#Banking with startups a growing trend Majority of the people in the U s. could bebanking with startups in the next three to five years.
It s for these reasons, among others, that the biggest opportunities in the financial world revolve around the disintermediation of these banks and core financial services.##
At the core of this emerging market was the desire to take banks out of the equation
(and other startups) by adopting a model that has been used by many other successful tech companies, like#ebay#and#Amazon, for example.
Mobile and the Disintermediation of Bill Pay, Processing & More Of course, the opportunities for disruption at the hands of disintermediation extend beyond lending.
The smartphone and increasing mobility of our world is changing the game. The consumerization of the enterprise and thebyod (bring your own device) trend within businesses mean that phones
and tablets are entrenched becoming features within the corporate and consumer worlds. Companies like Intuit, ebay/Paypal,
Mint. com started the ball rolling when it comes to disintermediation, and today a new generation of companies like Square, Braintree, Dwolla, Simple, Venmo, Indinero and Check are taking it to the next level.
But it s not just startups#alone. Consumer brand giants are leveraging both startups and the reach of the new mobile phone network to edge into territory that has traditionally been controlled by banks.#
#Starbucks partnering with Square#to be the main processor at thousands of locations is just one of many notable examples.
While banks have owned traditionally the small business space platforms like Square, Intuit and Paypal and even Amazon and Groupon are playing thedisintermediator
and are putting credit card processing in the hands of SMBS (small and medium businesses) and consumers.
and manage all of their critical banking information and bills in one place on their smartphones.
Rather than consumers being forced to go to their banks websites, their utility company s website and so on,
and a digital currency of record could become the micropayment system for the web, allowing publications, for example,
both areas are being reinvented today through the availability and abundance of new data types. From the rise of peer-to-peer lending models, mobile wallets, digital investment advisory, to the bitcoin revolution, today s digital disintermediation comes in many forms##all of
Retail UPS stores carrying pay-peruse printers, Makerbots in every school, a new brick in the Great Wall,
As noted futurist and self-proclaimed technology oracle Ray Kurzweil said at Google S i/O conference last week, the hype,
In less than ten years, you're probably going to be able to print your own open source clothes for a few cents,
it costs about $700 to build your own Openknit machine, with both the hardware and software still in the do-it-yourself stage.
There's also an online repository for open source digital patterns already up and running. Called Do Knit Yourself,
refinement, and much better printers and software. Eventually, printing clothes is going to be as easy as ordering a burger and fries from your smart watch.
Print green t-shirt, wear for a day, throw in the recycler, print blue-t-shirt (with recycled clothes matter) for tomorrow.
The cheap printing of socks and underwear doesn t look that far off, except that, unsurprisingly,
After all, just because I can build a computer (and I have built in fact every desktop I ve owned),
it doesn't mean I m going to have the time and resources to build some of the bleeding edge mobile computing hardware available today on the cheap.
So too for fashion. Printing socks and underwear may go on to reduce the difficulty of making jeans to making toast
#Google announces Google Drive for Work with unlimited storage for businesses Google Drive for Work#will cost $10 per month
Google just announced a new product that will offer business users unlimited storage for a set monthly fee per user.#
##Google Drive for Work#will cost $10 per month and come with unlimited storage, as well as a full license for Gmail and Google Apps.
It s a huge change for Google, which previously had a maximum storage limit of 30gb per user for Google Apps,
with extra storage tiers starting at $1. 99 per month for 100gb and going up to 30tb for $300(!)
per month. No more. Now every user will have unlimited storage, with no catches. Google is also increasing the maximum file size to 5tb larger than the largest hard drive on any PC available today.
I asked Google Drive product manager Scott Johnston what type of file could possibly run into the previous 1tb limit,
and he suggested high-defintion video (like 4k from a Gopro camera) or exceptionally large data files the kind of files usually stored on servers.
The move to unlimited storage was inevitable Box CEO Aaron Levie predicted this day on Twitter#back in March
and Microsoft just increased its storage limit for Onedrive business customers from 20gb to 1tb#on Monday.
But now that it s here, competitors like Box and Dropbox will have to step up and offer significant value beyond storage.
