#Stanford Researchers Created A Smartphone Battery That Charges In Only One Minute Last year, emarketer reported that the global smartphone audience passed 1. 75 billion people.
As smartphones become ubiquitous, the demand for longer-lasting batteries will continue to increase. Fortunately, researchers at Stanford university are building an aluminum-ion battery prototype that speeds up the charging times.
And the aluminum-ion battery could eventually replace many of the lithium-ion and alkaline batteries used in many smartphones today. e have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries,
which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames, said Stanford university chemistry professor Hongjie Dai, the lead researcher of the project,
The voltage of the aluminum battery made by the Stanford researchers is about half the average smartphone lithium battery.
And the other authors are Di-Yan Wang (Stanford), Mingyun Guan (Stanford), Michael Angell (Stanford), Changxin Chen (Stanford), Jiang Yang (Stanford) and Bing-Joe
Unfortunately, among other issues, testers reportedly developed headaches and motion sickness using the headset and the system was shelved quietly.
which is joint venture among NRG ENERGY, Google and Brightsource energy. That project takes 173,000 mirrors and focuses the sunlight to the plant solar receiver steam generator,
Patient-centric devices beyond just smartphones or even watches will help not only awarenes, but more importantly personal control of health.
#Nokia Buys Alcatel-lucent For $16. 6 Billion Nokia has pushed boldly ahead with its ambition to become one of the world leading network equipment makers after buying French peer Alcatel-lucent for $16. 6 billion (15.6 billion euros),
The combined company will be called Nokia Corporation and be headquartered in Finland, maintaining research and development centers in the U s.,France, Germany and China.
Nokia offer price represents a fully-diluted premium of 34%on Alcatel share price. The two companies expect the deal to close in the first half of 2016
Nokia has focused since primarily itself on network equipment manufacturing, mapping-and-location services and patent licensing.
By picking up Alcatel-lucent, with its 52,000-strong workforce, Nokia said its new addressable market was 50%larger,
Nokia said in a press release Wednesday. lcatel-Lucent and Nokia have highly complementary portfolios and geographies, with particular strength in the United states, China, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
In addition to using some of the proceeds from its mobile-handset business sale for the deal,
Nokia confirmed today that it was reviewing strategic options including the divestment of its HERE business, worth 2 billion euros according to Bloomberg B
#EU Formally Accuses Google Of Market Abuse, Opens Probe Into Android The European union competition chief formally laid down the gauntlet to Google on Wednesday,
accusing it of market dominance in web searches, particularly around online shopping. It also opened a formal investigation into
whether its Android operating system unfairly favored its own apps. would like to hear what Google has to say for itself,
said Margarethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner at a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday. he Statement of Objection is not the end.
Wel take in the response of Google and decide how to proceed. Wee not here to take the side of rivals.
Google wrangle with the EU over search results has been going on for five years, but the formal Statement of Objections is a landmark step.
who was criticized by some for not taking a stronger stance with Google. Almunia was replaced by Vestager late last year.
The next step is for Google to formally answer the EU Statement of Objection, which at its core accuses Google of favoring its own shopping services over those of third parties like Tripadvisor, Microsoft and Streetmap,
who filed their complaints with the EU back in 2010. If Google and the Commission cannot reach a settlement
and the case reaches the European High court, it could not only drag on for several more years
but see Google fined 10%of its annual revenues. At 2014 levels that would be $6. 6 billion.
Some might argue that Google as a private company should have the freedom to organize search results how it wants
who added that she considered Google to be lose to a monopoly. Google sent a memo to its employees yesterday showing charts from Comscore and its own internet analytics
saying the Statement of Objections was isappointing news. But, it added, e have a very strong case. t
#EU v. Google: What Each Side Is Saying The European union on Wednesday formally accused Google of abusing its dominant power in web search in violation of antitrust laws.
The action is potentially the most significant antitrust case in the tech industry since regulators on both sides of the Atlantic tangled with Microsoft beginning in the late 1990s
It could force Google to pay billions in fines or to alter the way it presents search results.
