams based on their feedback. Witkit has received $5 million in funding so far. 

Lead photo by Anonymous Account; photo of Sean Mirat courtesy of Witkit

You might remember that it took Apple to revolutionize the relationship between handset manufacturers and the mobile service providers. Perhaps it is Google--more than T-Mobile US or Sprint--that now will disrupt the U.S. mobile market.

The popular communication tool for company teams goes behind the firewall.

is not content to let Excel define the company's reputation among the world's data analysts. That's the message the company sent on Tuesday when it announced that its PowerBI product is…

By Dave Michels
Steve Kokinos, CEO of UCaaS innovator Thinking Phone Networks, gives us the lowdown on where the company is today and where it's headed.

Eat 'em while they're hot! (Okay, they are never hot.)

A new investigation shows the scale of surveillance on U.S. highways is more extensive than many previously imagined, thanks to a license plate database that allows federal and local law enforcement to watch cars…

By Andrew Prokop
An inside look at how a systems integrator uses the enterprise communications products and services it sells

If former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) officially enters the 2016 White House race, he probably won't be able to use the website JebBushForPresident.com. 

The domain is owned by CJ Phillips and Charlie Rainwater, a self-described "bear couple" from Oregon who told Business Insider they plan to use the site "as a platform to educate our friends and family about political impact to LGBT families." 

"We're a couple of high tech bears who both work in the microprocessor design industry, yes you could say we're just a couple of nerds," the two men explain on their personal home page.

In an email, Phillips said they purchased JebBushForPresident.com in 2008. 

"Early tentative plans were to essentially blog about how we felt about various legislation happening nationally and worldwide. For example, at the time Texas legislature was either planning to pass or had already passed a bill that made the legal documents created by any couple in a relationship that mimicked marriage null and void," Phillips explained. "We didn't see LGBT equality getting any better, and we felt said rights would more than likely still be in the spotlight in the run up for the next several election cycles. Jeb's name was already being bandied about in the news as a potential presidential candidate, and we felt sure he'd be running in a future election."

Last month, Bush launched a leadership PAC and said he plans to "actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States."

If Bush does decide to move forward with a campaign, gay issues could be a thorny subject for him. Early on in his political career, Bush expressed staunch opposition to gay rights and used the term "sodomy" when discussing legal protections for the community. Bush has moderated his tone in the leadup to his potential presidential bid. 

A spokeswoman for Bush did not respond to an email from Business Insider asking if he has made any attempt to purchase JebBushForPresident.com or if he had any comment on Phillips and Rainwater's plans for the site.

According to Phillips, the couple has received multiple offers from interested parties looking to buy the domain.

"We've had a couple of offers. One person asked flat out why a gay couple would have a candidate centric domain," he said, adding, "The latest was someone saying they wanted to buy the domain as a birthday present for a friend, awwww!"

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Pixelapse will remain a standalone product as a ​migration plan to the core Dropbox platform is hatched out.

Reuters / Benoit Tessier

Bitcoin is set for a big credibility boost.

On Monday, the bitcoin startup Coinbase is set to open the first regulated bitcoin exchange based in the U.S., in a move that industry observers have long said could increase trust in the digital currency among consumers and perhaps bring more stability to the price of each unit of bitcoin.

The launch comes a few days after the Winklevoss twins, of Facebook notoriety, announced plans for their own U.S. exchange. Last week Coinbase announced a $75 million investment from investors including the New York Stock Exchange and Spanish bank BBVA.

The exchange will be open to individuals and institutional investors in the two dozen or so states in which Coinbase has received regulatory approval. Coinbase will take a 0.25 percent cut of each transaction, according to the Wall Street Journal. Coinbase has previously offered a broker-like service that allows individuals to buy, sell and store bitcoin. It also sells a payment processing service that allows merchants to accept bitcoin from their customers.