These competitors can no longer rely on cross-platform compatibility as a selling point, either. Johnston told me that Google absolutely intends to offer feature parity between mobile and web,
and between all different platforms. You ll see the gaps between mobile and web close significantly,
Johnston told me. We ll march in lockstop with Android and ios . I don t see where any competitor has a better story in terms of cross-platform.
We recognize the importance of that to users. Johnston also emphasized that Drive is not exclusively for Google Apps customers,
but will be catered to all companies, including those with heavy investments in Microsoft office. We want to remove all barriers to entry on getting efficiency out of these cloud tools.
Drive is a way to get started, you don t have to change your existing workflows. To that end,
Google is also addressing some longstanding complaints with Google Apps and Office file compatibility by integrating Quickoffice, acquired more than a year ago, into the suite.
Now, users will be able to edit Microsoft-formatted files directly within Google Apps without converting them to Google s file formats.
Some features like real-time commenting, will still require files to be converted, but Google Apps director of product management Ryan Tabone promises that round-tripping will be more reliable in these cases.
Google Apps is also getting revision tracking and commenting, another long-overdue feature inherited from Quickoffice.
In addition to making storage size irrelevant, Google is also offering features designed to reassure IT managers who might be nervous about moving files to the cloud,
including much more granular permissions, with support for groups stored in existing directories. Within Apps, we have the concept of organizational units.
Those sync with Microsoft Active directory or with any generic LDAP framework, Johnston said. There will also be much better visibility into
what users are doing with files, and an API into the audit log for developers, who will be able to build special-purpose apps for industries where compliance is critical, like banking.
On the security front, Google will offer encryption at rest on its servers. In addition to encryption in transit and between data centers,
which was already in place.)Overall, the improvements are an important indication that Google has given not up on the enterprise.
The Apps suite has been pretty static for the last couple of years, and it seemed that Larry page was satisfied to keep the product around as a decent side business (advertising still makes up 90%of Google s more than $40 billion in annual revenue) and a thorn in Microsoft s side,
but didn t think of it as a core part of Google s larger strategy. Today s announcements,
along with the improvements and aggressive pricing for the Cloud Engine#announced in March, show in fact that Google won t cede any part of its enterprise cloud business to newcomers.
You shouldn t expect Google to get into verticals like CRM or HR management, but as far as broad-based infrastructure and horizontal Saas offerings go,
Google is in the enterprise game to stay. Photo credit: Cruxial CIO Via Cite World Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat d
#New recyclable plastics discovered by accident A collection of new plastics that are recyclable and adaptable have been developed by researchers
Dr Jeanette Garcia, from IBM s Almaden Research center in San jose, stumbled upon the first new class of thermosets in many years when she accidentally left one of three components out of a reaction.
who was in charge of the research at IBM, is excited by the possibilities. When a large or expensive component is damaged
allowing the printer to lay down more material with the same number of movements. But thicker layers means sacrificing the printer s resolution,
because the place where one layer ends and the next begins becomes obvious. So a national lab and a corporation set out in the past year to completely reinvent the concept of the 3d printer.
Oak ridge s monster machine Oak ridge National Laboratory decided to make a faster printer by embracing thicker layers.
which reported that BAAM is capable of printing objects as large as tables and chairs by extruding plastic in layers 0. 3 inches wide.
Chairs recently on display at the RAPID conference each took about 2 hours and 30 minutes to print.
On a normal printer, a chair would take days to print and need to be printed in pieces.
The site also reported that Oak ridge is considering processing 3d printed objects after they are printed so that they appear smooth.
highly customized modules that will go into Google s Project Ara phones, 3d Systems turned to an old concept:
The printers deposit different colors and types of materials on phones whizzing past them on an oval-shaped track.
or a few nozzles to switch back and forth between colors. 3d Systems does make a line of color printers,
but even the largest units would have trouble keeping up with the volume of phones Google expects to need.
which have driven heavy interest in the 25 year old professional printer industry, only appeared 10 years ago.
Blinding lasers Desert Wolf s website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets
the Defence Web news site has published a photo of the drone after it was unveiled at a security trade show near Johannesburg in May.