Specifically, the European commission said that Google's GOOGL+0. 35%promotion of its own comparison shopping search function may rtificially divert traffic from rival comparison shopping services
which has been investigating Google search practices for about 5 years, detailed its concerns, known as a Statement of Objections,
on Google comparison shopping service here. The accusations did not extend to other areas of search,
like reviews and travel that Google rivals like Yelp YELP+3. 14 %and Tripadvisor TRIP+0. 57%had complained about.
whether Google has violated European antitrust laws with its Android operating system and related mobile services. The commission said it is concerned that Google may have hindered market access to rival mobile apps by pushing Android phone makers to pre-install its suite of mobile services
which include search, maps, Google Drive and the Play store. It also said it is concerned Google may have hindered market access to makers of modified versions of Android.
The commission full concerns on Android are detailed here. Google put out a vigorous defense. In a blog post, Google search chief Amit Singhal said that people have more search choices today than ever before,
and that competition among shopping search engines is thriving. ndeed if you look at shoppingn area where we have seen a lot of complaints
and where the European commission has focused in its Statement of Objectionst clear that (a) there a ton of competition (including from Amazon and ebay EBAY+0. 58%,
%two of the biggest shopping sites in the world) and (b) Google shopping results have not the harmed the competition,
Singhal wrote. In a separate blog post, Hiroshi Lockheimer, an engineering vice president for Android, rebutted the commission concerns regarding Google mobile operating system. ndroid has been a key player in spurring this competition and choice, lowering
prices and increasing choice for everyone, Lockheimer wrote. Google will now has 10 weeks to respond to the commissions charges.
The commission will then evaluate those responses and potentially recommend remedies e
#Tencent Scores#1 On China Brand Ranking, Next Global? Chinese tech companies are becoming more adept at marketing
and brand image, and will become better known in the West as their products and services go global.
What interesting is to see Tencent and Alibaba overtaking long-time leader and state-owned China Mobile.
This year, three of this year top five are oriented consumer Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu. The brand rankings are compiled by analysis of financial data of publicly traded companies and interviews with consumers.
How long will it be before Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi makes this list? As Chinese companies improve their marketing strategies,
#IKEA Releases New Furniture Collection, Promises Better Living Through Wireless Power It tempting to dismiss IKEA new embrace of furniture that will charge your phone as a gimmick.
In fact, thousands of hours of observational research argues that it will. e know that people are attached at the hip to their smartphones,
IKEA transmitters will work with the Samsung galaxy S6, and are compatible with any phone that includes Qi wireless charging technology.
You may need to activate it in the settings. iphones can be used with a special case that IKEA sells.
And if IKEA furniture doesn appeal to you, but the idea of embedded wireless charging does,
while her smartphone lies cradled on a small shelf attached to a reading lamp in easy reach.
and convenience that come with iphone and ipad. It my vision to enrich their lives. Apple and IBM chief executives Tim cook and Ginni Rometty were both present at the press conference,
#Long term Investors Should Prefer Facebook to Google Last week saw another slew of quarterly earnings releases.
which support owning Google or Facebook. Google prices keep dropping, even as growth slows in oremarket Google once again reported higher sales and profits.
And that is a good thing. But, once again, the price of Google primary product declined. Revenues increased because volume gains exceeded the price decline
which indicates that the market for internet ads keeps growing. But this makes 15 straight quarters of price declines for Google.
Due to this long series of small declines, the average price of Google ads (cost per click) has declined 70%*since Q3 2011!
While this is a miraculous example of what economists call demand elasticity, one has to wonder how long growth will continue to outpace price degradation.
At some point the marginal growth in demand may not equal the marginal decline in pricing. Should that happen, revenues will start going down rather than up.
which allows Google to place more ads in more specific locations for advertisers via such automated products as Admob, Adexchange and Doubleclick Bid Manager.
But such computerized ad buying relies on ever more content going onto the web as well as ever more consumption by internet users.
Further, Google revenues are almost entirely search-based advertising, a category Google dominates. But this is largely a PC-related sale.
Today 67.5%of Google ad revenue is from PC searches, while only 32.5%is from mobile searches.
Due to this revenue skew, and the fact that people do more mobile interaction via apps, messaging apps and social media than browser,
search ad growth has fallen considerably. What was a 24%year over year growth rate in Q1 2012 has dropped to more like 15%for the last 8 quarters.
So while the market today is growing and Google is making more money, it is possible to see that growth is slowing.
And Google efforts to create mobile ad sales outside of search have failed largely, as witnessed by the recent death of Google+as competition for Twitter or Facebook.
It is the market shift to mobile which creates the greatest threat to Google ability to grow;
certainly at historical rates. Simultaneously, Facebook announcements showed just how strongly it is continuing to dominate both social media and mobile,
and thus generate higher revenues and profits with outstanding growth. The#1 site for social media and messenger apps is Facebook, by quite a large margin.
