Weekend’s Top 8 roundup – 12th Dec

Second week of December and we see Yahoo in more security problems, malware that tests our morality, Cisco bails on their cloud, Verizon puts out the Samsung fire, Slack gains video calling, virtual assistant gets a hologram to keep us company and Henry Heimlich dies.

Second week of December and we see Yahoo in more security problems, malware that tests our morality, Cisco bails on their cloud, Verizon puts out the Samsung fire, Slack gains video calling, virtual assistant gets a hologram to keep us company and Henry Heimlich dies.

  1. New ransomware tests the morality of those infected
    chrome_2016-12-18_19-27-58.pngThis is a new twist in the cyber extortion world.  We all know about how malware can target a machine and start deleting files if they do not pay a given amount of money to the hackers.  Well there is a way to sidestep this payment – that is to infect 2 other people and if they succumb you will get an unlock key and you are off the hook.

    This will be an interesting test of people’s honesty and faith.  Would you pass?

  2. Verizon will disable Samsung’s Note 7 this month
    screenshot-2016-12-11-at-08-14-46Verizon who previously said they wouldn’t get involved in the deactivation of Samsung’s infamous flame bursting phone have reversed their decision and in an upcoming software update they will disable people from charging the phone.  This will effectively render them useless.

    Only 7% of handsets are still out there after the vast majority exchanged them.  This will hopefully push the last few over the line and stop the airlines from having to issue warnings on each flight.

  3. Amazon’s cloud claims another; Cisco discontinues their cloud
    chrome_2016-12-18_19-37-25.pngCisco’s ‘Intercloud’ which had a $1B budget behind it will be closing its doors in March 2017.  While it has not publicly acknowledged Amazon, it has noted that existing clients will be moving to other public cloud operators.

    This is another big casualty in the cloud war, and while I am a huge AWS supporter, I don’t want it to be the only player in town.  We need competition in this space.

  4. Slack has added video calling to its app
    chrome_2016-09-30_22-00-12Slack, the very popular corporate chat system, has finally added video calling to its suite.   This brings it inline with pretty much every other chat system.  You can do one-2-one video calling, or group calling.

    Once they add desktop sharing, then this will be one of the best tools for teams and really take a huge chunk away from the likes of GoTo Meeting.

  5. Yahoo admits to another earlier attack; 1 billion accounts at risk
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-32-32The oldest property on the Internet block is just not having a good time of it.  They have released details of an earlier attack, circa 2013, where over 1 billion accounts were compromised.  This is in addition to the 2014 hack where 500 million accounts were abused.

    As you know Verizon are trying to close a deal to purchase Yahoo, and while this probably won’t make Verizon to step away, it gives them yet another excuse to drive down the asking price from the $4.7B.

  6. Tech titans, minus one, met with Trump this week
    The country’s new President-elect met with all the tech titans this week in a summit to discuss various things.   The big players were there, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Tesla, etc.  However one player was noticeably absent from this group – namely Jack Dorsey from Twitter.

    The very company that arguably won him the election, was left out because Trump felt they were too small a player. What do you even say to that?!?

  7. Girl in a box is the face of a virtual assistant
    chrome_2016-12-18_19-49-52.pngWe are all starting to get use to the faceless helpers such as Amazon’s Echo, or Apple’s Siri.  Well GateBox have upped the ante here and offered up a hologram to respond to your every move.   While this may first appear creepy, it does make a lot of sense, to have something more contextual to react to instead of just a voice.   The avatar can feedback using actions which will speed up the interactions.

    This I believe is the future of this style AI functions and I can see us all having our own customized avatar that will be with us for life.   Watch this space – more to come here I am sure.

  8. Henry Heimlich, yes that one, has sadly died
    chrome_2016-12-18_19-57-02.pngThe man that invented one of the most famous anti-choking moves in the world, has sadly passed away at the age of 96.   Henry invented the technique in 1974 when he discovered an alarming number of people died while eating out.   He died of natural causes, as opposed to choking himself – the irony would have been too much.

    In honor of the man that saved many, I give you an excellent clip from Eddie Izzard as he performs a stand-up routine around on the technique.

.. the countdown to Christmas day is in full swing and I discovered this seasonal tune from ColdPlay.  I am a big Chris Martin fan, so surprised this one slipped by me a couple of years ago.

Last Weeks Top 8 Tech Stories – 31st Oct

It was the week that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, Facebook and GoPro released their quarterly earnings and Samsung find themselves with some more consumer problems.

