When Patrick Benson joined Ovation Brands back in September 2013, he was given a tall order: modernize an array of legacy IT systems that could no longer keep up with the restaurant-chain conglomerate’s business processes.“I was strapped to a rocket and shot out of a cannon,” said Benson, the company’s CIO. “My job was to figure out what tools were needed.”Originally founded in 1983 under the name Old Country Buffet, Ovation had grown considerably over the years to comprise more than 300 restaurants in 35 states, operating under brands including Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse and Ryan’s.“We were conducting business in a much different way that was better and faster than our systems could keep up with,” Benson explained.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
So, it's April 25, 2015 and the delivery man has just delivered your new Apple Watch. Your first instinct: Spend more hard-earned cash trying out Apple's mobile payment system, Apple Pay.The question is, how?Although Apple Pay has been available for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users since October, it works differently with Apple Watch, which arrives in retail on April 24. (Pre-orders for the Watch, which start at $349 and rise into the thousands of dollars from there, begin April 10.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If parts of your phone are sometimes too hot to handle, Fujitsu may have the answer: a thin heat pipe that can spread heat around mobile devices, reducing extremes of temperature.Fujitsu Laboratories created a heat pipe in the form of a loop that’s less than 1mm thick. The device can transfer about 20W, about five times more heat than current thin heat pipes or thermal materials, the company said.The technology could improve smartphones’ performance by helping cool their CPUs and other heat-producing components, spreading that heat more evenly across other parts of the phone.Overheating has been an issue with some Samsung Galaxy smartphones, and the Korean manufacturer apparently dropped Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor from the Galaxy S6 due to excessive heat concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Raspberry Pi has inspired many board computers, and Qualcomm is now offering one of its own with a range of features never before seen in the low-price end of the market.The DragonBoard 410c is an uncased computer a little larger than a credit card, with all the important components on one board. With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, location tracking and 64-bit Snapdragon chips, it offers many capabilities not yet available in other low-cost boards.Qualcomm is best-known for its smartphone and tablet chips, but the board could be used to make robots, drones and wearables. The chip maker’s high-end developer boards have been used to develop self-learning robots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's new 12-inch MacBook might be a point of controversy for some. In order to attain a certain level of thinness, Apple completely removed all of the familiar ports and replaced it with just one – USB C.Now, in this hilarious parody video, we get an "insider" perspective from an "Apple engineer" on what that development process was like. It's a must watch!
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Lyft has raised US$530 million in its latest funding round, and plans to use the money to beef up its IT staff, expand its footprint and boost existing services.Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten led the round. With the latest cash infusion, Lyft has raised a total of $862 million from investors. The ride-hailing company is now reportedly valued at $2.5 billion.Lyft, based in San Francisco, said Wednesday it will use the funding to increase its presence in the 65 U.S. cities where it operates and to expand to other markets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
First, the iPhone 6 arrived last year without it. Now, comes the Apple Watch. Same story. Wireless charging seems to be something Apple's going to wait on even as major mobile manufacturers adopt it.Last week, Samsung announced that its Galaxy 6 and S6 Edge smartphones will have wireless charging. Two years ago, the Windows Phone 8-based Lumia 920 smartphone had wireless charging. So it's not as if it's not becoming a more mainstream technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you stop and think about it, smartphones are a lot like cars: They're fun, they're functional, and we always feel lost without them. But no matter how much we love 'em, they all occasionally do things that drive us crazy.As a certified Guy Who Writes About Android, I hear all about people's most pesky phone-related annoyances. From insufficient storage and wonky auto-brightness to less-than-stellar stamina, certain problems seem to pop up often. And nine times out of 10, there's a pretty easy fix -- or at least some steps that can help make things a little bit better.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple Watch Apps for BusinessImage by Apple/Shutterstock On March 9, Apple at last revealed more specifics about the much-anticipated Apple Watch. CEO Tim Cook said that following the release of the company's WatchKit SDK in November, developers created "thousands of new apps," a few of which were showed off by Apple vice president of technology Kevin Lynch. (You can jump to the 68-minute mark of the presentation video to see Lynch demo Watch apps.) Apple also revealed the new Apple Watch software, which is part of iOS 8.2 (now available) and lets you browse, buy and download apps for the watch.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is investing US$200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat, following a string of prior investments in U.S. tech companies.The companies did not publicly comment on the deal. But a person familiar with the matter confirmed the investment on Thursday.The e-commerce firm has been funding both U.S. and Chinese tech companies, as a way to grow the company’s global ecosystem, the source said.Previous deals made in the U.S. include investing in messaging app Tango, online retail site ShopRunner, and ride-sharing service Lyft.The activity has sparked speculation that the Chinese e-commerce company is preparing to buy its way into the U.S. market. Last week, Alibaba announced it was opening its first data center in Silicon Valley to target the U.S. cloud computing sector.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has opened its first shop-within-a-shop in London, yet another retail experiment by the company, which already has counters in third-party stores.The London shop is located inside the Currys PC World store on Tottenham Court Road, and it features Google’s Nexus devices, Chromebooks and other products. Currys PC World is the biggest consumer electronics retailer in the UK.Google’s shop is not a full blown retail outlet like Apple’s huge and sophisticated stores, but more of a modest test balloon for the search giant. It builds on dedicated areas Google has already in big electronics stores.Although not very big, the shop is prominently located by the entrance of the Currys store, so it’s impossible to miss. Shoppers can test and buy Google’s Android phones and tablets as well as Android Wear smartwatches and Chromebook laptops from partners such as LG Electronics, Motorola Mobility, HP and Asus.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
