Avaya held a customer, analyst, and consultant event in Santa Clara, CA. Called "Avaya Engages Silicon Valley," the event emphasized three messages, from my perspective: engagement, innovation, and relevance. Here are a few comments on each.
As part of its 2015 tech market outlook, Forrester says most of what CIOs spend on technology will go toward enterprise process apps such as ERP and CRM.
The enterprise Internet of Things will be the largest of the three main IoT sectors — enterprise, home, government — as defined by BI Intelligence, Business Insider's research service.
That's because businesses have the capital and reach to purchase IoT devices and services on a large scale. They will see benefits from the IoT accrue fast enough to spur further adoption and investment.
IoT devices range from robot-like units to tiny chips that hook into industrial or office machines allowing the user to fully control the device, or merely collect specific data from it.
In a new IoT report from BI Intelligence, we size the enterprise IoT market, noting the breakdown between hardware versus software spending, and determine which industries will upgrade to the IoT first. We examine how businesses are already using IoT systems and what barriers might still stand in the way of IoT enterprise upgrades.
T-Mobile’s Data Stash, which lets you carry over unused megabytes from one month to the next, has only been lived seven days, but AT&T has already come up with a counter…
Unified communications and collaboration are passé – long live “engagement.” That’s essentially the message analysts heard at the Avaya Engages event in Santa Clara, CA recently.
By Marty Parker Continuing evolution in mobility, software-based communications, architectural design, data analytics and the user experience will keep us hopping this year.
Two of the many wireless charging efforts said Monday that they plan to merge into a single organization, though they will still have multiple technical approaches.
“The ‘standards war’ narrative presents a false choice,” A4WP president and board chair Kamil Grajski said in a statement, noting that other wireless standards, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, can coexist peacefully. “The A4WP PMA merger is in the same spirit: Enable the market to apply technologies to their best use cases.”
Wireless charging has been slow to take off, in part because of the competing efforts that included these groups as well as others such as the Wireless Power Consortium, which operates under the Qi brand.
Importantly, though, even this combined effort isn’t settling on one technical standard and will still promote multiple technology options. It does pave the way, perhaps, for fewer competing approaches in the future.
The most prominent charging efforts today, including the PMA and Qi approaches, use inductive charging and can only replenish a single device from each wireless charging spot at a time. Future efforts, using resonant technology approaches such as that promoted by A4WP, hold the promise of recharging multiple devices at once. And all of these “wireless” charging devices require the charging base itself be plugged into an outlet.
There are other, more far-out efforts that look to recharge devices truly over the air without the need for a charging base.
Facebook has acquired Wit.ai, a Y Combinator-backed speech recognition startup founded 18 months ago.
The company provides an API for building voice-activated interfaces and already has over 6,000 developers on its platform.
While building speech recognition and voice control is normally an extremely complicated technical process, Wit.ai allows developers build this capability into their products by simply adding a few short lines of code.
“Facebook’s mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 billion people on the platform – technology that understands natural language is a big part of that, and we think we can help,” the company announced in a blog post.
Despite its acquisition, Wit.ai says its platform will remain open and free for everyone. It is likely that Facebook will leverage Wit.ai’s services to draw in new developers. Facebook provides developers with resources and help building apps on its platform in the hopes that these developers will one day turn around and pay Facebook for advertising.
Wit.ai’s technology could also become integrated with Facebook itself. The company could integrate voice control into Facebook's native app or add a voice-to-text input for Messenger, for example.
In an October blog post announcing Wit.ai’s $3 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, co-founder and CEO Alex Lebrun wrote that he hoped Wit.ai’s open, distributed, community-based network of developers could help build “the Github, the Wikipedia, the Bitcoin of natural language.”
Lebrun said that he wants his company to be the go-to platform for developers looking to build messenger-based and audio-first apps for next generation wearables and smart devices.
The USS Enterprise is, in popular imagination, a futuristic spaceship. The actual USS Enterprise model used on the Star Trek show is, in reality, a 50-year-old creaker that has endured at least one misguided new paint job. The Smithsonian is hard at work restoring the model , though, and they've even got the National Zoo's vet techs involved.
Marriott Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, TN
Three months after Marriott got a $600,000 fine from the Federal Communications Commission for blocking Wi-Fi devices at its Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, the hotel chain is petitioning regulators to let it do pretty much the same thing on all its other properties, too.
Marriott said it's not seeking to block Wi-Fi access from personal devices in its guest rooms or lobbies, just its meeting spaces and conference rooms—and solely for security purposes.
Marriott, along with the American Hotel & Lodging Association trade group, filed the petition to block Wi-Fi access on its properties in August, before the hotel chain was fined. The FCC however, opened up the petition for public comment in December, and there's been a lot of criticism voiced by tech companies, security experts and hotel patrons.
With few exceptions, the FCC permits almost all Wi-Fi devices to freely access unlicensed wireless spectrum. Preventing access can result in hefty fines, as the Marriott learned in October. But according to the hotel chain's recent statement, guests are encouraged to "use these Internet connectivity devices in our hotels." It just wants the FCC to spell out how far a hotel can go towards securing its network:
The question at hand is what measures a network operator can take to detect and contain rogue and imposter Wi-Fi hotspots used in our meeting and conference spaces that pose a security threat to meeting or conference attendees or cause interference to the conference guest wireless network.
