Business

October 2015: The end of the swipe-and-sign credit card

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Most of the world uses an embedded chip, pin based credit card system. The US does not. That is going to change next year.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed MasterCard’s Carolyn Balfany to discuss the particulars.

What machines can’t do

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Very interesting op-ed piece from the New York Times about the limits of technology and the human traits that will become valued in the coming decades.

80% and go

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Gayle Allen (MIT, BrightBytes) shares her list of lessons learned working in a startup. Good list.

Major League Baseball rolling out thousands of iBeacons for opening day

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For baseball fans, the long cold winter is almost over. Pitchers and catchers start reporting for spring training this Thursday (Feb 6th).

While the teams limber up in their spring training homes, the Major League Parks are making some major new additions, deploying thousands of iBeacons (20 parks participating, 100 Qualcomm iBeacons each).

Transcript of Apple’s F1Q 2014 earnings call

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Interested in reading the actual transcript of Apple’s recent earnings call? You’ll need to sign up for a free account via Seeking Alpha (you’ll have to jump through some minor hoops, but it’s not too bad) to read the whole thing, but I found it quite interesting, indeed eye-opening, to read Tim Cook’s actual words, as opposed to the translations of a journalist or analyst.

Nintendo President digs in heels, teases health strategy

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Nintendo President Satoru Iwata had a pre-scheduled strategy briefing to announce the companies planned direction. As expected, Iwata stuck to his guns, saying that Nintendo would continue on its path to make console and hand-held consoles and games. He did address the issue of porting hits like Zelda and Super Mario to mobile devices.

The core of a good startup idea

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This post is a bit more than a year old, but I just came across it this morning. Paul Graham uses a variety of threads to explore the concept of what makes a good startup.

World’s first multi-material, multi-color 3D printer

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Up until now, a 3D print run was based on a single material of a single color. You could print different parts in different colors for later assembly, but the Stratasys Object500 Connex3 printer makes it possible to use multiple materials in a single run.

Anyone who has watched the inkjet printer emerge and evolve could have seen this coming, but this is an important step nonetheless.

One way to make money in the music business

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This guy picks the hot topics of the day and embeds them in short little songs. He writes up to 100 songs a day. He’s found a loophole in the system and he ekes out a living doing this.

This is a tough call. What he creates is his music, so hard for me to say he shouldn’t be doing this. And he’s pretty consistent, so you know what you are getting when you listen to his stuff. Just feels a little bit slimy to me.

Question is, is he taking money from other musicians? Certainly anyone who buys one of his songs knows what they are getting before they pay. Interesting.

David Muir’s one-on-one interview with Tim Cook

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The interview opened up with this quote from Steve Jobs, a quote which is prominently displayed at Apple’s One Infinite Loop headquarters:

“If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it too long. Just figure out what’s next.”

Muir started with a focus on the new Mac Pro, stressing the fact that the Mac Pro is manufactured in Austin, Texas. Tim mentioned that the Mac Pro was just the start, in terms of on-shore manufacturing, briefly touching on the sapphire glass effort starting up in Phoenix.

There were glimpses of the 1984 SuperBowl commercial, and of Steve Jobs’ original Mac rollout.

Next, a brief discussion of secrecy (locked doors, black drapes over unannounced products) segued into the topic of the NSA and surveillance. To me, this was the most interesting part of the interview.

iPhone 5s users consuming significantly more data than their predecessors

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Users of flagship smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone 5s and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are continuing to suck down more data than their tablet-wielding counterparts, according to a large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU (which last year bought mobile data analytics company Arieso, the company that previously ran the annual survey).

Is there something about the evolution of the architecture of mobile phones that makes later models consume more data? Is there a correlation to the adoption rate of the most recent OS rev? In other words, the latest model of a phone enables faster transmission speeds and typically runs the latest OS. Or is there something more complex at work here?

Nintendo heads for third consecutive annual loss as Wii U flops

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To me, it all comes down to this:

Pressure will likely mount on the architect of the Wii success in 2006 to step aside or shift course to focus on making money from “Super Mario” and other software titles. Nintendo so far has refused to allow its games to be played on machines built by competitors or on tablets or other mobile devices that are used by gamers.

The pressure is building. Nintendo needs to either reinvent themselves entirely, shrink to focus on their handheld success, and/or start licensing franchise brands like Zelda and Mario to Microsoft or Sony.

Starbucks caught storing mobile passwords in the clear

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Are you kidding me, Starbucks?

The Starbucks mobile app, the most used mobile-payment app in the U.S., has been storing usernames, email addresses and passwords in clear text, Starbucks executives confirmed late on Tuesday (Jan. 14). The credentials were stored in such a way that anyone with access to the phone can see the passwords and usernames by connecting the phone to a PC. No jailbreaking of the phone is necessary. And that clear text also displays an extensive list of geolocation tracking points (latitude, longitude), a treasure trove of security and privacy gems for anyone who steals the phone.

Google, Nest, and the value of your home’s energy profile

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Buried in this article on the Nest acquisition is this little gem:

Researchers in 2011 were even able to use a similar approach to determine what movie was being watched on a television set by making energy profiles of each film. This was achieved by observing that a television’s electricity load will vary over time depending on whether dark or light scenes are being displayed to the viewer.

Although the researchers in question relied on very granular data from the television set, Danezis worries that such techniques could one day offer smart-home companies an X-ray view of your home.