Image by Roland TanglaoProgrammers seem to impact just about everything these days and mobile developers, in particular, are playing an ever-growing role in the world. The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets and the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) make the people who are creating the apps and tools for all the smart devices in our lives all the more important. A new global survey helps to shed light on the trends among mobile developers and the mobile economy, in general.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber likes to promote its service as an easy way to get from point A to point B with a smartphone. Now the company wants to reward you for making one of those points a hotel.The ride-hailing service is teaming up with Starwood Hotels & Resorts to boost the use of its app among the well-traveled crowd. Through the partnership, members of Starwood’s guest loyalty program can link their accounts with Uber accounts and earn Starwood credits whenever they take an Uber ride. They’ll earn more credits if they take the ride while staying in one of the hotel company’s 1,200 properties in 100 countries.The arrangement goes into effect Wednesday, marking Uber’s first partnership of this sort with a hotel operator.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If all the well-publicized hacks over the past year or so have had any effect on the corporate world, it’s been to make enterprises more worried than ever about security. Throw in the bring-your-own-device trend, and that concern gets compounded considerably.Such issues were part of the motivation for the recent launch of the Confide app for confidential enterprise messaging, and they’re also a big piece of the thinking behind the NetSfere messaging service that Infinite Convergence rolled out on Tuesday.Though Infinite Convergence launched its cloud-based messaging service for enterprises on a trial basis last fall, the security-minded offering just became globally available. Device-to-device encryption and administrative controls are among the service’s key features, which add up to end-to-end secure messaging capabilities, the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IDC's recent report on smartphone operating system market share points to Apple and Google squeezing out Windows Phone and BlackBerry again, making the smartphone market a two-horse race. Melissa Chau, IDC Senior Research Manager, said:
"Instead of a battle for the third ecosystem after Android and iOS, 2014 instead yielded skirmishes, with Windows Phone edging out BlackBerry, Firefox, Sailfish and the rest, but without any of these platforms making the kind of gains needed to challenge the top two."
With just Apple and Google as serious contenders, Apple has to maintain its iPhone 6 momentum from the fourth calendar quarter of 2014, when the company boosted unit shipments to 74.5 million, compared to just 51 million units during the same quarter of 2013.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprise apps built with IBM’s MobileFirst management and development platform can now be made more aware of their surroundings.The new capabilities, included in an upcoming MobileFirst update, could give app users more information about their location and let enterprises more granularly tailor their apps to user needs, said Mike Gilfix, vice president of IBM’s MobileFirst platform.MobileFirst is IBM’s package to build enterprise mobile applications that tie directly into the data and business logic of backend IT systems.The software is targeted at those organizations that don’t have sufficient in-house IT or development staff to fully build and support apps. About 75 percent of organizations have a backlog of up to 20 mobile apps that they plan to build, but haven’t yet, according to a survey commissioned by IBM and conducted by OutSystems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Let's go retroImage by REUTERS/Aaron HarrisWhen BlackBerry released its Passport phone last fall, it married a modern smartphone operating system -- BlackBerry's new QNX-based OS -- with a physical keyboard, which less than a decade ago had been a ubiquitous smartphone feature but now seemed like a relic from another age. Still, the company hoped that enough people pined for the older technology to drive sales.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Everywhere you lookWhile Apple does not pay for product placement in TV shows and movies, that hasn't prevented Apple products from showing up in all kinds of places in the media. As for how it all happens behind the scenes, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller once explained that Apple has a point person who works closely with Hollywood to get Apple products as much screen time as possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Extreme Networks
Extreme Networks CEO Charles Berger: "The change for Extreme vs. where we were prior to the [Enterasys] acquisition is pretty dramatic."