Guy Martin, the editor of Defence Web, said he believed the drone was unique. The Skunk unmanned aerial vehicle with its four paintball guns, loudhailer and cameras is only a logical next step in the development of UAVS,
but slightly faceted aesthetic you might equate with their Jawbone headsets or Jambox. But it s also recognizably influenced from the Nike+Fuelbandwhen you tilt the cup,
and displays that information right on the outside of the cup. In a perfect world, you adjust your exercise intake accordingly.
phones are typically in our pockets. We wanted to make sure there was something right in front of you,
That display is also customizable. In addition to calories, you can track, say, caffeineand make sure you re not ODING in the morning,
At its core lives a molecular sensor, the specifics of which Lee refused to provide for competitive reasons,
Over a Skype demo, Lee let me choose from maybe 60 different beverages he had on the table.
Presumably, this analysis time is of little concern to the user. It's certainly neat to watch as a machine reverse-engineers the liquid poured into it
but any long-time user of the Vessyl should, theoretically, forget that the Vessyl is doing anything special at all.
##Results from the latest clinical trials of his#smartphone-linked artificial pancreas#suggest he might just make that deadline.
A smartphone-linkedpancreas removes the need for people with type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor
Every 5 minutes, a signal is sent wirelessly from a glucose monitor under the user s skin to an iphone app,
sending a signal to pumps carried by the user to administer the required dose via a catheter.
Before eating, people can input data about the type and size of their meal. The artificial pancreas performed well in#hospital-based clinical trials in 2010.
and self-checkout terminals to voice-recognition telephone apps, each year intelligent systems will take over more jobs formerly held by humans;
Dr. Eric Topol, director of the#Scripps Translational Science Institute, describes in a#Youtube#video#how patient-focused technology improves medicine.
and many websites provide free medical advice; and even TV ads often disclose critical data.
The ultimate tool to replace doctors though, could be the nanorobot, a tiny microscopic-size machine that can whiz through veins replacing aging and damaged cells with new youthful ones.
They argue that we should not let computers replace positions such as law makers, judges, or police officers.
I d rather take my chances with an impartial Computer experts estimate that by 2050,50 million jobs could be lost to automation.
Futurist Marshall Brain in his#Robotic Freedom Blog#agrees with the idea. America should create a $25, 000 annual stipend for every U s. adult,
since the Internet exploded into our lives in the mid-1990##s. We now go into a store to figure out what we want to buy only to go home
-and-mortar store to see the colors and hardware for yourself. But you may still have trouble envisioning how the wall color
and matte paint and developed the augmented reality display system from scratch. The cost of each grid room is relatively low,
Customers using the Holoroom first use an ipad app to spec out the room they re remodeling.
which consists of walls with grids on them that the phone uses to track with technology similar to#Google s Tango.
The tablet serves as a kind of de facto goggle a giant monocle, really allowing couples to experience the illusion together.
Lowe s foray into high tech capitalizes on recent developments in holography. Ten years ago, the holodeck#seemed like a dream.
Now, it feels within reach, Phil Rogers, a corporate fellow at Advanced micro devices, the computer chip maker,#told the New york times#in January.
Once limited to silvery#images#on credit cards, holography#made a splash#last year when University of Illinois computer scientists showed off an immersive holograph room, CAVE2, that projected images on an array of LED screens.
Users wore goggles to get the full 3d effect, and a wand allowed them to interact with the objects on the screens.
One setting they mocked up? Star trek s holodeck, of course. Perhaps the perfect kitchen feels like a dream barely within reach, too.
Well, it may remain a dream for a few more months. Like other computerscreens, the room displays inputs processed elsewhere.
That means Lowe s has to scan every item before it can appear in the Holoroom.
because our phones help us keep a record of what we like e
#The Connected Fitting Room eliminates personal interaction with salespeople The Connected Fitting Room Retailers rely heavily on online shopping.
The Connected Fitting Room uses RFID tags to register the items a customer brings into a fitting room,
This information is displayed on a touch screen in the dressing room, and if a customer desires a different size or color,
they can simply click on the changes on the screen. The system has a real time registry of the store s inventory
In addition, the touch screen can suggest complementary or similar items, which can also be requested for retrieval.
Created by#Accenture,#Microsoft, #and#Avanade, the Connected Fitting Room is currently in use at the department store Kohl s,
which has locations all throughout the US. In addition, talks are in process that would bring the technology to retailers in the UK as well.