T-Mobile is crowing about making a list as one of the 2015 World's Most Ethical Companies. My guess is that voting must have taken place after December, when the FCC announced that T-Mobile would be paying at least $90 for cramming -- that is, "for billing customers millions of dollars in unauthorized third-party subscriptions and premium text messaging services."Then again, it's all relative. AT&T got whacked earlier last year by the FCC for $105M for doing something similar. The State of California also nailed AT&T late last year for almost $24M in a hazardous waste dumping case. Verizon paid up for privacy violations and Sprint got fined last year for not honoring the do-not-call rules. And of course take your pick with Comcast: How about "borrowing" customers' routers to use as WiFi hotspots?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some of Apple’s major online services for purchasing ebooks, music and apps were down as of Wednesday morning.Service for Apple’s App Store, iBooks Store, iTunes Store, and Mac App Store was lost around 2 a.m. U.S. Pacific time, and remained out as of 10:20 a.m., Apple posted on its system status page. Some users of these services worldwide may not be able to make purchases, downloads, or update apps.Service for Apple’s iCloud Mail and iCloud Account & Sign In was also lost around 2 a.m., but was restored by 6 a.m.It’s not clear what caused the outage. Apple did not immediately respond to comment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As concern grows about data collection by mobile apps, Apple and companies involved with its new ResearchKit software development framework for medical studies say users of the first five apps have nothing to worry about.Access to health data collected by the apps will be restricted to approved medical researchers and barred from commercial use, and the apps won’t delve into the personal contents stored on a smartphone, according to the companies.Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit biomedical research organization in Seattle, handles collecting, de-identifying and storing of the health data gathered from the five apps developed with ResearchKit, Christine Suver, principal scientist, head of open science data governance at Sage, said in an email interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Reports of problems logging into a variety of Apple services, including the iOS and Mac app stores, iTunes, iCloud and even the company's support scheduler, washed across the Internet early Wednesday."I am trying to update one of my apps but when I get asked to sign into the Mac App Store I get a "Status_Code_Error" appear in red letters to the bottom of the login window," reported someone identified only as xXDivineSparkXx in the first message of a long thread on Apple's support forum, posted before 3 a.m. PT today.Several hundred others chimed in -- from locations across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Asia -- to report the same.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As College Humor videos go, this is one of the more SFW ones I've seen (just a couple of naughty words). Anyway, Apple once again begs for parody videos to emerge with the official, official, official introduction this week of its Apple Watches. Here's why the gold watch costs $10K, according to the humor site.
An earlier Apple Watch parody video, too.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While many of us have taken to the concept of video over mobile networks on smartphones, you could argue that it's been more of a "yeah, really cool, I like that idea" flirtation, rather than a "Hey, when's trash day?" and "Anyone know how to get a 55-inch TV in a garbage can?" kind of amour.Just how many people are happy with stuttering, low-definition images on a pokey smartphone screen, one could ask? I for one am not watching a smartphone screen on an expensive, spotty mobile network in lieu of Wi-Fi media delivery via a big screen when I can help it.And has there been any indication that the non-tech segment of the population thinks differently? Is it not all the same inquisitive dabbling?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Baidu’s efforts to bring its own customized Android ROM to Chinese smartphones appears to be fizzling out as the company shifts resources away from the project.On Wednesday, the team behind the Baidu Cloud OS, a suite of tools and interfaces designed for Android phones and incorporated into the company’s Android ROM, announced it was saying goodbye to the platform.“Because of a company business adjustment, we have no choice but to painfully decide to suspend updates and support to the Baidu Cloud OS,” the team said in an official forum posting.While the rest of Baidu’s consumer cloud business will still be in operation, the Cloud OS and ROM design unit has been folded into a new company, the team added in another posting. It did not offer details about the new company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mobile device management (MDM) products continue to evolve as mobility takes on an increasingly important role in the enterprise, and as vendor consolidation continues.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Motorola Mobility will start shipping the second generation Moto G with LTE in Europe later this month, while smartphone buyers in the U.S. will have to wait.The price will be €199 (US$210) in countries such as Germany and France and £159.00 in the U.K. with tax. It will start shipping the week of March 16, according to Motorola. The company didn’t provide any details on a possible U.S. launch, only saying that it wasn’t included in the launch.The exclusion of LTE when Motorola announced the second generation Moto G back in September was surprising, since there already was a 4G version of the original model. But the company is now starting to rectify that by expanding availability outside Brazil, where the 4G phone went on sale earlier this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here