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Submission + - Was Apple's strong quarter built on iPhone upgrades? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Customers upgrading from earlier versions of the iPhone may have fueled Apple's strong financial performance in the previous quarter. If Apple created many new iPhone customers, the growth would be accompanied by a spike in app revenues. But there wasn't one.

Submission + - Google stopped making Glassholes, not Google Glass (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: When people who didn't code got their hands on Glass, things started to go very wrong. Glass made this group feel specially chosen and entitled – that they were somehow Google Glass ambassadors. And this group wasn't made up of just reserved software developer types; it included a disproportionate share of extroverted, attention-seeking publicity hounds. Hence the term "Glasshole."

Submission + - Smartwatches: Moto 360 takes top place – Samsung leads brands (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Market researcher Canalys reports another spike in wearables, Gartner predicts health and fitness wearables will disappoint in 2015.

Last quarter, the Moto 360 topped the list of smartwatches, taking 15% of all shipments, according to Canalys. While Samsung’s offerings netted 52% of shipments, the overall category of wearable bands grew by 37% last quarter. Canalys credited the Moto 360’s success to its "appealing design," which gave it an edge over other Android Wear products.

Compelling physical design is never a disadvantage, but in this case Motorola having sidestepped having to force consumers to embrace both an entirely new concept of wrist-worn hardware and a behavioral change driven by wearable software.

Submission + - Don't burn CurrentC at the Apple Pay heresy stake just yet (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Barely hatched and condemned as the Anti-Apple Pay, CurrentC could improve shopping experiences in the microcosm of a retailer’s brand in ways that Apple Pay’s brand macrocosm can’t. It’s premature to burn CurrentC at the Apple heresy stake.

Indisputably, Apple Pay is at least more secure than the mag-stripe plastic credit cards. Who benefits from Apple Pay security? The credit card companies, banks, and to a limited extent the retailers that are liable. Consumers aren’t responsible for any fraud whatsoever.

Submission + - Get to know Voxis, the cybercrime platform for evading fraud detection (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Almost like buying into a franchise, criminals outsource building fake ecommerce sites and buy software to beat fraud detection systems.

The black hat hackers who exploit network security flaws to steal credit card data turn around sell that data on underground electronic black markets. Criminals, often referred to as bad actors, buy the card data and monetize it with fake ecommerce transactions.

Standing in the way are the fraud detection systems, which prevent the bad actors from simply spraying large amounts of card data at the credit card gateways. These fraud detection systems are designed to look for transactions that resemble human behavior, and to block those that appear to come from automated systems created to monetize large amounts of stolen credit card data.

For cybercriminals, a new platform called Voxis works around the detection systems.

Submission + - Apple Pay vs. CurrentC: Which will retailers choose? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Expensive for retailers, Apple Pay, like credit cards, offers little more than customer convenience. Saving the consumer the time it takes to put down his or her iPhone to pull out a credit card is Apple Pay’s only advantage.

Apple Pay, like Uber, is a good product with a great user experience, but unlike Uber, Apple Pay is not disruptive. Apple Pay won’t reduce costs or improve efficiency in the credit card payments industry, which taxes merchants 2% to 5% of top-line revenues to pay transaction fees. Merchants’ acceptance of Apple Pay is for their consumers’ convenience, no different than accepting cash, checks, and credit cards.

Submission + - Nest to build out IoT with acquisition of Revolv's home hub engineering team (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: The next step for IoT in the home will enable devices from different manufacturers to communicate with each other.

Spending $3.2 billion for Nest in January, followed by a $555 million buyout of Dropcam in June and last week's acquisition of Revlov for an undisclosed amount, Google is moving quickly into the home Internet of Things (IoT) market.