Security experts do believe that hackers are using deceptively named Wi-Fi networks to trick hotel guests into logging on and exposing their computers to danger. It's not clear what that problem—which should mostly be addressed by educating people about not connecting to unknown Wi-Fi networks—has to do with people using personal Wi-Fi hotspots.
Critics believe that profit, not security, is the goal of this petition. As Recode reported last week, while Marriott was jamming personal hotspots at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, "it was charging exhibitors and attendees anywhere from $250 to $1,000 for Wi-Fi service."
These meeting-room fees are typically far higher than what hotel guests pay for daily Wi-Fi access in their rooms.
Google and Microsoft are among the major tech companies to criticize Marriott's Wi-Fi blocking plan, which, if allowed, could become standard practice throughout the hotel industry.
“Hilton could not meet its guests’ expectations were it unable to manage its Wi-Fi networks, including taking steps to protect against unauthorized access points that pose a threat to the reliability and security of that network,” Hilton Worldwide added in support of Marriott and the hotel trade industry's petition.
If you've got something to say to the FCC about the petition filed by Marriott International and American Hotel & Lodging Association to block personal Wi-Fi access, you can do that on the FCC website.
Marriott photos courtesy of Marriott Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.
There are so many companies I meet with who have interesting stories to tell so I spent some time putting together a list of those worthy of recognition. I hope you find this interesting and have a great 2015.
Talari T5000 pictured below
Talari Networks is all about revolutionizing WAN economics or in less marketing speak, they are disrupting the MPLS monopoly. Wait, I am still talking in marketing terms. Let’s try again. Talari Networks allows companies to use the networks they have already such as cable and DSL to bypass the need for individual high-quality and expensive connections such as MPLS. They basically benefit from the arbitrage between traditional broadband and MPLS for companies with at least three locations looking to spend a little money to save a lot.
Buying the company’s boxes can set you back as little as four-thousand dollars for each one but can provide a rapid ROI while also boosting QoS. By monitoring the network continuously, decisions can be made on the fly to allocate various connections to the traffic which makes the most sense. Web surfing can be low priority while voice and video can rise to the top of the heap. In all, a very slick solution. I found it interesting that Talari found DSL and cable can outperform MPLS in some cases.
Kevin Gavin has been the company spokesperson for ShoreTel for many years and I met with him at Talari, his "new" company. He says he sees lots of similarities to the PBX market when he joined ShoreTel in the early days.
One other point worth noting – for the same spend, VARs can now sell more equipment at the expense of service providers.
Polycom is a huge video and voice player but over the last few years a number of cloud-based startups have been gunning for them. Expect the company to continue fighting back with a slew of new services and business models. I had a long talk with Jim Kruger and Maurizio Capuzzo at the company about how they are spending more on R&D and will also focus on getting higher levels of user utilization of products already in the field. Finally, they think WebRTC will be good for business as more video will be used as a result. Expect to see Polycom in 2015 positioned as the collaboration company focusing on voice, video and content as a service.
Airtight Networks is an important company – as it is likely involved in providing the WiFi in the stores and banks you use but you may not have heard of them. I’m impressed with their solutions which add security to WiFi – either guest or internal. Their wireless intrusion prevention system can overlay on other hardware from companies like Aruba. They also have standalone boxes and cloud-based solutions.
By working with them you can ensure you don’t have to manually deal with WiFi AP security configuration at all your locations. I spoke with Ksenia Coffman and Hermant Chasker who told me organizations with over 100 locations really can’t rely on manual security solutions. In fact, companies with certain transaction volume have to pass audits by credit card companies and government compliance such as HIPAA and PCI are other areas where Airtight can assist. Typically, the branch manager of an Airtight customer takes the device out of the box and plugs in the Ethernet cable and is all set. There is an instructional video as well to help out.
In our meeting they told me about a thief that robbed a store and was found because the system was able to pull up the MAC address of the suspect's smartphone. Having said that, there is a wall between the analytics and security sides of the solutions. Analytics keeps a hash of the MAC address while security keeps the MAC address. This allows customers to remain anonymous but still, a store can tell how many people visit a location each day, week etc. They can further use the analytics to measure the impact of an ad campaign on new customer foot traffic. They can also use it to determine if a menu is turning off potential diners. For instance, if many people spend a few minutes at the front of the store looking at the menu but then leave, it could be a sign that the bacon flavored ice cream craze may have come to an end.
Another idea one of the company’s customers had which I thought was smart was to provide free WiFi to customers in exchange for a tweet mention or FaceBook like.
A few months back the company released the C-65 (pictured)which brings intrusion detection to the world of IoT and 802.11ac.
Imagine Communications may be one of the more disruptive companies that doesn’t get talked about enough. Communications carriers are becoming software telcos powered by SDN and NFV running on OTS computers in part to take on WhatsApp/Facebook and other OTT competitors. But the video distribution market is behind this curve. Charlie Vogt who has been a frequent ITEXPO keynote speaker in fact left GENBAND some time back to head Imagine as CEO. In a meeting with him at NAB he seemed to be confidently executing on his strategic vision.
