If you were someone who worried that Facebook was taking over the world, one market segment at a time, it would seem that the smartphone front is safe, for now. As part of the launch of its new pseudo smartphone OS “Facebook Home” back in April, the social media giant had also announced a partnership with HTC to sell the “HTC First” with the application suite pre-installed, essentially creating the official Facebook Phone. Unfortunately, Facebook’s foray into pseudo-OS development received a mostly tepid to slightly-negative response from the public, and HTC’s First faired little better. According to some analysts, as few as 15,000 units have been sold since it’s launch.
AT&T, betting big on the First and Facebook, appears to have a serious overstock problem due to the lackluster market response and has slashed the phone’s price to $.99 (with contract, of course) from the original launch price of $99. Unfortunately for the carrier, they signed a display contract that requires them to continue providing valuable shelf space for the First, despite the phone’s lack of popularity, so the price slash is an obvious desparate move to clear space for better selling phones.
What this means for you:
It’s too early to make any sort of prediction, but Facebook seems to be entering the awkward stage of life as it struggles to find relevance with an increasingly cynical/sophisticated user base while pursuing profit for shareholders disappointed by flops like the Facebook Home app. One of the interesting dynamics that is still very poorly understood is the changing demographic of Facebook’s core audience. The same population segment that helped Facebook rocket to world dominance is now entering into a distinctly different phase of life (college students are now parents and employees), and the next generation of users are young enough to view Facebook as the place where their moms and dads (and grandparents!) “do the ‘net.” The next generation of internet users are very fragmented and intent on experimenting with new platforms that rise and fall with rapidity, and many view Facebook as yesterday’s news. Still, with billions of users worldwide, Facebook has a long way to fall before any other platform, no matter how new or exciting can ever fill its shoes.
![robohand-indiegogo-3d-printed-hand-2[1].jpg](https://c2techs.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/robohand-indiegogo-3d-printed-hand-2[1]-460x260_c.jpg "robohand-indiegogo-3d-printed-hand-2[1].jpg")
The media has been aflutter with the progress on the highly controversial 3D-printed pistol, the Liberator, but has paid relatively little attention to the other side of 3D-printing which is intent on helping others. On the other side of the world in South Africa, Richard Van As, a master carpenter has collaborated with Ivan Owen, a Seattle, Washington prop maker to build an affordable prosthetic hand that has the potential to revolutionize the world of prosthetics.
Dubbed Robohand, this concept came into being after 3d-printer manufacturer MakerBot stepped in to help Van As and Owen as they struggled with the prototyping process by donating a pair of Replicator 2 3d-printers to their efforts. The devices helped the 2 men reduce the prototyping and testing cycle down from weeks to minutes, thanks in part to the mechanical speed of the Replicators, as well as the ability to collaborate digitally through MakerBot’s Thingiverse.org website to exchange designs and changes instantly. The result: a simple, affordable (less than $200 in materials) prosthetic that has already helped several children gain function in missing hands due to Amniotic Band Syndrome.
What this means for you:
3d-printing has been around for several years, but has only been hitting the front pages of mainstream media because of the controversy surrounding the creation of weapons that have the potential to avoid metal detectors. As with most things that are as disruptive as 3d-printing, the potential for both good and bad will be thoroughly explored by humans. Devices like MakerBot’s Replicators use materials and plans that are easy to acquire, which means things like the Robohand (and yes, the Liberator) can be quickly created just about anywhere in the world. Unlike the invention of the nuclear bomb, 3d-printing is more akin to the invention of the printing press by democratizing its potential for the masses. We can only hope that the creation and spread of Robohand-type devices overwhelm our more destructive and violent tendencies.
Image courtesy of 3ders.org
If you’ve spent any time on the internet lately, you likely know that Google’s latest innovation, “Glass” is already in the hands of the media and developers, and will soon be available to the general public. While the concept of wearable computers is not new – the earliest prototypes appeared over 30 years ago – Google’s sleek device has been giving privacy advocates fits since it was announced. Now that Glass is actually appearing “in the wild” as developers and media put the device through its paces, it’s getting pre-emptively banned by businesses, and in some cases, entire states are seeking to regulate its use.
As you might imagine, a device that can (relatively) unobtrusively record video and audio of anything in sight of a Glass wearer, on top of being able to access the vast data stores of Google’s indexed information, has many people understandably concerned. Cameras and recording devices are already banned in places like Las Vegas casinos, and organizations like Caesers Entertainment have extended their policies to explicitly include Google Glass in anticipation of the device’s arrival, as have numerous bars and other businesses, some merely for the publicity, but many for serious privacy concerns for their patrons and businesses.
What this means for you:
Whether or not you ever intend to use Google Glass or something similar, you’ve already been through a social revolution, and you might not have realized it. Remember when cellphones first started appearing with cameras? Remember when laptops first started shipping with webcams built into the lid? Devices that can be used to record others without their knowledge have been used in modern society for decades. Google is not the first to open this particular Pandora’s Box – the cows have long since fled the barn. Google Glass is fairly easy to spot now, but the technology will only improve (read: get smaller and harder to spot) and we will soon have wearable computers that are completely indistinguishable from a regular pair of glasses or sunglasses. We will get to a point that we will not be able to tell whether someone is digitally augmented, and societal conventions will have to adopt to the new standard, just like they have with smartphone cameras.