While supporters believe the bitcoin payment network has the potential to revolutionize industries from payment processing to remittance, the lack of a regulated U.S. exchange has limited its appeal. Up to now, the biggest bitcoin exchanges have operated outside of the U.S., in countries like China, Japan and Slovenia. Two of the biggest exchanges have suffered large breaches, including the now defunct Mt. Gox which saw hundreds of millions of dollars in customers’ bitcoin go missing along the way.

These events, combined with the fact that bitcoin moves through a peer-to-peer computer network outside of government control, have scared away some would-be investors. The hope is that a regulated U.S. exchange, operated by a well-capitalized company with a wide range of respected financial backers, will be more secure and can attract a new set of consumers to bitcoin. That, in turn, could increase market liquidity and potentially help stabilize the price of bitcoin, which had fallen about 75 percent in the last year as of last week. Bitcoin backers acknowledge that the volatility in bitcoin’s value needs to decrease if bitcoin is going to live up to its hype.

I've been done with Gold Systems for just over a year now.  The one year aniversary passed, and I thought that maybe it was time to tell the story, but really I've been looking forward much more than backwards so I'm going to save it a while longer.  I will say that when I do look back, I think mostly about the great people who worked at Gold Systems.  I've started a new company and not a day goes by where I don't think of the people I've worked with, the lessons I've learned and I'm reminded how much they helped me over the years.

Late last year I was asked to join a new venture firm as an operating partner.  The founders were people I had known for years and I have great respect for them, and I wanted to be a part of whatever they were doing.  They were the founders of a great company in Longmont, Colorado so it was natural that we would look for space for the new venture in Longmont.  One of our first meetings was with the Longmont City Manager, the Assistant City Manager and members of the Longmont Area Economic Council.  I was so impressed by how supportive everyone was and how much they were committed to making Longmont a great place for people and businesses.  As I've spent time in Longmont I've realized it is a community of wonderful people and they've quickly adopted me and become friends.

While exploring the creation of an accelerator to compliment the venture firm, I realized that there was an even greater need in Longmont.  While Boulder, Denver and Fort Collins have many places for entrepreneurs and startups to work and connect with mentors and like-minded people, Longmont didn't have a single coworking space.  There is TinkerMill, which is the largest maker space in Colorado, but there wasn't a single coworking facility.  That's just changed.

In January we opened the doors to Launch Longmont.  It's a place for entrepreneurs and startups to meet and work together, and to make the random connections that don't happen when you're working out of the spare bedroom at home.  Members can get a desk or a seat on a monthly basis with no long term commitments, and as we build out the space on the second floor they will even be able to get small suites.  Ultimately success for Launch Longmont is that these members will grow out of the space, become successful in the Longmont community and then return as mentors and speakers to help the next generation of startups.

Soon after starting Launch Longmont, I realized that I am not just helping startups, but I am in a startup myself.  I'll be sharing some of the new lessons learned, and talking about the people who have helped to make it happen over on the Launch Longmont blog, and I'll also be posting here about the journey.

If you are an experienced entrepreneur or business expert, you can help me out by visiting and getting involved as a mentor or speaker.  If you are a new entrepreneur, or you just want to get out of the garage and join a community of entrepreneurs you should also check us out.  Email me at terry@launchlongmont.com.  Thanks!

 

Microsoft already has a huge presence in most companies' server rooms. And it hopes to keep it that way or at least, persuade those companies running Windows Server, SQL Server et al…

Microsoft revealed a new large format touch-sensitive device, intended for groups working together remotely or in the same conference room, called Surface Hub. This will run on Windows 10, and will…

The Android versus iOS rivalry has been ongoing for nearly 10 years.

As of Q3 2014, Android owned more than 80% of the smartphone market around the world, but that's split between the dozens of different companies that produce Android phones. About 12% of devices around the world run on iOS, but that money goes straight back to Apple.

There's no clear answer as to which one is winning, but a few mobile executives recently provided some insight to The Information as to how developers view the mobile ecosystem.