The video industry is changing rapidly thanks to time-shifting, on-demand and mobile devices. This in-turn affects the whole broadcast chain. The typical broadcast studio has lots of big iron with blinking lights – roughly analogous to mainframes or perhaps carrier class switches – a Class 4/5 perhaps is more like it. While the cable companies have moved to standardized IT and SDN, these companies haven’t made the change.
Imagine thinks the market needs to move to virtualized networks, software defined architecture; networks and workflows which would allow the players to move a lot faster. Moreover, the end-game is all IP multiscreen, multiplatform distribution. Or, succinctly, sort-of what telecom went through a decade-and-a-half ago.
The company has put together a staggering list of acquisitions and spin-offs – too voluminous to go into here. The goal is to build a major company which provides all the needs of video production and distribution companies. They say they want to be open and encourage interoperability – which is good news because they are a much larger player in this market than GENBAND was competing with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and others.
Going forward, we can expect Imagine Communications to help the video industry transition to SDN, virtualization, OTS hardware, open source and more. It will be interesting to see how this market changes… Also, how long it takes to fully transition, who the new entrants will be, what sorts of new consolidation ideas will take hold and much more. Stay tuned.
Mavatar Technologies Inc is a mobile commerce engine which ties into many different back-end ecommerce sites. Moreover it takes into account discounts by enabling you to get a final price quickly. It further lets you compare products via a quick button press. This is great because it works across stores. In the “detail compare” mode you get to factor in shipping, tax, etc. Mobile shopping is taking off and Mavatar is positioned well. I spoke with Susan Akbarpour about the company many months back and at the time it seemed like it was on fire. I’m surprised they haven't generated more buzz lately. This is especially true around the holidays where mobile shopping is all the rage. Download it free for yourself (iOS) to try it. It seems very useful.
Google plans to nearly quintuple its presence in Colorado with the construction of a new, four-acre campus in Boulder.
The project, which was recently approved by Boulder's City Council, includes three, four-story office buildings with all of the usual Google luxuries, including fitness centers, cafeterias, and a large underground parking lot.
The new campus will increase Google's Boulder workforce from 340 employees to nearly 1,500.
That huge jump has some Boulder locals worried about the future of their city. An influx of high-salaried tech workers could worsen problems Boulder is already having, like traffic congestion and a shortage of affordable housing.
"Prices are rising. We are becoming less and less affordable to lower and middle income. We’re also seeing local businesses that have been here for decades being priced out," City Council member Suzanne Jones said to the New York Times. "It puts a finer point on this issue of, where are we headed? Attracting big business is great, on the one hand, but it will be part of that change on the other."
A set of nearby apartment buildings seems like the perfect spot to accommodate the incoming Googlers. Still, many worry that these high-paid workers will eventually look for housing beyond the immediately surrounding areas, leading to an explosion in home prices like that seen in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
"Many of the eventual 1,500 employees and their families won't choose to live in the monolithic apartment complexes that are right next door. Many of these high-paid techies will want houses with yards," Boulder resident Judy Amabile writes in a letter to the Daily Camera, the city's local newspaper. "They might drive: to work, to drop off kids at school, to grocery shop, to dine out on Pearl Street. Google's expansion may well exacerbate rather than mitigate our affordable housing and transportation problems."
The new campus will be located just a block away from the bus station currently under construction at Boulder Junction. When the city council approved Google's project, it also asked that the company provide incentives for employees to use public transportation rather than drive to work. The campus will have only 600 parking spots, less than half the number of employees who will be based there.
Another concern voiced by residents and the city's planning board regards the appearance of the buildings themselves. Google's campuses tend to be rather contained environments, with luxurious amenities that employees can enjoy behind closed doors.
The new campus will be built in one of Boulder's busiest commercial areas, but it won't have any ground-floor retail space. It's not exactly inviting.
Four stories is also significantly taller than many of the other buildings in the area.
"It will be a very nice place for the employees, but, as far as addressing the public realm, especially the streetscape, I think it falls short," planning board member Liz Payton said during a site review earlier in December. "I don't think this is coherent, in that it is this very insular campus, but not relating to the context around it very successfully."
Google will construct a path winding through the campus itself, with the hope that it will keep the complex relatively open to the community.
And some argue that a growing tech presence in Boulder would be a positive influence on the community.
Scott Green, site director for Google Boulder, emphasized the impact tech workers could have on the city's innovative sector, citing the engineering team's work on apps like Google Earth and Google Drive. There could be increased recruiting from the University of Colorado nearby.
The Google Boulder office also has sales and marketing teams.
"These are critical projects, and they're big projects. They're growing, and staying still is not really an option. We've grown quite rapidly, and we expect to continue to grow," Green said to the planning board in December. "Our identity is tied to Boulder. We want to be in Boulder."
You can buy an increasing number of goods of services with cryptocurrency Bitcoin and Apple’s new mobile payments platform Pay, but soon their reach could expand to fines as well –…
Huawei Technology’s smartphone sales rose by almost a third to $11.8 billion in 2014, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters, showing the Chinese telecoms firm’s continued ascent in the global handset wars.