It was the week that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (and I had the honor of seeing the team parade the trophy through the streets of Chicago), Facebook and GoPro released their quarterly earnings and Samsung find themselves with some more consumer problems.

  1. FaceBook stocks plunges even though they exceeded all expectations
    chrome_2016-11-06_13-08-48.pngThere seems to be no logic to the stock market at times.  It was Amazon’s last week, now this week it was the turn of FacePaint.  Even with announcing it had blew past last quarters earning numbers by 56%, the investors heard something that made them extremely nervous – they had run out of room to deliver ads – sending the stock down from 130 to 120.

    Though, from the users perspective this could be great news – what you are looking at now, the ads can’t get any worse.   Every cloud eh?

  2. Samsung recalls 2.8 million washing machines as bits start to fly off
    chrome_2016-11-06_13-14-10.pngJust as it is sweeping up the literal ashes of its fire starter Note 7, another safety scandal has beset the South Korean company – its washing machines may have  a tendency to have bits come flying off.  Machines from 2011 and 2016 are being recalled as the number of people to report injury from laundry mounts.

    This couldn’t have come at a worse time.  Quality Assurance seems to be a byword at Samsung.  My concern is that Samsung are also one of the worlds largest ship makers!

  3. NASA completes its Hubble successor, the James Webb telescope
    chrome_2016-11-06_13-28-44.pngCan you believe the Hubble telescope is 26 years old?  So it comes as no surprise that NASA has been spending time (and $8.7B) on creating an update to it, called the James Webb telescope.   This 18 carat gold plated beauty is extremely powerful and makes the current Hubble look like a 1st generation Kodak compared to today’s high end smartphone cameras.

    Though don’t expect to be seeing water on far off planets just yet, they are just going into testing and if all goes well, it will be launched in 2018.

  4. Oracle will close the NetSuite deal this coming Monday
    chrome_2016-11-06_13-44-41.pngIt has taken a while to get this one over the line, but Oracle’s big push into the accountancy SaaS world will be complete this Monday, when it completes the $9.3B purchase of NetSuite.

    It hit a speed bump when it first made the offer back in July when a prominent NetSuite investor thought the share price was under valued.  This is a big piece on the corporate chess board that Oracle has bought.

  5. Trendy camera company, GoPro, has a bad week, shares drop 20%
    chrome_2016-11-06_13-50-22.pngIn another quarterly earnings report, GoPro had a rough week with its investors, as it announced that it is not as bullish on the number of units it expects to sell.  GoPro point towards production problems that are not allowing them to make the volume they want to.

    Investors are not buying that reason though.  It would appear there is only so many sports/active people that want to strap a square camera onto their body.   This is a big upset in the industry of wearables, especially as FitBit faced the same problem a couple of weeks ago.

  6. NetFlix will introduce offline viewing; but not for American’s
    chrome_2016-10-16_11-16-04NetFlix have been talking around the much wanted feature of being able to offline content for viewing in poor-networked areas, on the road and up in the air.  However, before you go running to purchase extra large SSD cards to start downloading, it won’t be for those of us in North America.

    Netflix wants to keep the feature back for those counties that have severe connectivity issues.  Bugger.  Oh well – The Crown will just have to wait until I am grounded.

  7. We finally see Amazon’s Alexa in the flesh; Billy the Fish
    chrome_2016-11-06_14-05-04.pngIs the genius in the physical pairing of the classic Billy Bass talking fish with a Raspberry PI and Amazon’s Alexa?  Or is the genius simply coming up with the idea in the first place?

    If anyone ever doubted the power of the API, then doubt no more.  You will never look at Alexa in the same light again after watching this video of Billy answering Alexa queries.

  8. The future has arrived; bicycle tires that never go flat
    chrome_2016-11-06_14-13-45.pngThere are certain problems you would have thought that should have been solved by now.  The light bulb we never have to change or bicycle tires that never go flat.  Oh wait a minute, scratch that last one, this week we can put a check box against that.

    Nexo Tires have innovated a tire that has the feel of rubber with air, without the air. Therefore it will take thorns, nails and anything else you want to throw at it.  As someone that just last week purchased two new sets of tubes for his mountain bike this couldn’t have been more timely.

 

… and this weeks soundtrack was courtesy of Twenty One Pilots and one of their earlier albums, Vessel, that features the excellent House of Gold track.