#The nanodegree A new type of college degree created by AT&T and Udacity An instructor for Udacity teaching an online Python class.
AT&T and the online education provider Udacity have partnered to create thenanodegree, a new type of college degree similar to the#Micro Colleges that Futurist Thomas Frey predicted.
and Internet billionaires have promised to overhaul the clunky path to a diploma. We need to take
and experience, wrote#Linkedin cofounder Reid Hoffman. Last year, on stage with California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun#announced#a new consortium of businesses, the Open education Alliance,
together with many of the original partners, from AT&T to Autodesk. It s a failure of the community college system, the California state system,
Continuing, the blog explains, Our early nanodegrees will prepare you for a job as a front-end web developer,
back-end web developer, ios mobile developer, Android mobile developer, or data analyst. The first nanodegree will start this fall.
Other online education providers, such as Coursera,#are designing their own certifications, which take about the same amount of time,
depending on the course of study. So, how s the quality of the degree compared to a traditional diploma?
I ve been taking the data science track at both Coursera and Udacity and comparing it to the master s in mathematical behavioral sciences
On many levels, data science at Udacity and Coursera are superior. It s completely up-to-date with the latest software, it s problem-based, much (much) cheaper,
and more flexible. Don t get me wrong: my master s was fantastic for helping me think theoretically about data science
and how to carefully determine cause and effect. But it left me lacking#the raw coding skills necessary to download a dataset
For many data science jobs, the ability to run basic regressions and determine patterns in big datasets is more than sufficient.
#Mobile can drive down healthcare costs and improve care Jawbone, wearable technology for a healthier lifestyle.
Enter##Mobile Brands and healthcare organizations are realizing the potential of mobile apps and increasingly,
wearable devices to engage with and influence the behaviors of millions of Americans. According to a#study#we recently conducted
73 percent of people who use mobile to track their health/fitness now believe they are healthier than they used to be as a result.
Mobile in (medical practice When it comes to healthcare, mobile enables interactions and insights that were previously unimaginable,
Tracking of patients data through wearables and biometric sensors.##Healthcare providers can tell if the health of a patient at home is declining,
In addition, patients who track their data can have a more detailed conversation during visits, hopefully resulting in a better care plan.
While people are starting to use mobile devices more and more to manage their health, it is still not the norm.
they would use their smartphones to track their health and fitness even more. By leveraging the convenience, ubiquity and increasing intelligence of mhealth tools,
#Google buys startup Skybox Imaging for $500 million Google#will use Skybox s satellite-photo tech to improve Google maps.
Google is buying the startup, Skybox Imaging, a company that specializes in photos taken by satellites, for $500 million.#
and the company provides data analytics and video of Earth taken from afar. In announcing the deal Tuesday,
Google#said#the buyout will help bolster Google maps by keeping the service accurate with up-to-date images.
The acquisition will give Google the ability to design and build its own fleet of satellites.
and disaster relief areas Google has long been interested in, Google said in a statement. The deal comes as big tech companies have become more interested in aerial technology including satellites
and drones to expand their reach and business operations: getting more people online means being able to offer services to larger populations.
Google in April purchased drone maker Titan Aerospace to help further#Project Loon, the company s initiative to bring the Internet to less-connected places around the world using high-altitude Wi-fi balloons.
Facebook which was said also to be in acquisition talks#with Titan Aerospace has focused on developing drones and satellites as a means for beaming Internet connectivity to more people.
In March, the company#announced#a new lab dedicated to developing that technology. The effort is in line with the mission of CEO Mark Zuckerberg s Internet. org
which aims to bring the Web to everyone in the world. Skybox and Google share more than just a ZIP CODE,
reads a#blog post#by Skybox, which, like Google, is based in Mountain view, Calif. We both believe in making information (especially accurate geospatial information) accessible and useful.
Google maps itself got its start after Google#acquired#another satellite imaging company, Keyhole, a decade ago.
Skybox in November#launched#Skysat-1, a satellite capable of taking 90-second videos at 30 frames per second.
The satellite was to be the first of a fleet of 24 launched to capture views of Tokyo;
Bangkok; Baltimore; Las vegas; and Aleppo, Syria. Google hasn indicated t if the rest of the launches will remain on schedule after the startup joins the company.