The division shipped about 75 million smartphones in 2014, according to the year-end memo to employees sent by Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business. Although that represented a more than 40 percent year-on-year increase, the figure lagged behind Huawei’s previously stated sales target of 80 million units.
Huawei spokeswoman Maggie Qi said the company does not comment on internal memos.
The results, which are due to be publicly announced in the coming weeks, reaffirm Huawei’s place among a small coterie of rising smartphone makers, including Xiaomi and LG Electronics, whose growth rates are eclipsing those of industry leaders.
Pressured by low-cost vendors, top ranked Samsung is likely to see its shipments nearly unchanged this year, while second-ranked Apple may have posted around 20 percent growth after launching the iPhone 6, analysts estimate.
Those growth rates, however, pale in comparison to the expansion of Xiaomi, which sold 26 million handsets during the first half of 2014.
If it reaches its sales target of 60 million for the year, Xiaomi will have more than tripled its 2013 sales of 18.7 million. Private investors believe it will continue to soar: The Beijing-based company announced this week a new round of equity financing at $45 billion valuation, making Xiaomi the most highly valued private technology company in the world.
Meanwhile, close rival LG may have seen its smartphone shipments rise around 26 percent this year, according to analysts.
Trendforce analyst Alan Chen said in a research note this month that Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo, which recently purchased Motorola from Google in a $2.91 billion deal, will battle to be the top Chinese smartphone vendor in 2015.
“How Lenovo’s Motorola acquisition plays out and whether Xiaomi can replicate its home market success overseas will be key factors in determining who becomes the top Chinese brand in 2015,” Chen said.
(Reporting by Gerry Shih and Miyoung Kim; Editing by Miral Fahmy and Louise Heavens)
You know that excited, blissful feeling on Christmas morning? When you scramble downstairs with a bounce in your step and a sparkle in your eye? And then you hunker under the tree to greedily unwrap your new penis-shaped Play-Doh dispenser? Because after this holiday season, a whole bunch of kids and parents do. And Hasbro would like you to mail the penises back and not say another word about it, please.
With so many hacks and leaks around, it almost feels like whatever you say over IM or emails are going to be exposed by hackers some day.
One way to save you from those hacking attacks is to use self-destructing messaging apps that can delete the messages after a set period of time.
The demand for such apps have certainly skyrocketed in recent years, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing a number of different apps pop up in this space.
We put together 9 self-destructing messaging apps that can save you from hackers. Here they are:
Snapchat: Probably the biggest player in this space, Snapchat has over 100 million users, mostly between the ages of 13 and 25. Users can send text, photos, and videos, and set them up to automatically delete after 1 to 10 seconds. The company, founded by Evan Spiegel, is now valued at $10 billion.
TigerText: TigerText primarily targets business customers. It is HIPAA and SOX compliant, making it an appealing choice for companies in the medical and finance fields. For example, doctors can share and consult x-ray results without violating any compliance regulations. It has been downloaded more than 4 million times and roughly 5,000 organizations use it.
Wickr: Wickr proudly claims to offer “military grade encryption.” Like other competitors, Wickr automatically deletes texts, photos, and video files once the message is received. It’s been growing quite fast, raising $39 million in funding and adding 22 language support. Wickr also has a bounty program where hackers can make up to $100,000 by submitting vulnerabilities of the service.
Confide: The main difference between Confide and other competing apps is how you have to swipe your finger along the blocks covering each word in order to read the message. This makes is nearly impossible to take screenshots of the message, as only parts of the message is visible at any time. And if a screenshot is detected, each message self-destructs to prevent multiple screenshots.
Frankly: Frankly offers the same 10-second deleting feature just as Snapchat does. But it provides more fun features, like changing the size of fonts or background color of the text. Its group chats are also slightly different in that the users know who is in the room, but have no idea who is actually sending the message. Since its founding in 2013, Frankly has raised around $18.8 million in funding.
ClipChat: ClipChat is unique in that its messages are deleted after just five seconds. It blocks any attempt at screenshots, as the screen turns black when someone tries to capture the screen. Users can also share and see the video or photo they sent on a separate news feed with a selected group of friends.
Cyber Dust: Backed by Mark Cuban, Cyber Dust is often described as “WhatsApp meets Snapchat.” Its messages self-destruct after 30 seconds, and messages that aren’t viewed within 12 hours also expire and delete forever. Cuban says he has moved all his conversations to Cyber Dust, and is continuing to see a “big surge” in downloads following the recent Sony hack.
Ansa: Ansa works like a regular messaging app, but once the user presses its “off the record” button, all the messages sent under that function get deleted after 60 seconds. Users can go back to “on the record” mode anytime. It also allows users to delete old messages after months through its “sync deletion” feature.
Burn Note: Burn Note offers something called “Spotlight,” where the user needs to put a finger over the text to see the message. Similar to Confide, this allows the user to only see portions of the message at once. You can set up how long you’d like to keep the message available, and can delete it even before it’s opened.
ReadWriteReflect offers a look back at major technology trends, products and companies of the past year.
This year’s hottest startups were all about boosting our productivity and well-being. They seized the opportunities presented by open APIs, and they rode the ongoing shift to mobile devices. In so doing, these small, innovative companies improved our professional and personal lives in ways that mattered.
