These cutting edge companies rely heavily upon mobile and cloud technologies and a wide variety of online services and platforms.
which does marketing, technology and data solutions, was founded as a remote company in 2001. It now has 64 team members working from 24 remote locations.
the president and founder of 10up Inc. 10up is a website design and development company with 115 team members working remotely from 20 locations.
While most remote companies reported using phone and video conferencing to conduct job interviews, some used other means.
Automattic, the web development company that operates Wordpress. com and has more than 325 remote workers,
Origin Eight, a web and application development company with 25 remote workers, takes time to build culture.
and quarterly check ins to make sure everyone is on track with their core job responsibilities and individual goals,
Scrapinghub, a data and information extraction company with 107 remote workers, focuses on motivation over productivity.
& Gas Efficiency Battelle has developed a data analytics platform to increase oil and gas industry efficiency.
and machine learning methods originally developed for data-heavy applications such as national security and the healthcare industry to the oil and gas industry,
#Quick Key integrates with SIS Powerschool for data flow Quick Key, the mobile assessment software that targets student performance and aims to eliminate hand grading,
has announced a collaboration with Pearson through an independent software vendor (ISV) partnership agreement that hopes to help educators quickly score assessments using Quick Key mobile scanner app
and instantly upload results to the Powerschool student information system. uick Key and Powerschool are a perfect match,
said Kyle Hansen, Powerschool Administrator at American Leadership Academy in Spanish Fork, Utah. hen I found Quick Key last year,
tracking and analyzing student assessment data has become truly effortless. he integration enables educators and administrators to take action based on real-time data,
to identify which students need help and which lessons need to be taught re. Hours previously spent hand-grading assignments can now be spent focusing on how to best meet individual studentsneeds. ntegrating Quick Key with Powerschool is a testament to our belief in service,
15-year veteran teacher and cofounder of Quick Key Mobile. his collaboration puts the power of teaching back into the capable hands of teachers.
the most widely used web-based student information system, supports more than 13 million students globally. Powerschool enables today educators to make timely decisions that impact student performance
Powerschool users will be able to access their Quick Key Dashboard from within the Powerschool dashboard, and vice versa.
Data, including class rosters and student assessment scores, can be transferred easily from one platform to the other.
Districts can implement Quick Key without upgrades and the mobile app can be used without Wi-fi. Quick Key Team Management
and Quiz Sharing features allow district and school administrators to deliver standards-aligned assessments to all teachers within their district
which monitors his heart function. Everyday he is scanned and his data is sent to his hospital and medical team,
if there is any indication of a problem the doctors identify it and take appropriate action.
In the beginning, it was GPUS that drastically increased BTC mining capability and kept the operation profitable,
#Google#s Project Ara update: New partners inductive data transfer and cutting-edge battery tech Ever since Google Project Ara debuted,
consumers have been interested in the possibility of a customized smartphone with hot-swappable modules and varying functionality that can be changed on the fly depending on the user needs.
Today, Google gave a major update on where the program is and where it headed through 2015.
Right now, Google is focused on building what it calls the Spiral 2 device, a new version of the hardware that will include multiple modules, greater flexibility,
the option to swap out the battery while the device is in low power mode, and the opportunity to use multiple antennas for better signal sourcing and multiple carrier support.
Spiral 2 also shifts from FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) to ASICS specialized application-specific integrated circuits with superior performance
and generally lower power consumption compared to FPGAS. Spiral 2 still has some problems with signal degradation over the long term
Google is reportedly working on induction signaling, with a 150-micron gap between components that will prevent the wear and tear that comes with repetitive switching back and forth.
Project Ara roadmap Google also laid out the Project Ara longer-term roadmap through 2015,
Spiral 3 will add the Rockchip reference design, an LTE 4g modem, an Android release, packaging
and decorating improvements, and an updated framework for software development that meant to make it easier for both software
and hardware developers to build their projects. Google also talked up the concept of giving new and unusual battery designs a forum to experiment with Project Ara there are battery technologies that offer substantial improvements over conventional lithium polymer architectures
but either cost too much for typical inclusion into smartphones or have specialized other requirements. Some of these could be met within the Project Ara modular concept,
and Google wants to see the platform used for prototyping and market testing. Longer term, the goal is to create an initial pool of some 20-30 modules,
including some of the options shown above. Google didn go into detail on what a ollution sensormight be,
but it possible to include a carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other types of smoke detector modules in a smartphone platform.