We ve asked Skybox for comment and will update this post when we hear back.
Though people have for some time been speculating about Google s interest in Skybox, Tuesday s announcement pegged the deal at half the price of the#rumored $1 billion#that had originally been reported.
Google also warned that the price tag could be adjusted and that the deal is subject to approval by regulators.
#HP announces plans to destroy Microsoft windows Moments after Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-packard, announced the company grand new plan to compete with the Microsoft windows operating system,
she was thanking Microsoft for being a major sponsor of the conference and inviting the company new CEO, Satya Nadella, on stage.
Nadella joined Whitman and Intel new CEO Brian Krzanich for a fireside chat-style interview conducted by New york times columnist and author, Tom Friedman.
But just before Nadella joined via video conferencing, during Whitman keynote speech, CTO Martin Fink, head of HP Labs, showed off
what HP hopes will be a game-changing new data center computer. It internally calling that computer he Machine.
HP is creating a lot of new technology to build The Machine, especially a new form of memory known as emristorswhich won lose data if the power turns off (also known as on-volatile memory.
The Machine claim to fame is that it can process loads of information instantly while using hardly any power.
HP wants this computer to replace the servers being used in today data centers. But it also hopes the tech will become the basis for the next generation of PCS.
and open-source operating system and is inviting universities to help research and build it. He threw in a little dig at Microsoft
when announcing the news saying: e want to reignite in all of our universities around the world operating system research
which we think has been dormant or stagnant for decades. On top of that, HP is working on a brand new operating system for The Machine based on Linux.
And another one based on Android, Fink continued: e are, as part of The Machine, announcing our intent to build a new operating system all open source from the ground up,
optimized for nonvolatile memory systems. We also have a team that starting from a Linux environment
and stripping out all the bits we don need. So that way you maintain compatibility for apps.
What if we build a version of Android? We have a team that doing that, too.
Notice any operating systems not mentioned? Microsoft windows. You might argue that it would be difficult for HP to build an operating system based on Windows
since Microsoft doesn freely share that code. Windows is not free and open source as Linux and Android is.
You would be right. However, when Nadella and Krzanich were on stage, Whitman pointed out how all three companies have been doing joint R&d for 30 years.
In other words, HP could be doing a joint development project with Microsoft if it wanted to.
As Whitman said about the HP, Intel, Microsoft combo, ur partnership, the three companies it was the defining partnership of the industry for the last 30 years but sometimes 30-year marriages,
they need a little rejuvenation. That rejuvenation will obviously come in the form of Linux and Android.
It not wholly surprising that HP is building a new computer that will extricate itself from Microsoft,
and potentially from Intel, too, depending on who HP chooses to fabricate its new chip. Last year, Whitman called out Microsoft and Intel as competitors.
After a disappointing quarter for the company PC business she told Wall street analysts: P traditional highly profitable markets face significant disruption.
Wintel devices are being challenged by ARM-based devices. We are seeing profound changes in the competitive landscape.
Current partners like Intel and Microsoft are turning from partners to outright competitors. Since then, HP has introduced new Windows 8 PCS.
But it has introduced also new Google Chromebook laptops and an experimental new desktop aimed at businesses that runs Android.
This is a bold move by HP. The ability to process large amounts of data with little energy consumption plus nonvolatile memory could be a game changer on the hardware side.
Obvious benefits are longer life of mobile devices more processing power on the device for things like speech recognition, instant on/off functioning, superior servers, removing most of the device cooling engineering,
and lower energy costs for storage and server providers. There hasn been a real hardware advancement in decades.
As the article points out, this opens the door for a change in operating systems, and hp is interested clearly not in helping Microsoft,
and prefers open source OSS. Intel also might be left out in the cold. If hp has the goods
and delivers, this technology will become THE big data system, and take over the server world just for the energy savings alone.
Pricing will be the adoption issue for consumer mobile devices. When the price points are attractive the mobile phone and tablet suppliers will switch too.
Nice tech advancement we all can benefit from. And, if u have investment money for speculation,
hp stock could be a nice retirement plan. Since snubbing Microsoft seems to be the sport of tech royalty this year,
shorting MS stock might be fun money too t
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