Apple says new wireless technology is better than Bluetooth

Now that Apple has pronounced the end of the headphone jack, the company is aiming to prove that it can do better than the existing wireless options.

At its much-hyped event in San Francisco on Wednesday, the iPhone maker introduced a cordless earbud that it claims is more power efficient than Bluetooth devices. AirPods, as they're called, have their own communications chip, Apple's Senior Vice President Phil Schiller said on stage.

"It makes no sense to tether ourselves with cables to our mobile devices," Schiller said. "Until someone takes on these challenges, that's what we'll do."

The iPhone 7 will be the first smartphone without a headphone jack, marking Apple's latest effort to strip hardware from devices. There are plenty of Bluetooth options on the market, including from Apple's Beats business, but the products have been criticized for their high price and spotty quality.

Read More@ http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/07/apple-says-new-wireless-technology-is-better-than-bluetooth.html

Apple’s AirPods do use Bluetooth and they don’t require an iPhone 7

When Apple introduced its AirPods on Wednesday, the company went on and on about the new Apple-made chip on the inside, but said little about the technology that delivers the sound to the wireless earbuds from the iPhone.

It turns out Apple isn’t using some Bluetooth-like wireless technology, as rumors suggested, but rather Bluetooth itself.

Apple, Google remain most valuable brands

New Delhi: Silicon Valley is home to the two most valuable brands in the world. For the fourth consecutive year, Apple and Google topped the annual Interbrand Best Global Brands Report, released Wednesday.

The report estimated the value of brand Apple at $178.1 billion, up 5% from last year. Value of brand Google was estimated at $133.2 billion, an increase of 11% from last year.

Beverages brand Coca-Cola stood third in the list at an estimated brand value of $73.1 billion, a 7% dip in brand value from last year. The top 10 brands in the list included Microsoft, Toyota, IBM, Samsung, Amazon, Mercedes-Benz and GE.

According to the list by the global brand consultancy, the world’s five top growing brands included Facebook, Amazon, LEGO, Nissan and Adobe. Brand Facebook witnessed the maximum increase in value at $32.5 billion, an increase of 48%, followed by Amazon.com (33%), LEGO (25%), Nissan (22%) and Adobe (21%), according to the report.

Smart wallet shuns NFC in favor of in-house magnetic flux tech

From smart cards to smartphone-based payment services, we've seen plenty of high-tech digital wallets vying for the attention of tech-savvy consumers. The Spendwallet is the latest of the bunch, an all-in-one device that opts for an in-house magnetic field technology instead of NFC.

Upgrading India’s cyber security architecture

Two things set aside India’s digital spaces from that of major powers such as the United States and China: design and density. India is a net information exporter. Its information highways point west, carrying with them the data of millions of Indians. This is not a design flaw, but simply reflects the popularity of social media platforms and the lack of any serious effort by the Indian government to restrict the flow of data. Equally important is the density of India’s cyberspace. Nearly 500 million Indians use the Internet today, but they do not access the Internet from the same devices. Apple’s market share in the U.S., for instance, is 44 per cent, but iPhones account for less than 1 per cent in India. The massive gap between the security offered by the cheapest phone in the Indian market and a high-end smartphone makes it impossible for regulators to set legal and technical standards for data protection.

With little control over the hardware used by Indian Internet users as well as the information that is carried through them, India’s national security architecture faces a difficult task in cyberspace. India’s infrastructure is susceptible to four kinds of digital intrusions: espionage, which involves intruding into systems to steal information of strategic or commercial value; cybercrime, referring to electronic fraud or other acts of serious criminal consequence; attacks, intended at disrupting services or systems for a temporary period; and war, caused by a large-scale and systematic digital assault on India’s critical installations.

Indian authorities have spent the lion’s share of their resources tackling localised cybercrime while responding to major attacks on a case-by-case basis. Recognising the strategic dimensions of cyberspace, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) created the position of the National Cyber Security Coordinator in 2014, a welcome first step. There is, however, no national security architecture today that can assess the nature of cyber threats and respond to them effectively. India’s civilian institutions have their own firefighting agencies, and the armed forces have their own insulated platforms to counter cyber attacks.

Read More: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/upgrading-indias-cyber-security-architecture/article8327987.ece

Encryption isn’t at stake, the FBI knows Apple already has the desired key

Apple has been served with a court order at the FBI's request, demanding that it assist the government agency with unlocking an iPhone 5C that was used by Syed Rizwan Farook. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 and injured 24 in an attack in San Bernardino, California on December 2, 2015.

Mobile wallet industry plans to cash in on big 2016

American consumers will have more choices in 2016 for how they make purchases with their smart phones as big banks and retailers vie for market share against tech giants Apple and Google.

Companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wal-Mart Stores are rolling out their own products just as mobile-payment apps are catching on. By 2019, eMarketer estimates, the total value of transactions made by tapping a phone on an in-store terminal will reach $210 billion, up from $8.7 billion in 2015. For banks and retailers, that presents an opportunity to take on Apple Pay and Google’s Android Pay – and maybe save on transaction fees to boot.

“Every one of the top 11 issuers of credit and debit cards by the end of next year will have their own version of Pay,” said Richard Crone, chief executive officer of Crone Consulting LLC. “Same for retailers. The big losers are going to be the ones with nothing.”

At stake is a fight over money and consumer data: Retailers loathe paying fees to accept credit cards in their stores and have long sought better data on what their customers buy, and when. Banks similarly dislike paying fees for Apple Pay transactions. Thus, financial institutions and retailers have incentive to push out their own mobile-payment services.