A Project Ara device could conceivably include multiple modules to scan for various types of atmospheric contaminants
along with an LTE modem to report their prevalence at specific locations. Google has stressed the goal of creating an entire ecosystem around this concept rather than simply throwing it to the consumer-wolves,
which implies that the device could at least find targeted applications in specific markets or spaces where its customizability are a selling point.
It not clear if the wider consumer space will take to the device (this will likely be cost-dependent)
and hobbyists who want the ability to customize a phone for particularly long battery life or with specialized sensors.
if the phone can be equipped with a sufficiently flexible LTE radio to allow for a truly global device.
Google intends to move forwards with market availability in the 2016 timeframe 0
#In wake of Paris terror attacks UK Prime minister proposes ending secure communication The recent terror attacks against The french satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo have rocked the international community. UK Prime minister
The Conservative party leader told journalists that he remained committed to strong data gathering and retention policies
noting that the government has retained always the ability to intercept letter or phone traffic, and that he viewed it as essential that the UK be able to intercept email and online traffic as well.
Cameron has been a strong supporter of the UK internet filtering campaigns and has pushed ISPS to adopt policies that require every single household to choose
whether or not to receive a filtered service as quickly as possible, despite the well-known problems that filter systems have
That law woulde required companies to retain information regarding users for a period of at least 12 months,
#Google throws nearly a billion Android users under the bus refuses to patch OS vulnerability When it comes to providing security updates for previous products,
Some, like Microsoft, tend to provide security updates long after theye stopped selling an operating system (Microsoft only stopped providing WINDOWS XP support last year.
Others, like Google and Apple, have pursued tighter timelines for security updates. Google is now doubling down on that schedule,
refusing to patch bugs in Android 4. 3 or prior, even when those bugs could expose critical vulnerabilities on nearly a billion devices.
The flaws in this case affect Android 4. 1 to 4. 3, aka Jelly bean, which began shipping in mid-2012
and was the primary version of Android through late 2013, or roughly 14 months ago.
Up until quite recently, Google has patched aggressively problems in Android Webview rendering engine. Before Kitkat (Android 4. 4
all versions of Android used the version of Webview found within the Android Browser for rendering HTML webpages.
With Kitkat and Lollipop, Google updated the operating system to use a Webview plugin derived from its Chromium project.
When Security firm Rapid7 discovered a new exploit in the Android Browser version of Webview,
it contacted Google to inform the company that Android 4. 3 and below were vulnerable.
Google response and policy change are raising major eyebrows. Specifically, the company states that: If the affected version of Webview is before 4. 4,
we generally do not develop the patches ourselves, but welcome patches with the report for consideration.
Other than notifying OEMS, we will not be able to take action on any report that is affecting versions before 4. 4 that are accompanied not with a patch.
Google will onsiderthe patch to see if it resolves the problem. If they don, Google now says the only thing it can do is inform various OEMS of the problem.
What Google is doing in essence, is telling its user community orry, you have to tell Samsung, LG,
and Motorola to provide you with an updated version of our operating system. This is hilariously impossible.
It would never fly in the PC WORLD imagine Microsoft telling customers orry, you have to make HP, Dell,
and Lenovo provide you with a free update for our operating system. The disparity is even larger
if you consider that, in most cases, a computer running a previous version of Windows can be upgraded by the end user to run the next version.
That upgrade may be a headache but system requirements on Windows haven budged in nine years.
The average phone or tablet buyer has no way to upgrade their operating system unless the carrier provides an OTA update,
and two-year upgrade cycles means that plenty of people are going to be stuck on broken devices with known exploits that Google isn going to fix.