Tom Moss, CEO and co-founder of a service called Nextbit that helps you sync data between Android devices, said he doesn't believe Android is offering anything different that makes it more appealing than iOS.

Moss was one of Google's earliest Android employees, and he helped build the business development and strategic partnership division of Android back in 2007. 

"I think right now Android doesn't solve any different problems for users than Apple does," Moss said during The Information's Next Phase of Android event in San Francisco. "And Apple has a better brand. As long as the platforms don't solve any new and different problems, I don't think anything will change the status quo."

Moss also acknowledged that Android is noticeably absent from the enterprise space, which is dominated by Apple and Microsoft.

"Google could do a hell of a lot better," Moss said.  "I don't think it's going to get better for them. Android for Work doesn't solve the right issues yet. But at least it's a statement to CIOs and IT departments that Google actually cares." 

Android for Work is a new type of Android software designed to be deployed in corporate environments. It lets you set up a dedicated work profile and switch between work and personal modes on a single device. It's not available yet, but Google has a preview page on the Android website detailing all of its features. 

But that's only part of the problem, according to Moss, circling back to his comment about branding from earlier.

"It's a second-order problem," Moss said. "If you give an employee the option to have an iPhone or Android phone, the first-order problem is that most of them are going to select iPhones." 

SEE ALSO: 11 Things You Can Do With Samsung's Newest Tablet That You Can't Do With The iPad

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NYSE

Cloud storage and collaboration company Box debuted for trading as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange this morning, capping a 10-month process during which the offering was delayed at least twice.

Box shares closed at $23.15 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up more than 65 percent from the $14 price it announced late Thursday. The shares opened for trading at $20.20 and rose during the session to as high as $24.73. The closing price gave it a market capitalization just shy of $2.8 billion. Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan led the process.

Box raised $175 million in the offering, which initially valued the firm at $1.7 billion. Given the rise in its share price, it might have raised more by pricing higher. In an interview with Re/code at the NYSE in New York, CEO and founder Aaron Levie said he was satisfied with the IPO process and with the amount of capital raised.

“The market is a very interesting place, and we’re happy with how it turned out,” he said. “There’s not a single regret.”

On top of the capital raised in today’s offering, Box still has most of the cash from a $150 million investment it raised in July from the private equity firm TPG and hedge fund Coatue Management “From a capital standpoint we feel like we’re in a very strong position,” Levie said.

Box’s next act as a public company will be to close its 2015 fiscal year on Jan. 31. It will report quarterly and annual results sometime in early March.

Box’s largest shareholder is the venture capital fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which led its $1.5 million A-round in 2006, and after the offering will own a stake in the company of more than 19 percent, worth more than $540 million at Friday’s price late in the trading session. Levie owns 3.4 percent of the shares, a stake worth nearly $97 million.

Other notable shareholders include U.S. Venture Partners with a 10 percent stake, Coatue Management with an eight percent stake, and the private equity firm General Atlantic, which owns about seven percent.

On Twitter Levie thanked Box’s customers and employees.

He also received congratulatory tweets from numerous tech execs including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Here’s Levie talking about the IPO on CNBC.

The price of bitcoin has been declining, dropping as low as $173 last Wednesday, according to stats from CoinDesk.

At the time of publication, the volatile cryptocurrency was back up to about $230.

With the price of bitcoin sinking, are the limited number of companies that were accepting bitcoin as a form of payment going to stop taking bitcoin? Three major companies that spoke to Business Insider say they plan to continue accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.

A spokesperson from Expedia, which began accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment over the summer, told Business Insider it will continue to accept bitcoin as a form of payment for hotels purchased on Expedia.com.

"All bitcoin transactions are handled through the company’s partnership with Coinbase, a third-party bitcoin payment processor who handles the processing and transfer of actual bitcoin funds directly with Expedia’s customers," the Expedia spokesperson said.