Here are some of the mobile wallets that will compete for consumers’ attention in 2016:


∎ JPMorgan Chase plans to introduce its own mobile wallet in mid-2016. Mobile-banking apps are already used by more than half of U.S. smart phone owners with bank accounts, according to the latest Federal Reserve survey. Chase plans to pre-load cards for 94 million customer accounts “so the customer doesn’t have to do anything but accept the terms and conditions,” Gordon Smith, CEO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase, said at the Money 20/20 conference in October.

∎ Wal-Mart will begin accepting payments through its mobile app in all U.S. stores in the first half of 2016. About 22 million Walmart shoppers already use the app, which compares prices and offers discounts on items and will now let customers store their credit- and debit-card information.

∎ Merchant Customer Exchange – a consortium founded in August 2012 by merchants including Wal-Mart and Target Corp. – is testing its CurrentC app with about 200 merchants in Columbus, Ohio. The service is not yet available nationwide.

Read More: http://www.concordmonitor.com/news/nation/world/20305545-95/mobile-wallet-industry-plans-to-cash-in-on-big-2016

Mobile payments ecosystem comes of age in India

Although being young with only a dozen mobile wallet players in the field, India's mobile payment ecosystem has witnessed steady growth and a rapid adoption of path-breaking innovations as people started realising the benefits of technology in online payments space in 2015 -- the most popular being the "mobile wallet".

Major economies across the world have been witnessing "cashless" transactions, with the industry, estimated to be around $300 billion in 2013, making inroads in many countries in the last five years. Companies such as Apple, Alipay, Google's Android Pay and Samsung Pay have already put their own solutions in place.

In India, there are around 12 mobile wallet players that include Paytm, MobiKwik, Oxigen, Citrus Pay, Freecharge, Zaakpay, ItzCash, Airtel Money, M-Pesa, and mRupee, and their combined customer base is said to be more than 125 million. Of this, Paytm alone has a lion's share of over 50 million.

According to a study by research and consultancy firm RNCOS, the current size of the mobile wallet market in India stands at about $53 million (350 crore Indian rupees) and is estimated to touch around $183 million (1,210 crore Indian rupees) by 2019. Cash transactions account for 38 percent, while recharge and bill payments account for 30 percent of the total market.

However, there are minor irritants such as failed transactions forcing the online shoppers to go through the tedious process of filling in details, and the lack of awareness among people. But leading payment gateway company PayUbiz has launched a new feature called Magic Retry, which enables the consumers to retry a failed transaction by simply picking up from the point where the last error message appeared.

Magic Retry is specifically designed for mobile online payment and is said to be first of its kind in the digital and electronic payments ecosystem in the country.

Head of Business at PayUbiz Rahul Kothari said that though most of the online shopping was taking place over mobile devices, online transactions through mobile phones were still susceptible to payment failure due to network signal loss or a random error. "With the launch of our new feature, the usual hassles which have been traditionally associated with mobile payments are things of past," he added.

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/article/mobile-payments-ecosystem-comes-of-age-in-india/

3D Cameras Give Computers Brains, Much Bigger Brains

When the world shifted away from film-based cameras, digital cameras started to change how we interact with one another. Think selfies and social media, for starters. What if you could capture in 3D and view all angles of an object or person? That is partly what the Google GOOGL +0.00% Cardboard project allows in a virtual reality/augmented reality sort-of-way, with your smartphone. But you don’t need a special viewer with new 3D technology.

This video gives you an idea of what’s coming when you have a 3D camera — this particular scene above was done by Patrick Eleazar from Realidyne, using a GoPro Spherical cam setup (and some post-processing work). If you place your cursor in the video, you can move around in the scene — try it - drag left, right, up or down and you will see a near-360 degree view. Within his YouTube channel, there are several others to give you an idea of what’s possible in 3D.

3D cameras, to date, have not been widely adopted, but as I suggested in Is The 3D Camera Tipping Point Here? Apple, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Sony, we are about to see and experience more change. Partly, I believe we are going to see consumer adoption, thanks to devices like the Kinect, and now, Orbbec with its Astra Pro (which depends on being connected to a computer via USB) and Persee, a 3D camera-computer (which does not need a computer to operate).

Most of the 3D devices, gesture capture and motion tracking types, are receiving and processing only through a more powerful computing device – your laptop or the Xbox gaming console. Persee is different in that it has an onboard computer, charged to process what you are seeing and capturing, in real time. Arguably, this is a shift.

Read More: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2015/10/28/3-d-cameras-give-computers-brains-much-bigger-brains/

Apple, Google and Microsoft: weakening encryption lets the bad guys in

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Twitter, Facebook and 56 other technology companies have joined together to reject calls for weakening encryption saying it would be “exploited by the bad guys”.

After Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook’s claims that “any backdoor is a backdoor for everyone”, the Information Technology Industry Council, which represents 62 of the largest technology companies worldwide, said: “Encryption is a security tool we rely on everyday to stop criminals from draining our bank accounts, to shield our cars and airplanes from being taken over by malicious hacks, and to otherwise preserve our security and safety.”

The debate over encryption, which has become the bedrock of the internet used by almost every transmission that needs to be secure and increasingly those that don’t, has erupted after the terrorist attacks on Paris.

The Information Technology Industry Council’s chief executive, Dean Garfield, said: “Weakening security with the aim of advancing security simply does not make sense.”


Tech industry groups urge US to avoid policies that would weaken encryption
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End-to-end encrypted communications mean that only the sender and receiver can view the contents of the message, which governments say has put intelligence services at a disadvantage.

Read More : http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/23/apple-google-microsoft-weakening-encryption-back-doors