Granted, the fact that Google fixes an exploit doesn mean that carriers will deploy it,
and fragmentation has been a major problem in Android ecosystem over the years but there a difference between acknowledging the difficulty of maintaining security updates for the entirety of one user base
and flatly refusing to do them. Pushing OEMS off open-source Android One obvious reason for Google to stop fixing Android Browser problems is that the company is aggressively moving to get OEMS to stop using Android open-source features
and to replace them with features licensed directly from Google. Ars Technica has done an extensive write-up on this trend here,
and getting rid of the Android Browser is a key facet of moving away from an Android that actually maintained and useful.
No, Google isn killing Android it just ensuring that the only parts of the program that get feature updates, capability improvements,
and performance enhancements are the parts that require licensing agreements and promises not to develop competing products.
The reason Amazon Kindle Fire has its own app store and Samsung continued interest in Tizen are both the result of Google push to embed itself into the center of mobile business
while paying lip service to the idea of open source. By throwing all of the responsibility for security updates back on carriers and security researchers,
Google is telling OEMS that they can either agree to its licensing terms and fall in line,
or take on the responsibility of performing security updates that theye typically not qualified or funded to do.
It a trick worthy of Microsoft in the Bad Old Days, and it particularly funny to see the company doing this,
given that it threw Microsoft under the bus in December when it published the full details of a security flaw two days before Redmond patched it,
on the grounds that the desktop and laptop OS company wasn moving fast enough S
#Wireless power system charges devices up to 20 feet away A plethora of firms are racing to develop a feasible method for delivering power wirelessly,
but thus far the best wee managed are short-range standards like Qi and PMA. A company called Energous is on hand at CES with a demo of its new wireless power system known amusingly as Wattup.
It uses a mix of Bluetooth and RF to combine the convenience of wireless power with the security of a wireless network.
If it all pans out, Wattup could juice up your phone from up to 20 feet (6. 1 meters) away.
The heart of Wattup is a hub that basically a powerful RF transmitter station. Devices that want to receive power from the hub announce their presence via Bluetooth 4. 0. Wattup then uses that connection to direct the wireless power signal to the device.
It operates in the same unlicensed spectrum as Wifi, which makes me wonder about possible interference in busy wireless environments.
Assuming the connection holds, though, the Wattup signal is absorbed and converted to DC power in the phone or tablet by a receiver chip.
Whenever youe sending an electromagnetic signal through the air, you have to worry about signal drop-off as dictated by the inverse square law.
Some experiments in long-range wireless power have forced simply brute their way through this problem to the point that they actually heat up the air around the transmitter.
That Bluetooth connection is used to focus a tight cone of electromagnetic waves on the target, and it can even track the device and recalibrate as needed.
just like your phone can transfer from one cell tower to the next to maintain a connection.
the system begins charging your phone. When it detects that the phone is full, but maybe your tablet is getting low from an evening of couch computing,
it switches automatically to recharging that one. It could also connect to wearable devices or anything else if they have a receiver.
Wattup also takes into account one of the drawbacks of wireless power you don usually think about:
security. If youe got a wireless power base station that can blast energy 20 feet away (improved from 15 feet last year),
so why not your wireless power network? The Bluetooth tether that is used to direct beam-forming can also authenticate devices.
Wattup can operate in protected mode where only authorized devices can connect, or in public access mode where anyone with the hardware can soak up some electrons (controlled via an app).
The company hopes to license the technology to device makers soon. The hardware required on the phone side is cheap,
so it might gain some traction. However, the energy routers will probably be a substantial investment,
especially considering most homes would need more than one
#Virtual reality comes to the desktop thanks to HP and Zspace The first time I donned a pair of special glasses
It required extremely expensive hardware, and only allowed for a simple, low-resolution, experience of machining a part on a virtual lathe.
but with its new Zvr display, HP is bringing to market a practical and useful VR tool for educators,
interactions with computer-generated models. The heart of the Zvr (if youl forgive the pun) is a special-purpose display from VR startup Zspace,
which incorporates four cameras for head-tracking, a fully gyroscopic stylus that allows for both precise pointing and true 3d manipulation of objects,
HP is also offering Zview software for the sharing of 3d content suitable for use on the Zvr.
or Microsoft Kinect, suffer from a lack of precision, especially when it comes to twisting and turning objects using motions of your wrist and hand.