Likewise, Microsoft confirmed the company will continue to support bitcoin as an option for customers to add funds to their Microsoft accounts. Starting in December, Microsoft began allowing customers to use bitcoin to buy apps and games for Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox.

A spokesperson for Overstock also confirmed that fluctuations in the price of bitcoin will not affect the company's decision to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. Overstock started letting customers pay with bitcoin in January 2014, becoming the first major retailer to do so.

Mobile payments processor Braintree also announced Thursday it plans to open up bitcoin payments to thousands of its merchants, including Uber and Airbnb, through a partnership with third-party bitcoin payment processor Coinbase. Though the partnership was originally announced in September, "today's update means that, effective immediately, 'any merchant that uses Braintree for credit card payments [can now accept bitcoin payments],'" Pando reported.

Though retailers are sticking with bitcoin, low bitcoin prices forced cloud mining service CEX.io to temporarily stop its operations. The service was no longer turning a profit because of how low bitcoin prices had dipped.

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin Is Getting Annihilated

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One of Silicon Valley's hottest young companies is Slack, the business messaging app that was valued at a jaw-dropping $1.1 billion valuation in October, just 9 months after it launched.

Zero to over $1 billion in 9 months?

Even by Silicon Valley’s loose standards, that seems insane.

And now Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield has admitted that the valuation was based almost as much on speculation as it was on traditional metrics.

In an interview with Fortune, Butterfield explained, “There are fairly precise methods for putting a value on future cash flow given steady business," but since Slack's business is skyrocketing, not steady, he admitted, "We’re not in that position, obviously.”

The issue: Slack is growing at such a fast rate that it's hard to come up with meaningful business projections. Since its launch in February when it claimed to have 15,000 daily active users, Slack has grown to have 365,000 users. That’s nearly 25X growth in just a year, all without any real spending on sales and marketing.

Slack claims to be adding $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) every month, with “near perfect” retention rates. ARR doesn't mean actual revenue. But it's a good indicator of a cloud software company's health since it represents the value of the total subscription contracts expected to recur for the next 12 months. Based on those metrics, Slack would have made a little over $12 million last year.

That amount of revenue doesn't seem like enough to justify Slack’s billion-dollar valuation, but it does show that companies are willing to pay for its service. And that's what the VCs are counting on.

“We’ve established that people would pay for us. Slack is being valued based on its ability to make money rather than something more speculative,” Butterfield told us in a previous interview.

Valuations are a tricky business, too, because they are based in part on how much money venture capitalists are willing to invest in exchange for how big of a chunk of the company they'll own. In the end, if the investors and the company agree, that's what the company is worth.

And it looks like investors were lining up to invest in Slack. Butterfield says he was initially trying to raise only $100 million, but he saw so much interest that he ended up raising $120 million, with $200 million in commitments. It also probably helped that Butterfield is a well-known figure in the Valley, having sold his previous company, Flickr, to Yahoo for about $35 million in 2005.

In Slack's case, there was a bit of a leap here, too, apparently. Butterfield didn't really need the money. But Butterfield saw that venture was relatively easy to raise right now, and having lived through the 2008 downturn, wanted to strike while he could. He also wanted Slack to be known as a $1 billion company. His logic: Being in the "Billion Dollar Club" helps to acquire new customers and great talent.

“One billion is better than $800 million because it’s the psychological threshold for potential customers, employees, and the press," he told Fortune.

Yet still, it’s unclear if the app is just a trend or a real long-term business. Some companies are just leaving the space altogether. Basecamp, for example, dropped a business group chat app called Campfire from its product lineup in early 2014. 

Even Butterfield seems to concede: when asked why Slack is so popular at a recent conference, he said, “I have no f—ing idea.”

 

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BlackBerry's CEO John S. Chen wrote a blog post on net neutrality this week that's so wrong, it's funny.

Most of the post is a Wikipedia-like explanation of net neutrality, the concept that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally. It's adapted from a letter Chen sent to the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, which is looking at net neutrality policy.