Hackers have compromised a Department of Energy website, leveraging a previously undiscovered security flaw in version 8 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. IE 8, which is now 2 versions back from Microsoft’s most recent release (v10), is used by almost a quarter of all Internet Explorer users, and is most commonly found on Windows XP computers. The “watering hole” style attack is thought to be the work of Chinese hackers based upon the malware used and the command and control protocols used. The hacked website is used by the DOE to disseminate information on radiation-based illnesses, leading analysts to believe that this was a targeted attack aimed at compromising the computers of government employees working with nuclear weapons and reactors, ostensibly for the purposes of gaining access to classified information and systems.
What this means for you:
This is the first instance of this particular exploit being discovered, but given the publicity and Microsoft’s well-known inertia in issuing security updates for it’s older products, there is a chance that if you are still using IE 8 you could be at risk. Microsoft recommends upgrading to a new version of Internet Explorer, but in the event that you are unable to upgrade due to your business requirements or application limitations, Microsoft has issued the following guidance for working around the security flaw until it can be patched:
- Set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to “High” to block ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones
- Configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and Local intranet security zone
- Add sites that you trust to the Internet Explorer Trusted sites zone to minimize prompt disruption
As I’m not a Microsoft employee, I can also recommend switching browsers to Chrome or Firefox. Both issue security updates much more rapidly, and though they are not free of security flaws and zero-day exploits, both browsers typically fair better than IE in terms of overall security strength.
It’s commonly said that you either “get” Twitter or you don’t, and there is a small percentage of folks (your’s truly included) that understand Twitter but prefer other social media platforms. Regardless of where you stand on Twitter, there are millions using it to send billions of tweets, and lest you think all those pithy (and not so pithy) thoughts are gathering virtual dust on some Library of Congress archive server, researchers at University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab have created a website that uses English-language tweets to guage the overall happiness level of the (English-speaking) world’s population.
Based upon the usage of certain words that are scored on a scale of 1 (sad) to 9 (happy), The Hedonometer crunches the numbers into a visual representation of the “world’s” happiness on any given day, going as far back as October 2008. Based upon the statistics so far, Christmas Day appears to be the happiest day of any year, and you can spot obvious low points as well, including the recent bombings of the Boston Marathon. The creators of the site plan to include other sources moving forward, including text from the New York Times, Google Trends, the BBC and Bit.ly.
What this means for you:
On a purely practical level, there is probably not much for the average human on Hedonometer.org other than intellectual stimulation. Sadly, UV’s researchers haven’t revealed the secret of happiness on a personal or global level, but their research and results do illustrate the point that many, including myself, like to make about living in the digital age: everything we do on the internet is being recorded, and in most cases, it’s being analyzed. Sometimes that analysis is academic (ie. Hedonometer.org) but as for-profit companies (think: Facebook) start to crunch the massive amounts of data they have on their servers, our collective behaviors, moods and (most importantly) needs will merely become an exercise in big-data analysis. While human welfare and profit aren’t mutually exclusive, the latter is not known for being universally conducive to the former, especially when the leaders (or stakeholders) of those companies view profit and happiness as a zero-sum game.
According to BlackBerry’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, tablets will lose their market dominance in 5 years, to be replaced by, presumably, smartphones like the BlackBerry, and larger monitors. Assuming he is referring to the business space, it’s hard to decide whether his prediction is some parts sour grapes – BlackBerry’s own tablet, the Playbook, was a market failure and nearly bankrupted the company – and some parts wishful, magical thinking to self-fulfill their own business goals, which is to supplant tablets (dominated by the iPad and to a lesser extent Android) with their devices. As is usually the case with controversial predictions, Heins’ prognostications have roots in fact. Apple’s profits have been declining, as has its margins on the iPad, giving analysts cause to speculate on the longevity of the platform.
What this means for you:
Unless you are about to make a substantial investment in bringing tablets into your business processes (and even if you are), Heins’ predictions are likely to have little impact on you. BlackBerry wants to be considered a competitor in the mobile device space, and as they can’t compete on the tablet level, the traditional business tactic one can take in this situation is to attempt to invalidate the competition’s strategy by influencing the market. “Tablet’s will be dead in five years. Everyone will be using BlackBerries,” makes for good headlines, but any student of technology history will tell you that smarter technology leaders and innovators got more wrong than right when attempting to predict the future.