But, Facebook 2014 acquisition of Whatapp is now#2. Whatsapp has doubled its monthly active users (MAUS) just since the acquisition,
and now reaches 800million. Growth is clearly accelerating, as this is from a standing start in 2011.
Facebook Messenger is#3, just behind Whatsapp. And#5 is Instagram another Facebook acquisition. Altogether 4 of the top 5 sites,
and the ones with greatest growth on mobile, are Facebook. And they total over 3billion MAUS,
growing at over 300million new MAUS/month. Thus Facebook has emerged already as the dominant force, with the most users, in the fast-growing, accelerating, mobile and app sectors.
Just as Google did in internet search a decade ago, beating out companies like Yahoo, Ask jeeves, etc.
Facebook is monetizing its market leadership position Google is moving rapidly to monetize this user base.
From nothing in early 2012, Facebook mobile revenue is now $2. 5b/quarter and represents 67%of global revenue (the inverse of Google revenues.)
Further, Facebook is now taking its own programmatic ad buying tool, Atlas, to advertisers in direct competition with Google.
Only Atlas places ads on both social media and internet browser pages a one-two marketing punch Google has cracked not yet.
Google $17. 3b Q1 2015 revenue is 30 times the revenue of Facebook. There is no doubt Google is growing,
and generating enormous profits. But, for long-term investors, growth is slowing and there is reason to be concerned about the long term growth prospects of Google as the market shifts toward both social and mobile.
Google has failed to build any substantial revenues outside of search and has had some notable failures recently outside its core markets (Google+and Google glass.
Just how long Google will continue growing, and just how fast the market will shift is unclear.
Technology markets have shown the ability to shift a lot faster than many people expected, leaving some painful losers in their wake (Dell, HP, Sun microsystems, Yahoo, etc.
Meanwhile, Facebook is positioned squarely as the leader, without much competition, in the next wave of market growth.
Facebook is monetizing all things social and mobile at a rapid clip, and wisely using acquisitions to increase its strength.
As these markets continue on their well established trends it is hard to be anything other than significantly optimistic for Facebook long-term.*
*1x. 93 x. 88 x. 84 x. 85 x. 94 x. 96 x. 94 x. 93 x. 89 x. 91
x. 94 x. 98 x. 97 x. 95 x. 93=.295
#Court Rules Cops Don't need A Warrant To Get Your Cellphone Records A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the public has no reasonable expectation of privacy
when it comes to their cell phone location records. Cops don need a search warrant to get access to cell tower location records
when investigating criminal cases because this information belongs to a third party, according to the ruling. The case centered on Miami resident Quartavious Davis,
who was convicted of robbery, possession of a firearm, and conspiracy in 2012 after investigators obtained 67 days of Daviscell phone records from Metropcs1,
606 records in total. Davis was sentenced to 162 years in prison. The case was appealed to the 11th U s. Circuit court of appeals on the grounds that Davisfourth Amendment rights were violated.
On Wednesday, the court ruled with a 9-2 vote that the overnment obtaining of a court order for the product of Metropcs business records did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
The ruling stated that even though the cell tower records concerned Davis, they did not belong to him
because they were created by a third party. Therefore, Davis did not have a right to privacy around that information.
Because the public is aware that they can be tracked through their cell phones, the ruling argues that people should have no reasonable right to expect privacy around those records.
The ruling also compared cell phone location data to surveillance tapes in stores, saying that hose surveillance camera images show Davis location at the precise location of the robbery,
Using the example of information Google GOOGL-1. 71%collects from its usershich includes names, email addresses, telephone numbers, credit card data, online history, devices used,
meaning that Google users wouldn have a right to privacy around that data. The dissent continued, nd why stop there?
Nearly every website collects information about what we do when we visit. So now, under the majority rule, the Fourth Amendment allows the government to know from Youtube. com what we watch,
or Facebook. com what we post or whom we riend, or Amazon com AMZN-0. 38%what we buy,
or Wikipedia. com what we research, or Match. com whom we datell without a warrant.