HP and Zspace are positioning the display primarily for science and technology related disciplines especially for teaching them.
The high-resolution display and 3d manipulation require a fair amount of compute power. You need an HP Z-series
(or similar) workstation to run it. Along with its large size that means it is not suitable for any type of mobile application.
when I stood behind the person seated at the display I didn get any of the 3d effect.
the virtual heart on the display popped into a nearly holographic 3d form. HP and Zspace have not announced a price or exact availability date,
#Google calls on FCC to mandate line-sharing pits itself directly against Comcast and other ISPS In the ongoing battle between net neutrality advocates and the ISPS,
Now, Google has weighed in on the issue, reminding the FCC that reclassifying companies like Comcast would serve the public interest and advance the deployment of high speed Internet.
What common carrier classification does and does not Do it may be helpful at this point to revisit
in the case of the proposed T-Mobile/AT&T merger, 4G LTE networks), is that it costs too much to be economically viable.
AT&T has made and broken repeated promises about network rollouts, often citing cost (Ars Technica has a summary of the shenanigans there over the years).
Verizon stopped deploying Fios citing construction costs and the difficulty of ramping the service in new markets.
Two years ago, an excellent piece by Bruce Kushnik skewered these claims by showing that Verizon total construction costs were dropping year-by-year,
Despite securing additional money specifically for Fios upgrades, the company never spent more cash in real dollars it just used the state funding it received to pay for fiber,
In Verizon case it actively turned to tearing them out. This kind of bait -and-switch is what makes complaints that regulation represents unfair intrusion into the free market so damned egregious.
For decades, the telecommunications industry has gone collectively running to Congress, crying about the need for a greater slice of the tax revenue and service fee pie,
Google argument essentially rests on the idea that as a would-be competitor itself, access to these preexisting networks would allow it to deliver substantially better rates and lower prices to its customers.
After years of breathless reporting on its potential as a long-term solution for logic circuits (computer processors and memory), interest as waned as fundamental research problems have refused to resolve.
however, and a research team from the University of Manchester has published a report detailing how flexible 2d graphene arrays could be used in the next-generation of LED screens.
the Cambridge Graphene Centre demonstrated a display that incorporated a graphene electrode. The new LEDS built by the University of Manchester in this experiment were engineered apparently at an atomic level from multiple layers of crystal lattice as shown below.
the final display is semitransparent, extremely thin, and according to the research team, at least semi-flexible and durable.
While OLEDS have become popular in certain Samsung displays, the OLED revolution in mainstream television has yet to occur.
What was predicted once as The next Big Thing after 1080p has been supplanted largely by conventional LCD technology at higher 4k resolutions.
Right now. OLED has just one major vendor LG offering serious support, and that not enough to drive long-term R&d for continuing the technology in large panels.
It not clear if graphene LEDS can drive the rich, vibrant colors that have made OLEDS desirable,
it possible that TV manufacturers will finally be able to deliver the promise of OLED in a different technology.
#Microsoft tries to thwart Google by investing in Cyanogen Windows phone still hasn set the world on fire,
so it seems Microsoft is investigating other ways to compete against Google and Apple in the mobile market.
Reports are coming in that Microsoft will participate in a round of funding for Cyanogen, Inc. the commercial enterprise that formed out of the Cyanogenmod community.
This will only give Microsoft a minority stake in the company, but this could hint at large changes for one of the largest tech companies in the world.
a few nuggets of information have come to light regarding Microsoft decision to help fund this fork of Android.
but sources claim that Microsoft will be a inority investorin Cyanogen latest round of funding (estimated at $70 million).
At the very least, this is Microsoft hedging its bets. On the other hand, maybe there more to this story.
Microsoft might just be laying the groundwork for a future without Windows phone. Cyanogen Earlier this week, Microsoft released the first stable version of Office on Android.
Similarly, the brand new mobile version of Outlook debuted on ios. Microsoft is well aware
of which way the wind is blowing, and it seems increasingly focused on delivering top-tier support to competing platforms.