Weekly Top 8 Tech Stories – 10th October

This weeks top tech stories for the week of the 10th Oct. Amazon, SalesForce, Netflix, Twitter, Samsung, AOL

Another week in the world of tech and here are the stories that caught my attention on this week starting 10th October 2016.

  1. Samsung pull the plug on its flagship Note 7
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-28-02After all of its woes, and for the first time a manufacturer has done such a step, Samsung have finally stopped making and shipping the Note 7.  Too many flames in that smoke.  This whole incident will cost the company $5B in real money and likely a more in customer goodwill and brand damage.   It is a complete nightmare.

    After recalls and units still bursting into flames, the Department of Transport officially ban people from flying with the phone, there is no recovery from this, so Samsung are looking to S8 due out in the 1st quarter of 2017.   You can be rest assured the likes of Apple, Google, HTC and LG are looking into the quality of their supply chain.

  2. Twitter is the house on the block no one wants to buy
    chrome_2016-10-16_10-37-48The last few weeks had a lot of buzz around the potential buy-out of Twitter by the likes of SalesForce, Google or even Disney.  However, all parties have had a deep look at the in’s and out’s and opted to walk away, citing they aren’t the right fit.

    This is seriously bad news for Twitter, because if those big players are out of the picture, who else is left that thinks they can monetize this medium that fits between the cracks of social media.  Stock price depressed upon this news.

  3. Yahoo fighting for survival on a number of fronts
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-32-32Yahoo is trying to close the sale to Verizon, however Verizon are now looking to walk away from the deal due to the huge data security breach of its user base. If that isn’t enough, those people still using @yahoo.com email accounts, discovered this week that Yahoo pulled the feature to auto-forward emails.   This effectively is locking people into Yahoo and not making it easy for them to migrate off.  As you can appreciate this is infuriating its user base.  Yahoo put it back in again at the end of the week, but its excuse was awfully flimsy to why it pulled the feature in the first place.

    Marissa Mayer looks to be blundering here at the very time Yahoo needs a strong and determined CEO.   She can still save this so the next couple of weeks is going to be crucial.

  4. Germany votes to ride the combustion engine by 2030
    chrome_2016-10-16_10-51-37The home of the automobile (BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche) have voted to stop manufacturing and selling traditional gas powered engines by 2030.  A bold step but their hopes is to speed up the innovation around alternative fuels.  Tesla has already set the bar very high as to what electric cars can do, and Mercedes has declared they will over take Tesla’s innovation in 10 years time.

    The reality here is that they looking to have zero-emission engines.  Be interesting to see if other countries will follow suit here, but one upside is that we are going into a phase of extremely clean air in our cities.

  5. Amazon calls bullshit on Oracle’s cloud claims
    chrome_2016-09-24_05-16-50Oracle has never been shy about its boasts on its own technology.  Do you remember the whole ‘Unbreakable Linux’ claim 15 years ago, until it was proven it was indeed breakable?   Well Larry Ellison is at it again, claiming that Amazon is 20 years behind Oracle’s cloud and up to 24 times slower.   Oh dear.

    Well Amazon, who usually do not dignify such claims by getting involved, fired back at Larry.   Oracle is desperately trying to be relevant in the cloud space and the reality is that they are the ones that are years too late with too little services too late.  Gartner noted that Amazon is 10x bigger than its next 14 competitors combined.  There is a reason for this – it works and works very well.

  6. Morgan Stanley updates its yearly 30 top stocks to look for
    Morgan Stanley released the top stocks that they believe will do best when should the economy slow down a little.  We have Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook in there from the world of big tech.
  7. Netflix will offer offline viewing by year end
    chrome_2016-10-16_11-16-04Speaking of Netflix, it looks like that they can’t dodge the disconnected offline world we live in and are going to finally allow its content to be downloaded to be viewed later.  Applaud Netflix for listening to its paying customers.

    This could actually lessen the bandwidth load as people can download quicker in short bursts and then enjoy the content at their leisure in the air for the example.

  8. The history of the AOL CD
    This week, we seen the head of sales leave AOL, reminding us all that AOL still exists (part of Verizon if you recall).  You have to wonder just how hard a job that is, when you have a brand that people associate most with is dial-up internet access and their infamous CD ROM.

    Mental Floss published a fascinating look back at the history of the CD ROM this week.