A few concurring judges also offered caution about the implications of the case. his case is certainly about the present,
but it is also potentially about the future, Judge Jordan wrote. have some concerns about the government being able to conduct 24/7 electronic tracking (live
In a statement on Tuesday, ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler noted that other courts of appeal are grappling with the question of cell phone location tracking
GMP corporate spokesperson, told me in an email. Schnure couldn say how big or small those promised savings will be:
a Southern California Edison spokesman told me via email, ut as prices decline for energy storage,
¢he me via Twitter. Even at twice that price, he said, grid-level batteries offer utilities a return on investment now:
The low hanging fruit was the copy cat web design for internet cannabis sites based on already popular traditional internet sites.
#Goodbye iphone Bulge: This Technology Reduces Lenses To The Thickness Of A Credit card A team of scientists at the Harvard School of engineering
Taking the iphone 6 as an example, the rear isight camera uses five individual lens elements stacked on top of each other,
resulting in a thick lens module which creates the familiar protruding lens bulge at the back of the phone t
#Whatsapp For ios Will Receive Voice Calling Feature In A few Weeks Whatsapp the instant messaging app that Facebook acquired for $19 billion last year hit 700 million monthly active users
At the Facebook f8 conference this week, Whatsapp cofounder Brian Acton said that the ios version of the messaging app will gain the highly anticipated free voice calling feature within the next few weeks, according to Venturebeat.
Whatsapp cofounder Jan Koum also said at the Mobile World Congress event that mobile phones will be sold in Germany with the Whatsapp brand.
Whatsapp launched a desktop client service called Whatsapp Web. The desktop version of Whatsapp only works for Android, Windows phone, Blackberry and Nokia S60 devices right now though.
Hopefully, Whatsapp Web will support ios devices soon. If you have a jailbroken iphone, then you can already access the voice calling feature on Whatsapp.
To use the voice calling feature on Whatsapp with a jailbroken iphone, you can follow these instructions that Thefusejoplin. com provided:
1.)You will need to install Appsyn and download the latest Whatsapp BETA version. Then you have to add the cydia. angelxwind. net and apt. imokhles. com repository on the Cydia sources. 2.)Download the latest version of the Whatsapp beta application and Whatsapp Call Enabler.
You have to make sure that Whatsapp Call Enabler is activated in the settings. 3.)After voice calls are activated,
you will need to have someone call you through Whatsapp and restart your iphone. Why did Facebook acquire Whatsapp?
During a keynote at Mobile World Congress last year, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg said that the acquisition was linked to his vision for Internet. org.
Internet. org is an initiative to bring the Internet people who do not have access
since two-thirds of the world is connected not. The amount that Facebook paid for Whatsapp was particularly interesting
because the messaging app is far from profitable. Whatsapp lost $230 million in the first half of last year on revenues of approximately $15 million, reported The Wall street journal
. While Facebook generates most of its revenues from advertising, Whatsapp charges 99 cents per year for a subscription after one year of free service.
However, Koum acknowledged that Whatsapp scaled back efforts to generate revenue following the acquisition i
#The XX Factor: Getting More Young Women Ready For STEM Jobs More girls and women than ever before are studying
when only one game has made it to American iphone Top 20 download chart. This is a radical,
On March 1, 2011,17 out of Top 20 most popular iphone apps in America were games. It was not unusual to have half a dozen new games enter the Top 20 each week each at least getting fair sampling by the public.
many of the rare recent download winners on the US app chart are relatively low-budget, indie titles like Mr. Jump.
The robot battle game eal Steel World Robot Boxingis likely the best known Reliance Games app it has 7. 5 Million downloads,
while the cluster of three Real Steel tie-in apps has garnered 47 Million downloads. The Real Steel franchise has shown broad global appeal
or TV series can generate downloads across the globe, even years later. Real Steel is a 2011 movie that grossed $300 Million.
Earlier this March, eal Steel Champions a new spin-off app by Reliance Games, hit Top 5 of US ipad download chart.
Manish Agarwal, the CEO of Reliance Games, Digital, had some interesting comments about using licensed IP for developing mobile games. he biggest challenge is identifying play mechanics that fit both the license
which has become something of a gatekeeper in South korean mobile game market. Koreans increasingly use Kakaotalk as an app discovery mechanism,
Reliance has decided to use Facebook as the social media network for its apps. Few Western app vendors apart from Supercell and King have attacked seriously Korea notoriously insular market It is impressive that Reliance is tackling Korea seriously from the start.
Backers included major VC players like Adreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Google Ventures hope what youl see is the regulations get cleared very soon
#Will Payments On Facebook Be Successful? Facebook: The Social Graph Of Payments Today March 17th, 2015 Facebook has entered into payments in a very big way 1. This is perhaps the biggest news in this sector since its inception.