Since Windows phone reportedly only has 3%of mobile marketshare, it easy to see why Redmond has shifted its priorities.
Cyanogen has been busy partnering with hardware manufacturers across the globe. Specifically, this small company is focused on expanding in emerging markets where the established players haven taken over yet.
By Strategy Analyticsaccount, roughly 37%of Android devices worldwide are using off-brand forks, so there obviously a lot of money at stake here.
If Microsoft can get a piece of that massive pie, all the better for its shareholders. With free access to Office and free upgrades to Windows 10, Microsoft is bowing to market realities.
Google docs and OS X make it increasingly difficult for Microsoft to sell its products outright. Instead money has to come from subscriptions services and support contracts.
None of that is inherently bad, but clearly the Microsoft of 2015 shows little resemblance to the Microsoft of ten or twenty years ago.
This news serves as a stark reminder that the old grey mare just ain what she used to be
#Flexible nanogenerator harvests muscle movement to power mobile devices The consumer world is becoming powered by mobile devices,
What if you could generate power for your mobile devices simply by moving your body, and the power source was almost unnoticeable?
this type of generator could remove the need for batteries in certain mobile devices your smartwatch
Who knows one day this type of generator could even generate enough energy to power your smartphone,
which is one of the biggest constraints to smartphone development and design o
#USB 3. 1 shows big gains over USB 3. 0 early tests indicate USB 3. 1 was a hot topic at CES this year,
with multiple vendors talking up the standard performance and new, reversible connector. Shipping hardware is still some months away,
but early performance data is looking solid particularly given that third-party controllers tend to improve over time.
Anandtech has teamed up with MSI and Asmedia to benchmark USB 3. 1 and compare it against third-party solutions from VIA as well as Intel own native solution.
The results vary, but many metrics are quite impressive particularly comparing random read performance at queue depth 32 between the USB 3. 1 Asmedia and native Intel USB 3. 0 performance.
Even compared to the VIA controller, which does quite well here, USB 3. 1 is 27%faster.
Compared to Intel, it 1. 7 times faster. In real-world file copy tests, the Asmedia USB 3. 1 controller completes the work in 75%of the time it takes the Intel integrated USB 3. 0 controller and half the time of the VIA solution.
Intel has demonstrated solutions capable of up to 800mb/s in RAID connected via USB 3. 1;
Anandtech early hardware hit 650-700mb/s in analogous testing. Generally speaking, Intel controllers tend to outperform third party controllers for a given standard,
but they also tend to ship later and it not clear when Intel will add USB 3. 1. Looking back to USB 3. 0,
Intel was remarkably late to add direct chipset support for the new standard it took the company three years to deploy its own USB 3. 0 solution after the first motherboards shipped with third-party controllers in 2009.
At the time, it was believed widely that Intel dragged its feet on USB 3. 0 hoping to replace it with Thunderbolt as the mainstream peripheral interconnect on most devices
but that never materialized. Intel has yet to announce when it might add USB 3. 1 support
and AMD hasn announced it either, but I expect a similar third-party support situation to evolve.
Companies like Via, Renesas, Marvell, and Asmedia will add the capability first, with integrated chipsets following after.
What more interesting, at least to me, is improved what storage performance could eventually mean for the venerable SATA connection.
Currently, most motherboards sport an array of 4-12 SATA ports, but features like M. 2 and msata allow for an SSD to be integrated directly on the motherboard.
Combine this option with fast external storage and youe got a set of solutions that could obviate the need for SATA ports at all or,
at the very least, reduce the number of additional connectors to 1-2 for expansion purposes.
Right now that a nonstarter USB 3. 1 doesn support features like TRIM but in the long run, USB 3. 1, future iterations of Thunderbolt,
and PCI Express-based storage directly on-motherboard could eliminate most of the need for internal storage cabling at all t
and the modern smartphone. On the other hand, lithium-ion limitations are the reason why most EVS have a range of 40-60 miles, the Model S costs upwards of $80, 000,
and why your smartphone can last all day on a single charge. For all its promise and capability
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