But Chen gets really mixed up when he proposes regulators include mobile apps and content in the same bucket as internet traffic. His theory is that apps should be forced to appear on all platforms, regardless of who makes them. For example, he thinks Apple's iMessage should be on Android and BlackBerry devices, not just the iPhone.

Here's Chen:

Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what net neutrality is. Instead, it's a desperate plea from a company that completely whiffed on the modern smartphone era.

BlackBerry was slipping long before it launched its modern smartphone operating system, BlackBerry 10, in 2012 — five years after the iPhone was introduced). But the real nail in the coffin was its inability to convince app developers to bring their wares to BlackBerry phones. Without good apps, there was little reason for anyone but the biggest BlackBerry loyalists to buy a BlackBerry phone.

Netflix famously refused to make an app for BlackBerry 10, and just about every other major developer from Instagram to Google followed suit.

Here's what Chen gets wrong. Net neutrality only protects the traffic over the internet. Advocates of net neutrality believe all traffic should be treated equally and rich companies shouldn't be allowed to pay for so-called "fast lanes" to users that its competitors can't afford. 

But net neutrality has nothing to do with what kind of apps appear on your phone, and it's wrong for Chen to even imply that it does. It's simply not worth a developer's time, effort, and money to make an app for a platform like BlackBerry 10 that doesn't even have half a percent of the global smartphone market.

If BlackBerry wanted developers to pay attention to its platform, it shouldn't have sat around all those years while Google and Apple ate its lunch. The reason why we have two dominant smartphone platforms is because Apple and Google did it better than anyone else. BlackBerry was over five years late to the game, and proposing that developers should be required to make apps for BlackBerry phones is sad and misguided.

The goal of net neutrality is to make sure content flows freely and equally over the internet, not to make sure a dying platform like BlackBerry with an insignificant number over users gets apps.

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By Michael Finneran
Google is reportedly poised to resell Sprint and T-Mobile wireless services, continuing its foray into communications.

Technology giant Samsung is still in talks to acquire BlackBerry, a new report in the Financial Post has claimed, days after both companies denied that acquisition discussions were underway.

The new report, published on Wednesday, claims that Samsung is still pursuing a deal to buy BlackBerry. The Financial Post spoke to someone familiar with the acquisition talks. "Samsung is still evaluating their options," the source said. "So it’s still very much an open deal."

Both BlackBerry and Samsung issued denials that they were in talks. But the new report claims that discussions are still underway.

The first report of a deal between BlackBerry and Samsung came on January 14. A Reuters article claimed that Samsung was looking to purchase BlackBerry for as much as $7.5 billion, mainly for its patent portfolio. A source close to the rumoured talks told Reuters that meetings had taken place.

The stock market loved the news that BlackBerry could be acquired by Samsung. The company's share price shot up 29% on the news. But it wasn't for long. BlackBerry quickly issued a denial, claiming that it had not talked with Samung about an acquisition. That news didn't go down quite as well, and BlackBerry's stock price was down 15% on after-hours trading.

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drserg/Shutterstock

If there’s one thing Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison loves, it’s a fight with a rival. He likes them so much he’s known for publicly needling his company’s competitors almost every time he’s near a microphone.

Today his target was networking giant Cisco Systems and its Unified Computing Systems. The occasion was the launch of the latest generation of Oracle’s computing hardware aimed at corporations, which it calls its Engineered Systems.

It’s in this market segment — sometimes called “converged infrastructure” — where Oracle and Cisco compete. The basic idea behind both Cisco’s UCS and Oracle’s Engineered Systems is to build specialized hardware that packs three primary pieces of a corporate data center into a single piece of equipment: Computing, data storage and networking. Last year Gartner estimated the size of the marketplace for this kind of IT hardware at $6 billion.

In Cisco’s case, the UCS product is one it builds in cooperation with storage company EMC and data center software company VMware, and together they’ve done well. In a report issued last year, research firm Gartner gave the trio the highest marks in its closely watched “magic quadrant” study of the space.