Submission + - How Sony, Intel, and Unix made Apple's Mac a PC competitor (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: In 2007, Sony’s supply chain lessons, the network effect from the shift to Intel architecture, and a better OS X for developers combined to renew the Mac’s growth. The network effects of the Microsoft Wintel ecosystem that Rappaport explained 20 years ago in the Harvard Business Review are no longer a big advantage. By turning itself into a premium PC company with a proprietary OS, Apple has taken the best of PC ecosystem, but avoided taking on the disadvantages.

Submission + - Is the HTC Eye the Nexus 6? - Is RE Camera a new category? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Perhaps the Eye will be a lower-cost option to the HTC One, like the iPhone 5C is to the 5S. The usual mobile carriers are supported, with the exclusion of Verizon Wireless. Verizon opted out of the Nexus 5 even though the internal radio hardware supports it. Perhaps the HTC Eye will be the new Nexus 6.

Submission + - The HTC Zoe ecosystem, a short automated video editor and cloud service (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: HTC debuts Zoe, short automated video editor and cloud service. The Zoe short automated video editor and cloud service is HTC’s chance at creating a missing ingredient — an ongoing open ecosystem that keeps Android and iOS users engaged with the company between phone upgrades.

Zoe fits somewhere between Instagram’s Hyperlapse, which processes videos into short time-lapsed video, and Google Auto Awesome Stories,

A few details about the Zoe app and cloud service, users can combine videos automatically into a composite video of 7, 15, and 30 seconds in length. No surprise, the video lengths align with Snapchat, Hyperlapse, and Facebook. An algorithm chooses how to edit the videos into a short series of highlights. After the composite video has been created, it can be set to music with another algorithm aligning the music by beat with the video scene transitions. Themes with Instagram-like filters and special transitions can be applied to the video mashup.

Friends can be invited to collaborate and add their own video highlights to the video mashup uploaded to the Zoe cloud service.

Submission + - Highfive wants to become the Nest of B2B video conferencing

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Conference calls are notoriously unproductive, and one company wants to fix that with simple videoconferencing. Today, Highfive announced its video collaboration cloud service and purpose-built camera intent on inspiring business users to jump into face-to-face video conferences more often.

Highfive CEO Shan Sinha wants to change this, along with company culture, by replacing conference calls with conference-room-wide video calls integrated with a cloud-based video collaboration application and an integrated camera, speaker, and microphone.

The company has raised $13.4 million from investors such as Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Box founder and CEO Aaron Levie, Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst Partners

Submission + - Can't fix it, can't sell it: HP gives PC business to investors (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett-Packard’s breakup into two companies was the company's third choice to save itself. The first two – a turnaround and the sale of the business – haven’t worked. According to Re/Code, HP approached both Dell and Lenovo to acquire the business and were rebuffed. Under PC and printer chief Dion Weisler, the business unit has started growing again, but it appears that HP's boat has been raised by the incoming tide of a new cycle of PC growth, which Richard Windsor of Radio Free Mobile once predicted. But in the longer term, the PC business isn’t a growth business.

Submission + - VoLTE - Once again Apple copies Android (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Apple and carriers are getting a lot attention with iPhone 6 bringing HD quality voice calls.

In reality, it’s the first Apple device consumers can use to both make phone calls and use the internet at fast 4G LTE speeds.

Most Samsung smartphones were VoLTE-enabled since the Samsung Galaxy S III, announced almost two and a half years ago. AT&T introduced VoLTE with the Samsung S4 Mini last May.

Android users have long enjoyed simultaneous voice calls and the 4G internet because most Android smartphones have two chips and two antennas, one for the 4G mobile data network and the other for the old GSM/UMTS and CDMA2000 mobile voice networks

Submission + - Will Apple's iWatch be smart or dumb? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: Looking back at the smartwatches and activity trackers built by others begs the question — will the iWatch be a smart microprocessor-based device to which Apple’s developers can add value, like Android Wear watches from Samsung, LG, and Motorola? Or will it be a dumb-but-power-efficient microcontroller device like the Fitbit or Jawbone?

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