One thing common to 2014’s most intriguing upstarts is how they didn't just serve themselves: They empowered others to innovate, too.
Whether it’s through easier communication, better health, or faster development, these companies have made a big splash in the way we live and work.
Here are 2014’s most influential small companies.
Slack
<em>Brady Archambo worked at Slack when it was known as Tiny Speck, maker of an online game called Glitch.</em>
Slack is a messaging tool designed to improve the way teams communicate. Founded in mid-2013 and based upon an internal messaging system used to build the now-defunct online game Glitch, Slack mushroomed in popularity this year. The easy-to-use tool now boasts over 250,000 daily active users.
Slack improves on team chat by integrating automated messages from other communication services, such as bug reports or tweets from customers. It also allows team members to search through conversations by keyword or topic.
Best of all, the Web and mobile app significantly cuts down on unnecessary email, transforming the way teams communicate.
Docker
Docker is an open platform designed to let developers and sysadmins build, ship and run distributed apps from anywhere.
It promises to revolutionize the way developers and operation teams work, aiming to make application development for the cloud less of a nightmare. Based on the buzz it's created in the developer community this year, we'd say it has followed through on this promise.
The main contribution of the open-source Docker software is to simplify the distribution of applications by standardizing their properties and shipping them together with their entire environment in neat containers. That makes it possible to, as the old saying goes, write once and run anywhere—at least theoretically.
Not all is going smoothly. Docker has already faced some backlash against early, hyperbolic claims made for it. A rival company has launched a competing version based on its underlying open-source code. And the Docker open-source community may be in the midst of a potentially ugly split.
But the software has strong support from top cloud providers, including Amazon and Google, and still looks like a favorite to simplify the development of cloud apps. The disagreements over Docker just highlight how much is at stake.
Quip
Quip has redesigned office-productivity software for the mobile age.
Founded by former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor and Google App Engine creator Kevin Gibbs, Quip was recognized by Technology Review as one of the "Breakthrough Technologies of 2014" for making it effortless and fruitful to create and edit documents on mobile devices for real-time collaboration.
The company aims to eliminate the cumbersome back-and-forth of email attachments by personalizing shared documents with notifications and chat-style message threads.
Rather than mimicking the way Microsoft Word works on the desktop, Quip goes above and beyond to rethink the way word-processing should be adapted to a mobile, connected way of working. Like Slack, Quip has added integrations with a variety of services like GitHub and PagerDuty—so if you need to write up a report explaining recent outages with your app, the changes you made to your code and bug reports are just a few taps away.
The fitness app, which regularly tops the health and fitness charts in Google and Apple's app stores, is best known for its namesake food and exercise diary.
MyFitnessPal still integrates data from wearable devices and other health apps through its popular application-programming interface, which is one of the most widely adopted tools for other fitness apps to share calorie data. Since the data flows into MyFitnessPal, it retains its central role in users' lives even as they add other fitness apps to their phones.
Product Hunt
Product Hunt digs up the best new products buried in the noise of today's startup market by using an upvoting system.
Each day, users go to Product Hunt to view a simple, clean list of handpicked tech products. Technology experts and other early adopters regularly upvote or downvote their favorite products on that list, which ultimately surfaces the best new products daily.
The best thing about Product Hunt is that it values meritocracy. High-quality new startups with no connections to Silicon Valley have a shot at getting discovered on Product Hunt.
Take Point, a Chrome extension that makes it easier to share articles with friends and then chat about it right on the page. Point's founders had absolutely no connections to the established tech scene, but hit a nerve among the enthusiasts on Product Hunt. Point is among the most upvoted products on Product Hunt altogether, exceeding 500 upvotes.
"With no other press coverage, and no other efforts at distribution, Point added 8,000 new users, more than quadrupling its user base," TechCrunch reported.
Kimono Labs
Kimono Labs is a data-scraping tool that offers a simple way to create an API for any website in just minutes.
It allows people without a coding background the ability to gather large quantities of data from any website, and turn that data into a mobile app or other program.
Users simply install a bookmarklet in a browser and point to the data they want to focus on. The Kimono learning algorithm automatically generates a data model.
The data model figures out common patterns in the data fields that you clicked on. When you click "Done," the bookmarklet creates an API, which is scheduled to update with any new data on the site periodically.
You can take this API and build it into whatever application you're working on.
One developer, Miles Grimshaw, used Kimono Labs to scrape data from his Citibike trips over the course of a year. Citibike, the New York City bike-rental service, lets users see maps of their trips, but doesn't offer a data-export tool or API. So Grimshaw spent five minutes setting up his own API—and as a result, learned fascinating things, like how he biked 33% faster in the morning than in the evening.
Multiply that kind of everyday insight across thousands of websites that lack an API, and it could spell serious data liberation.
BigML
BigML is a machine-learning service that helps people without a background in data science make behavioral predictions using data.
Users upload a set of data and format it to BigML's specifications. BigML discovers a range of relationships between the variables. It creates a predictive model, made up of a number of variable factors that are likely to influence future results.
BigML displays predictions using a "tree" structure, which ranks the most predictive factor up top and less relevant factors on the bottom of the tree.
At this point, it's easy to plug in hypothetical data points, resulting in different predictions.