Shoppers enjoy online purchasing for a variety of reasons, but the lack of sales tax is probably highest on that list of perks. That may soon change due to a revamped Internet Tax bill re-introduced last week on the Senate floor, and one which could be voted on as early as this week. The “Marketplace Fairness Act“, penned by Sentor Mike Enzi (R., Wyoming), essentially requires any internet business with more than $1M in online sales to collect taxes on the US’s estimated 9600 state and local taxing authorities, something that brick-and-mortar businesses don’t have to do, even if sales come from across state lines (and presumably through channels other than the internet). Opponents of this bill state that this places an unfair burden on smaller internet businesses, as calculating and processing taxes for nearly ten-thousand different localities presents a logistical nightmare with which even large companies struggle. Obviously, brick-and-mortar companies back this bill, especially the big ones – Wal-Mart is a vocal backer, but even online retail giant, Amazon.com has thrown in their support. It may surprise no one that they have a dog in this race – Amazon offers a subscription-based tax-processing service to online retailers.
What this means for you:
If you sell more than $1 million in taxable goods on the internet to customers in the United States, you might need to look at some serious upgrades for your online store in the near future. On top of the huge headache this creates for your website administrator and programmers, this may also complicate your shopping cart process, and your customers may be in for a shock when they discover that their online shopping isn’t paying off like it used to. Opponents say that this bill will throw a wet-blanket on online shopping, and could be a huge damper on the struggling American economy. The bill hasn’t been made law yet – but it may behoove you to find out where your local government representative stands on this issue.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Note: image has been digitally altered by Chris Woo.
Though they haven’t officially confirmed it, Microsoft’s update to Windows 8 (codenamed “Blue”) is supposedly set to give users back their “Start” menu and the ability to boot into the more familiar “desktop” mode of the OS, as opposed to using the tile-based interface that Windows 8 boots into currently. According to Microsoft, the impetus to remove the Start menu from Windows 8 was provided by user interface data gathered automatically by previous versions of Windows, but it’s fairly clear that whatever the data shows, customer feedback has been fairly pointed about the lack of the Start menu: Users want it back.
What this means for you:
The developer preview of Windows 8.1 is set to be released in June of this year, and should be publicly available in August, according to Microsoft’s timeline, so we won’t know for sure for at least another month as to whether Windows users will actually have their wishes granted. Many analysts point out that it’s likely the Start menu won’t be what everyone remembers – current opinion is the returning menu will actually only be a button to launch the Windows 8 Start page, ie. the screenful of tiles that everyone’s been avoiding by switching to “desktop” mode, which emulates the Windows interface from version 7 on back. These concessions are likely in response to lackluser sales figures and slumping PC sales, possibly in response to the general public’s reluctance to move to Windows 8.
The controversial CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) proposal has passed committee review and is heading to the Senate for a vote, despite a clear warning from the Obama administration that it would VETO the proposed law. Unlike the equally controversial SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) backed by media companies and defeated through vigorous and coordinated protests from the technology industry, CISPA has divided the technology industry. Many large companies like IBM, AT&T, Oracle and Verizon backing it, while other, equally sizeable companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google and dozens of activist organizations oppose the bill on the grounds that it doesn’t do enough to protect the privacy of US citizens.
What this means for you:
In case you are confused as to how CISPA might impact you or your business personally, here’s a summation of what the bill proposes: This law would allow telecommunication companies to share data with governmental agencies for the purposes of combatting terrorist or criminal activity, overriding any local laws that would prohibit such sharing. According to supporters, law-abiding citizens should have nothing to worry about, but opponents contend that on top of very weak protections for citizen privacy, there is nothing in the bill that would protect citizens from potential abuse by the various intelligence agencies who could amass an inconceivably comprehensive database from the information gained by CISPA. Regardless of which side of the privacy fight you stand on, it behooves you as a US citizen to be aware of where you stand on this issue, as well as encouraging everyone around you to participate as they can in helping our government come to terms with this problem.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Just when we were getting flight attendants to relax the electronic device restrictions on flights, a German security consultant has demonstrated a real-world hack and takeover of an airplane’s critical guidance and control systems using an app he built that runs on an Android smartphone. Hugo Teso of n.run, who is also a trained commercial pilot, demonstrated the exploit at the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam, and has developed a framework and app as a means to illustrate just how poor the current state of aviation security actually is. Teso designed the framework to be unusable outside his simulation environment, but he maintains that his environment mirrors technology that is currently in use throughout the aviation industry. On top of being able to completely own the Flight Management System (sometimes referred to as the “Autopilot”) of an aircraft, Teso’s app, named “PlaneSploit” demonstrated how, once complete control of the aircraft’s control systems was obtained, the actual operation of a flying aircraft could be remotely controlled from a smartphone.
Teso has carefully kept his research private, and has been working closely with the aircraft industry to help them close the gap on the many security vulnerabilities that exist in the thousands of aircraft in use today. Even still, it’s possible that other security analysts could uncover the same exploitable weaknesses in avionics platforms, and perhaps behave less altruistically than Teso. Also keep in mind that the autopilot systems can be manually overridden and the aircraft flown “by hand” using backup analog instrumentation. The trick, Teso reminds us, is that unless the pilot knows the plane has been hacked, he won’t know to take over control until the damage has already been done.
What this means for you:
Unless you are a commercial pilot, or someone of influence in the airline industry, I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about this except continue to raise awareness with everyone around you about technology security. Even though I sincerely doubt we’ll see any real-world plane hijackings via smartphone any time soon, now that this Pandora’s Box has been opened, it may never be shut again.