 

and finally, this week’s audible distraction was provided by Nate Ruess and his, Grand Romantic album released last summer.

 

Weekly Top 8 Tech Stories – 3rd October

The top stories from the week of the 3rd Oct; Samsung, Amazon, SalesForce, VMware, Yahoo, security and candles!

Here are the stories that caught my attention in the week starting 3rd October 2016.

  1. Samsung’s Note 7 replacement catches fire; plane is evacuated
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-28-02Samsung’s woes just got worse when its flagship Galaxy Note 7 burst into flames, when it was already turned off, onboard a Southwest flight.  The irony here was that this was a replacement phone from the first batch of faulty phones.  Network carriers are now offering free replacements to other handsets.

    Such a shame to see this, as I love my Note 5 and I was looking for to upgrading to the Note 7.  My reason is because the phone is waterproof – though I will need it to be flame proof too!

  2. Yahoo caught spying on its users emails for the NSA
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-32-32This is the first major email provider that has been caught with its fingers in their user’s inbox.   They not only gave data to the NSA, but actually helped the NSA do their job by building filtering software to track for certain keywords. This is not good for Yahoo as they try to close the deal with Verizon, who are seeking a $1B discount off the sale price because of the stolen 500M users details.

    Email is still our primary link to our digital world – we have to trust our email providers safeguard our precious data.  This is 2 major strikes against one of the oldest domains.

  3. Saving babies lives thanks to IoT
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-54-21Internet of Things is creating buzz all over the industry at the moment as we look to track everything, and one company, Owlet Baby Care has taken it to your baby.   They have developed a sock ($250) that monitors the wee ones heart rate and oxygen levels alerting the parents when things significantly change.

    This gives me such joy to see technology coming together so beautifully to save lives in a space where there is much research being done on infant premature death.

  4. Save yourself – how to avoid being scammed online
    chrome_2016-10-08_07-56-35The vast majority of security hacks are down to the infallibility of the human – we’re so easily seduced and tricked into doing things we really shouldn’t.  A very handy info-graphic was released this week to show all the ways scammers try to seduce you and the very simply steps you can do to present.

    Covers all forms of online scams in a very easy digestible format.  Do yourself a favor and take a look, and then either feel educated, or smug you already knew it all.

  5. SalesForce announces an improved IoT offering
    chrome_2016-10-08_08-03-07The big cloud providers are desperate for your IoT data – Amazon, Google, Microsoft and SalesForce have extremely rich offerings to make it real easy to pump your device data to their cloud.   This week was DreamForce in San Francisco, the annual SalesForce love fest, where they announced a number of updates to their Thunder IoT cloud.  The main one is marrying up the device data with core data stored in SalesForce.

    This is a huge step considering how many companies run exclusively inside of SalesForce.  Though price is their achilles heel – running inside SalesForce is not a cheap experience when compared to Amazon.

  6. Dongle technology finally comes to ordinary credit cards
    chrome_2016-10-08_08-17-06.pngI am sure you have seen the security dongles that many banks issue for online access to your account.  They are small devices that continually generate numbers that you read off and type in to gain access.   This technology has now come to credit cards, with France trialing the card that updates the 3 digit number on the back every hour.

    While this will complicate our lives a little more, not being able to save the card online for fast purchasers as we will be forced to look at the card and type in the ever-changing 3 digits, it is a small price to pay to be immune from hacks and data dumps.

  7. VMware throws in the towel; joins Amazon’s cloud
    chrome_2016-09-24_05-16-50VMware, recently part of Dell, was the early pioneer of virtualization technology that allowed the cloud world to even exist.  Like the Yahoo’s of its era, VMware has struggled to compete with the mammoth Amazon offering and this week, we learned that they have finally decided to stop fighting it and now offer their software to run within the Amazon cloud.

    This is a huge admission that their own cloud offering is failing to take off and instead of losing out on the customer relationship altogether they have wisely decided to give their clients what they want.

  8. Keep that new Apple Mac feeling going longer with the Mac candle
    chrome_2016-10-08_08-24-52Nothing better than that new smell that comes with a car or even a house, but what about the smell from a newly booted Apple Mac?   Well for those diehard Apple fanboys they can keep that smell going longer, thanks to a new candle that burns the scent of a new Mac.

    Naturally, special order at the moment, until such times that Yankee Candle decides they need a whole range of ‘new unboxing scents’.

 

and finally, this week’s soundtrack was Passenger’s new album.