Sunrise is trying to make mobile calendars simpler. Birthed by two ex-Foursquare designers, Sunrise syncs information from other calendars and social media accounts, including Facebook and LinkedIn.
If you schedule a meeting with one of your LinkedIn connections, Sunrise will import your LinkedIn contact's info straight into the calendar, helping you prepare. And your Facebook events appear in the same calendar as your work events, so you don't end up double-booked with personal and professional obligations.
As a nice bonus, Sunrise also gives you weather updates based on your location.
It’s compatible with Google Calendar, Apple's iCloud calendar and Microsoft Exchange, and it syncs with popular productivity apps like Evernote. Sunrise shows what an information-powered calendar can look like.
Shyp
Shyp is a mobile app that provides on-demand packaging and shipping. It allows you to take a picture of the item you want to ship with your smartphone, prompting a "Shyp Hero" to pick it up, package it and ship the item for you.
Right now, it charges a $5 fee for pickups in addition to the shipping cost. It's available in San Francisco, New York, and Miami.
While FedEx and UPS will pick up packages, Shyp doesn’t restrict you to any one carrier. Instead, Shyp defaults to the cheapest carrier at the time of shipment. And Shyp's contractors package it for you—while FedEx's idea of "packaging help" is a bunch of YouTube videos and do-it-yourself packing supplies.
For small-business owners who ship things infrequently and don't want to hire warehouse help or stock packing supplies, it could make a lot of sense. It could also boost business for marketplaces like eBay, which struggle to attract occasional sellers.
Shyp's an example of a startup that has thrived thanks to the existence of open Web services. Among others, it's used EasyPost, Shippo, and Stripe's APIs to get off the ground.
Lead photo via Shutterstock; photo of Slack by Owen Thomas for ReadWrite; photo of container ship by pete; other images courtesy of the companies
This is cool: Chromebook users can now run their favorite Linux distribution within a window right on their Chrome OS desktop. Google's own happiness evangelist François Beaufort revealed with a Google+ post…
There are so many horrible companies in the world that make their profits by stewing in consumer misery. According to a just published list of this year's most hated companies, the worst are unsurprisingly Time Warner Cable and Comcast. Yup, the two giants that want to merge.
There's a lot to be learned from a person's Google searches.
Real estate listings site Estately looked at Google Trends data to determine what people, stories, and controversies residents of each state cared about most.
The map they compiled using the data shows not what each state searched for the most overall, but what they Googled more than any other state.
While New Yorkers were wondering what a selfie is, Californians and Nevadans took to Google for more information on bitcoin. The protests in Ferguson were a major interest for people in Missouri, and Malala Yousafzai had some big fans in Connecticut.
ALASKA: Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (tied w/ Wyoming), How to DIY, 4chan, legalize marijuana, domestic violence
ARIZONA: Mexico-United States Border, "Wilfred"
ARKANSAS: Mike Huckabee, "Dancing with the Stars"
CALIFORNIA: FIFA 2014 World Cup, Malaysian Airlines, Kim Kardashian, Iggy Azalea, Donald Sterling, Renee Zellweger, Tom Perkins, Joe the Plumber, Jamie Dornan, Steve McQueen, Charles Manson, James McAvoy, Ellen Page, James Franco Instagram, How to get rid of acne?, What is BB cream?, How to minimize pores?, How to shape eyebrows?, Nexus 6, iPad 3, Bitcoin, Kate Middleton butt, Chia seed, Uber
COLORADO: Marijuana
DELAWARE: (nothing)
FLORIDA: Michael Sam kiss, Michael Douglas, John Travolta, Carmen Carrera, Obamacare, Jeb Bush
GEORGIA: Kerry Washington, Ruby Dee, Michael Sam boyfriend, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," Center for Disease Control, "The Arsenio Hall Show"
HAWAII: Robin Williams, Jennifer Lawrence, Joan Rivers, Melanie Griffith, Jan Hooks, Theo James, Kate Upton leaked, A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge, I.S.I.S, Hello Kitty, iPhone 6, Apple Watch
IDAHO: How to craft, Bowe Bergdahl
ILLINOIS: Harold Ramis, Jenny McCarthy
INDIANA: Tony Stewart, Shirley Temple, Ann B. Davis, "Two and a Half Men," "Community"
IOWA: Flappy Bird, Richard Dawkins
KANSAS: (nothing)
KENTUCKY: What is A.L.S.?, "Sons of Anarchy," Betty White dead?, Billy Gilman
LOUISIANA: "True Blood," Laurence Fishburne
MAINE: "Between Two Ferns," Affordable Care Act
MARYLAND: Pharrell Williams hat, Ray Rice, Roger Goodell, Chelsea Manning, Piers Morgan, Paula Patton, Executive order, Bill Cosby
MASSACHUSETTS: Kate Middleton, Scottish referendum, Scottish independence, "True Detective," "The Good Wife," "The Newsroom," Patton Oswalt, Ira Glass, Tom Magliozzi, Jonathan Gruber, Bill Simmons, "Serial," "The Imitation Game," Emma Watson UN speech
MICHIGAN: Macualay Culkin dead, Kate Upton photos, Ted Nugent, George Will, Mary T. Barra
MINNESOTA: Joan Rivers death, Adrian Peterson, "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson"
MISSISSIPPI: Flappy Bird cheat, Ciara, Ciara baby, Ciara pregnant, Cee Lo Green, Robin Thicke, Raven-Symone, The Ultimate Warrior
MISSOURI: Ferguson, Casey Kasem
MONTANA: National Rife Association
NEBRASKA: Keystone Pipeline
NEVADA: Mila Kunis pregnant, Bitcoin price, What is Bitcoin?, Cliven Bundy, Bill O’Reilly, Jose Canseco, Mickey Rooney
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Hilary Clinton, Bode Miller, net neutrality, "Philomena"
NEW JERSEY: Tracy Morgan, Ansel Elgort, Alfonso Ribeiro, Idina Menzel, Kim Novak, Tim Howard, Oscar Pistorious trial, Bridgegate, War on women, Immigration reform, Frozen costume
NEW MEXICO: Zombies, LG G3 phone
NEW YORK: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Peaches Geldof, Lauren Bacall, Terry Richardson, Jared Leto, Macaulay Culkin, Margot Robbie, Kerry Washington, Laverne Cox, Donald Trump, Drake, Leslie Jones, Conchita Wurst, "Girls," Samsung Galaxy S5, How to apply foundation?, Gaza and Israel, What's a selfie?