Oracle was not far behind. One reason: Everything about its machines is Oracle-designed, so the hardware is tied tightly to Oracle’s software. Ellison has occasionally likened its approach to Apple’s — owning the hardware and the software in order to make sure the user gets the best experience.

That gave Ellison some of the leverage he used in his pitch at Wednesday’s event at Oracle HQ in Redwood City, Calif.: Oracle’s machines are designed by a single vendor, which in the end makes life easier for customers. “We’ve engineered all the pieces to work together, and we test all the software to work with the hardware,” he said. Relying on a system assembled with parts from three different vendors is more complex in the end, he argued.

With the new systems he also promised to beat Cisco on price. For example, Oracle says its Virtual Compute Appliance X5 is 50 percent less expensive to buy than a comparable Cisco product. Oracle has tended to lead Cisco on overall computing performance in this segment, Ellison said, but Cisco has been more aggressive on price. He promised to change that.

“We will compete with Cisco by delivering not only the highest performance virtual computing appliance machines in the industry, but now with the lowest price by far,” he said. “Our old strategy was to offer the highest performance and the best cost for that performance. … Now it’s highest performance with the best list price. We’re just trying to make the decisions easier.”

Cisco of course didn’t suffer Ellison’s jabs in silence. Paul Perez, VP and general manger at Cisco’s UCS data center business, reached by Re/code offered the following: “We feel pretty good about our hand in the converged infrastructure market. … This is a market Cisco created with EMC back in 2009 with a joint venture that became one of the most successful in IT history. … Oracle has a lot of catching up to do.”

Dozens of retailers including Target, Neiman Marcus, and Home Depot have reported data breaches in the last year.

People who are feeling uneasy about using their credit cards following the attacks might find solace in a security system that uses randomly generated credit card numbers to fend off potential hackers.

The service, called MaskMe, was developed by the Boston-based privacy firm Abine, which is behind the popular blocking software DoNotTrackMe. 

Here's how it works: When you're ready to make a purchase, MaskMe will randomly generate a masked card — a one-time-use credit card number, expiration date and security code with a name of your choosing. The card is produced virtually and looks like this:

If you are in a physical store, you can give the card information to the retailer to pay for your purchase. The card is only authorized for the amount you specify and after a single use, it will be destroyed.

Here's a screenshot of the mobile app in the process of creating a card, courtesy of Abine:

If you are shopping online, the masked card will show up as a credit card option when you're checking out. Once you select it, the service will automatically enter all the information you need. Abine inputs its own mailing address as the billing address for all masked cards. 

"Masked cards are useful because they leave no trace of your real credit card on all those databases where you shop," says Abine co-founder and CEO Rob Shavell. "The principal behind what we do for security is very simple: Hackers can't steal what they don't have."

Some banks, including Bank of America and Discover, offer a similar one-time-use-only card for online purchases. But unlike MaskMe, those cards use consumers' real names and addresses.

Shavell says its important to protect that information, as well.

"The average online store today works with over seven different targeted advertising, tracking, and data collection companies," he said. "These purchases that you make with masked cards can no longer be connected back to a single card and fed into a profile of what you buy online — which can be sold without you even knowing it to insurers, banks, the government, you name it."

Some consumers may have concerns about trusting Abine with their credit card info, however. What if Abine was hacked?

To protect against that possibility, Abine doesn't store consumers' real credit card info, Shavell says. That data is encrypted and stored by the company's banking partner.

"The real point, though, is that consumers shouldn't trust us more than any other merchant," he said. "The advantage is that the more [that consumers] shop with masked cards, the less places their real card is."

SEE ALSO: The Shopping-Mall Crisis Is Getting More Ominous

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I went to one of those fancy private dinners at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday night.

The dinner had a special format. The roughly 40 attendees sat around a long, straight table, like students at Hogwarts. As the smoked salmon appetizer arrived, the hosts informed us that we were not to spend the evening conversing with our immediate neighbors. Instead, a microphone would be passed around the table, and we would each give a three-minute speech about something interesting.