Much like Wechat a sort of Facebook of China along with Alipay with their hundreds of millions of users to send money via instant message.
To become a person to person payment system in the US the company must apply for
and be granted a money transmitter license in every state. Facebook has been approved money transmitter licenses in every US state and territory along with many European and Asian countries.
My good friend Faisal Khan has been researching this for a number of years. In the US
One could argue that Google system was a communication platform centered around Gmail, but it was linked not fully to the chat system.
and there is a tipping point where one can be certain that the recipient can be found on Facebook.
It turns out a vast majority of Facebook 500 million monthly users are logged on to Facebook Messenger with about 80 million payment cards on file.
With Facebook Payments, the entire system is built currently around the Messenger platform. Fundamentally person to person payments are a form of deep communication
and Facebook Messenger is a logical jumping off point. A vast majority of person to person payments begin with a conversation, perhaps already within messenger.
How Does Facebook Payments Work? To use the system, the sender will need to associate a US based debit card with a Visa or Mastercard logo to their Facebook account.
If the user already has a debit card on file with Facebook from gaming, advertising, or donations, this can be the default card.
The system will allow for the user to image the card via a camera or to manually enter the card into the setup form.
Specimen of Facebook Payments payment sending sequence. To send money press the button in the Messenger message composer,
Specimen of Facebook Payments payment receipt screen. The money is removed instantly from the sender debit account
and delivered to the recipient Facebook associated debit card. Facebook uses the debit card network and the recipient bank
and can take about 24 hours to become usable. Both sender and recipient will see a confirmation message detailing the transfer status and time.
Along the way, Facebook will send the recipient notices to claim the money. As an added security feature, Facebook may ask users some extra security questions before a transfer can be authorized.
This may take the form of id you ever own a red caror n what city did you live in during the period of 1984 1986 etc.
Banking On Debit cards Facebook is currently a debit card based system and is using a similar system that Square adopted for Square Cash 2,
and optimizations made by Facebook to make the system more fault tolerant and redundant. Facebook is also using more recognized APIS that will have the ability in the future to also allow payments from credit cards using the full extent of systems like Visa VPP API 2. The system will also be able to easily scale to countries outside the US
and localize from a technical standpoint and a regulatory stand point. I am rather certain that Facebook has negotiated with a number of regional debit card networks to lower effective rates that Facebook will pay for each transaction.
This will actually be a win/win for both camps. The debit card networks will see a huge growth of aggregate transactions allowing the networks to continue to be relevant and vital in this new space.
And Facebook will of course see lower costs than most companies in this space. I see this pattern perhaps playing out through the world and thus
By the next Facebook developer conference we may see this presented along with very unique useless for the APIS Facebook most certainly will produce.
Now The Person To Person Payments Party Is Ready To Begin Facebook is entering into a market that has many existing solutions,
including: Google Paypal Venmo Square Banks And others It is very clear that a sort of shakeout will commence that will define competing products and perhaps remove a few products from the market.
There is little doubt that the landscape will be changed far one year from now. Square Square Cash seems to be in a very vulnerable position before Facebook Payments 3 and
I tried to present the case days after the product was announced that this will prove to be a huge waste of time, talent,
Paypal+Venmo Paypal and Venmo will see a challenge from Facebook Payments. There is no doubt about it.
and marketing needed to respond to Facebook. There are many ways that Paypal and Venmo can stay vital and relevant because of the scale they have achieved already.
Google Google has been sending person to person money via Gmail for over two years and although it is not breaking any records,
or a picture is quite genius. Google will need to lower costs and continue to innovate.
and a system that will surprise even Facebook. The plans have been in process for quite some time and unlike Facebook
Paypal, Google, and Square, Apple will not handle any payments themselves. High Likelihood Of Success There is little doubt that Facebook will be successful In person to Person payments.
If not just by the size of the user base and the utility this new feature will offer.
One can surmise that at some point, even though currently there is no revenue model from Facebook pavements,
there is a path where the cards on file will become a source for payments for products and services from merchants.
Specimen of revenue sources at Facebook. The Payment isruptionera Is Now Officially Over In less then 12 months
and listed Apple, Facebook, and retailers themselves. Today, Apple Pay, Facebook Payments, and MCX/Currentc are here.
It was fun times as my thesis and postulations were controversial and constrain. This was the height of the ayments disruptionmania
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