NORTH CAROLINA: Maya Angelou, The Benham Brothers, What is transgender?
NORTH DAKOTA: Jay Leno, U.S. National Hockey Team, Kaley Cuoco, "Dumb and Dumber To"
OKLAHOMA: Ebola, Ebola Symptoms, I.S.I.L, Jennifer Lawrence photos, Renee Zellweger, Betty White, Lea Thompson, Tommy Chong, Mila Kunis baby, Carrie Underwood, Carrie Underwood pregnant, Benghazi, Hobby Lobby, Selfie, Sarah Goldberg, James Garner, Chelsea Handler, Kim Kardashian butt, What is a switch?
OREGON: Ukraine, Motorola Moto G, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Avril Lavigne, Syria news
PENNSYLVANIA: Macaulay Culkin dead?, 2016, 2016 Presidential election, marriage equality, "The Millers"
RHODE ISLAND: Woody Allen, Pope Francis, "The League"
SOUTH CAROLINA: Hazing
SOUTH DAKOTA: "The Dr. Oz Show"
TENNESSEE: Who is I.S.I.S.?, Kevin Sharp
TEXAS: Flappy Bird download, Johnny Manziel, Join I.S.I.S., Carrie Underwood baby, How to get rid of stretch marks?, James Avery, Are zombies real?, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
UTAH: "Frozen," "Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1," "How to Train Your Dragon ," "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," same sex marriage, Shailene Woodley, Glenn Beck, How to kiss?, Anita Sarkeesian, Emma Watson nude, "The Mentalist," "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"
VERMONT: Lena Dunham, Seth Rogen, Pete Seeger, Feminism, kale, 2014 Winter Games, climate change, "The Colbert Report," "The Grand Budapest Hotel," Amy Schumer
VIRGINIA: Tucker Carlson, Boko Haram, White House security, upskirt pics
WASHINGTON: Gamergate, marijuana store, Richard Sherman, Amanda Knox, Macklemore, minimum wage, rape culture, "Interstellar," school shooting, Amazon Fire phone, Rosetta Space Probe
WEST VIRGINIA: Maroon 5, Charles Manson, Brad Paisley
WISCONSIN: What is Tinder?, Pabst Blue Ribbon
WYOMING: Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (tie with Alaska)
When Windows 10 arrives, probably by next fall, Microsoft could include a brand new browser that's more like Chrome and Firefox and less like Internet Explorer. The project goes by the codenamed "Spartan," reports Mary Jo Foley.
Microsoft won't completely kill off IE in Windows 10, sources told Foley. It will include a version of IE for "backwards compatibility" meaning for sites, particularly older enterprise apps, that have been fine-tuned to function with Internet Explorer. That version is expected to be IE 11, the current version of Internet Explorer.
The new browser is expected to look more like Firefox and Chrome in design and do a better job of supporting extensions, which are apps you can add to your browser.
Interestingly, Foley says that the new browser will still use Microsoft's same underlying browser technology. In geek speak, that's Microsoft's Chakra JavaScript engine and Microsoft's Trident rendering engine, not the popular WebKit, originally developed by Apple and later adopted by Google. Versions of Webkit are used in Safari and Chrome.
This is important because each browser engine has its own tweaks that developers must learn. That's why a website sometimes works well on one device and is wonky on another. As you might imagine, given the dominance Apple and Google have over the mobile devices, a lot of mobile developers optimize their sites for Webkit.
In any case, it looks like Spartan could be a new browser that works across all versions of Windows 10, including desktop and mobile (phone/tablet). Remember, one of the big promises of Windows 10 is that most Windows 10 apps are supposed to be able to run on any Windows 10 device, mobile, desktop, even Xbox.
But one question is if Microsoft will somehow bring Spartan to Android and iOS. Given Microsoft's huge new focus on pushing its software out on all platforms, that seems likely.