Naturally, not all of the attendees limited themselves to three minutes. And, naturally, not all of the speeches were interesting.

But many were!

One attendee, for example, the famous CEO of a massive global corporation, began his speech by asking whether anyone could remember what the price of oil was in 2000.

One person at the table remembered: ~$10 a barrel.

That was startling, given today's global hyperventilation about the shock of ~$50 oil.

Then the CEO, whose company does business in China, said most Westerners were seriously underestimating China.

Most Westerners, he said, love to diss China, talking about how all the Chinese do is steal and copy stuff.

These Westerners are, at best, behind the times, the CEO said.

The CEO pointed to the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is now one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world. He pointed to the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which used to copy Apple to a comical extent but has now captured the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers while building top-notch smartphones that cost a fraction of the iPhone's price. He pointed to China's recent military intervention in Africa, observing that, as with the US, China is increasingly going to deploy troops to defend its interests around the world.

The CEO also needled one of the other dinner guests, who had shared his view that China's recent economic growth was not the 7.5% that the country reported but actually a lame 5%. The CEO observed that 5% growth on an economy the size of China's ($10 trillion) is still impressive growth — growth that puts most of the rest of the world to shame. He noted that China's economy had grown from basically zero 30 years go to become the second-biggest economy in the world.

Basically, he said, Westerners who think that all China does is copy and steal stuff have their heads in the sand. The next few decades are China's decades, he implied. And it's time Westerners woke up to the fact that China is going to take over the world.

SEE ALSO: Unboxing The Davos Swag Bag ...

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Last night at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a source with knowledge of security issues along the United States-Mexico border shared this interesting tidbit: the supply of marijuana grown in the United States has become so abundant and cheap that in the regions of northern Mexico, where it used to be grown, farmers have taken to burning their crops.

Because of the increased domestic supply, it is no longer profitable for these Mexican farmers to grow, reap, and transport weed across the border.

They've decided there is more money in burning down their crops down and planting something else instead.

This makes sense. Medical marijuana is legal in 23 states now. Recreational marijuana is legal in three, and decriminalized in many more.

The bad news: this source says Mexican farmers are growing opium poppies instead — the plants that heroin is made out of.

(We'd describe the source of this information more, but the World Economic Forum is held under something called "The Chatham House rules," wherein reporters are able to share information they've heard here, but not allowed to describe its source.)

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“Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” Musk said. That sounds like Elon Musk.

A Polish tinkerer has created the ultimate compact PC — one that's small enough to fit inside a conventional mouse, MyBroadband reports.

Przemysław Strzelczyk, a software engineer at Nokia Networks, calls his invention, "The Mouse-Box."

"From now on, you don’t need to buy a few devices to keep your computer always at hand," the Mouse-Box website says. "Mouse-Box uses the power of a mouse, an invariable component in a computer set for many years. By virtue of placing a computer in a mouse, the two most powerful elements have been combined in one unity."

The Mouse-Box contains a 1.4GHz ARM processor, 128 GB of flash storage, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a micro HDMI port to connect a monitor. It also comes with two USB 3.0 ports, a gyroscope, and an accelerometer.

It's unclear which operating systems would be able to work on the Mouse-Box, but with built-in Wi-Fi and a 128 GB disk, you should be able to handle plenty of programs and data, especially if you're reliant on the internet or the cloud to get work done. 

Strzelczyk and his Mouse-Box team say the product is still in "the prototype phase," but they're also working to build a wireless mouse pad charger. They're currently seeking financial backing to launch this product in "maybe a few months."

The team has not set a price yet, but they say it will be "very cheap" and available globally.

Check out the full video of the Mouse-Box below.

 

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By Zeus Kerravala
Extra steps that Polycom is taking to improve quality, usability, and interoperability should significantly help its competitive position in an increasingly crowded video collaboration market.