Then again, if the browser doesn't use Webkit, it likely won't be accepted into Apple's App store. Apple still requires all "apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript" according to its store guidelines.
We expect to hear more about the browser next month. Microsoft will be hosting an event On January 21 to show off Windows 10's consumer features.
If you're not already using AmazonSmile when you shop, you should start right now.
Smile gives Amazon shoppers a way to donate a small percentage of their purchases to almost any charity they want. Once you sign up at smile.amazon.com and choose a charity, 0.5% of your eligible purchases will be donated.
There are nearly one million charities available to choose from, with more getting added every day, and hundreds of thousands of products qualify (you'll see an "Eligible for AmazonSmile donation" badge near the "Add to shopping cart").
The service doesn't cost anything to the charities that sign up or the shopper (for that reason, donations are not tax deductible). All you have to do is start your shopping at smile.amazon.com.
I decided to donate to charity:water, a non-profit organization that brings clean drinking water to people in developing countries. Even though .5% isn't a lot on each purchase, everyone should sign up for Smile because giving something is always better than nothing:
In its annual tally of our insane holiday shopping, Amazon reported that 16 times more Amazon customers shopped on smile.amazon.com than last year, and the company has donated millions of dollars since it launched the program in October 2013.
For the second holiday shopping season in a row, Chromebooks were the top-selling computers on Amazon, Amazon reported Friday.
That's bad news for Microsoft and its hardware partners, which have shifted their Windows 8 computer strategy this year by offering cheaper models. For example, the HP Stream laptop, which got pretty good reviews, only costs $200 and comes with a lot of free software like Microsoft Office.
Amazon reported that the top-selling computers were the Acer C720 Chromebook ($228), ASUS 13-inch Chromebook ($220), and the HP 11-2010nr Chromebook ($198).
Chromebooks are computers that run Chrome OS, which is essentially just the Chrome web browser with a few extras. They're typically very cheap, around $200 or $300, and only good for basic computing like browsing the web, watching YouTube videos, and emailing.
Of course, there some caveats. Amazon didn't give the specific number of laptops sold. Plus, Windows devices still make up the bulk of the PC market. Chromebooks are only a tiny sliver of the market.
Finally, Microsoft is getting ready to release a new version of Windows called Windows 10, which is supposed to fix a lot of the gripes people have with Windows 8. Now that Microsoft has stopped support for Windows XP, Windows 10 has the potential to kick off a massive upgrade cycle and reinvigorate the PC market a bit. Microsoft is holding an event on January 21 to unveil even more features in Windows 10.
At the same time, Amazon's stats point to a real trend in personal computing these days. We use phones and tablets for a large portion of our activities. There's little need for a lot of people to spend $1,000 on a computer when all they want to do is surf the web and check Facebook. A $200 Chromebook is good enough.
Heads up if you use Skype on an Android device: A reported flaw in the software allows another Skype user to listen to you through your phone without you even knowing…
Google just released an official statement saying it's going to help Sony and run "The Interview" on YouTube and Google Play. Beginning at 1 PM eastern, the movie can be purchased in HD ($14.99) or rented (for $5.99). It's also available on "www.seetheinterview.com" and on Microsoft's XBox video. It will only be available online in the United States.
Google says Sony first reached out last Wednesday, and it was tempting to hope someone else would volunteer to run the controversial comedy flick. Ultimately Google decided it "could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country."
Here's the memo, posted by David Drummond, Google's SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer.
Last Wednesday Sony began contacting a number of companies, including Google, to ask if we’d be able to make their movie, "The Interview," available online. We'd had a similar thought and were eager to help—though given everything that’s happened, the security implications were very much at the front of our minds.
Of course it was tempting to hope that something else would happen to ensure this movie saw the light of day. But after discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be).
So starting at 10 a.m. PST in the U.S., you can rent or buy "The Interview" on Google Play and YouTube Movies. It will also be available to Xbox Video customers and via www.seetheinterview.com.
In late November, hackers targeted Sony Pictures Entertainment in an unprecedented cyber attack. This led to the exposure of thousands of sensitive emails from Sony executives and threats to release more if the release of the film "The Interview" wasn't canceled.
While this breach was indeed historically devastating, it's not the first successful cyber attack on a big corporate powerhouse.
The folks over at Information Is Beautiful have put together an amazing infographic with the biggest data breaches in recenty history. You can see when the attack happened, who it happened to, and how large the impact was.
Although the Chrome OS platform isn't known as touch-friendly software, there are some touchscreen Chromebooks on the market. And Google has slowly added more features to take advantage of these screens…
Facebook has acquired Wit.ai, a Y Combinator-backed speech recognition startup founded 18 months ago.
left GENBAND some time back to head Imagine as CEO. In a meeting with him at NAB he seemed to be confidently executing on his strategic vision.
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With so many hacks and leaks around, it almost feels like whatever you say over IM or emails are going to be exposed by hackers some day.
Cyber Dust: Backed by Mark Cuban, Cyber Dust is often described as “WhatsApp meets Snapchat.” Its messages self-destruct after 30 seconds, and messages that aren’t viewed within 12 hours also expire and delete forever. Cuban says he has moved all his conversations to Cyber Dust, and is continuing to see a “big surge” in downloads following the recent Sony hack.