It’s been about 15 months since Extreme Networks completed the acquisition of Enterasys Networks, a move that bolstered not only Extreme’s financial heft, but widened its switching line and beefed up its wireless LAN capabilities. Extreme CEO Charles Berger gave IDG US Media Chief Content Officer John Gallant an update on the progress of integrating Enterasys’s technology and discussed how software-defined networking is reshaping the industry. He also discussed how Extreme’s work on in-venue wireless with NFL teams and others will benefit all customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Visa Europe is rolling out the security technology that Apple Pay uses to process payments, raising the question of whether the Apple mobile payment system will cross the pond in the coming months.By mid-April, Visa member banks in Europe will be able to process tokens, the company said Tuesday. This technology replaces a person’s credit card information with a random series of numbers called a token, which retailers send to a financial institution when a person uses a smartphone or wearable device to pay for merchandise. The technology is considered better at protecting a person’s financial data since it doesn’t transmit credit card details. Apple uses tokens to complete mobile payments made with the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and its upcoming smartwatch.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AOL
Apple has alerted AOL subscribers who use their credentials to access iTunes and other Apple services that they will need to switch over to an Apple ID for access as of March 31.And yes, according to AOL's latest financials, there still are more than 2 million domestic subscribers of its services. Subscribers have been able to use their same AOL credentials to access iTunes, the Apple App Store and iBooks store.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google's Nexus 9 is a nearly perfect device that, with the addition of the (optional) keyboard case, straddles the line between "little tablet" and "laptop replacement."When I say nearly perfect, put a heavy emphasis on the "nearly" part.I've spent about two weeks with this little Android-powered rig and, for the last few days at least, I've been attempting to use it as my primary machine. As both my tablet and my laptop. The results were… mixed. But overall quite good.The size of the tablet is great, though it is a bit too big to fit in (even rather baggy) pockets. But when you buy a 9-inch tablet, you know you're not going to be able to slip it into your pants pocket anyway. So this isn't really a problem.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Your old smartphone has a greater destiny than your junk drawer. Believe it or not, you can turn it into, say, a mini-PC or media streamer. Assuming it packs both USB On The Go support (OTG) and a Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) compatible port, there’s a ton of additional functionality lurking under that its hood. Heck, you can even use a smartphone with a broken screen for this.Without further ado, here’s how to transform your old smartphone into the brains of an Android-powered PC.It starts with MHL ports and USB OTG support
Many smartphones from companies like Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, and Sony—among others—ship with MHL ports and have built-in compatibility for USB OTG as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung Electronics led the Indian smartphone market with a 22 percent share last quarter, while global rival Apple didn’t even make the top five in this price-sensitive market.The South Korean company is, however, facing strong competition at the low end from Indian players like Micromax, which had an 18 percent share of the market in the fourth quarter of 2014, and also from brands like Xiaomi that sold exclusively online, according to IDC.The rankings are the subject of some dispute, however. Earlier this month research firm Canalys said that Micromax had already overtaken Samsung, with a 22 percent share of the Indian smartphone market in the fourth quarter to Samsung’s 20 percent share. Samsung contested the figures and said its share had been far higher at about 34 percent, citing data from another research firm, GfK.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google says its new YouTube app for kids is its first product “built from the ground up with little ones in mind,” and it appears to have taken careful steps not to ignite a furor by sacrificing children’s’ privacy for its business interests.YouTube Kids was released Monday in the U.S. in the Google Play store and Apple’s App Store. It has privacy-preserving features but also displays ads, which Google says will be “family friendly.”Ads in nearly a dozen categories are prohibited including beauty and fitness, food and beverages, and politics, Google says. And it says the ads won’t collect data about those who view or engage with them, or track them elsewhere on the web.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The tap-and-pay mobile payments market in the U.S. is getting a little less confusing.On Monday, Google said it had reached a deal with three of the country’s major cellular carriers to acquire “technology and capabilities” from Softcard, a competing mobile wallet app developed jointly by the carriers. But the deal appears to be less about technology and more about branding.The biggest immediate change is that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile will begin preinstalling Google Wallet on new Android smartphones later this year—something that had been blocked before in preference for the Softcard app.At their heart, both apps are based on the same contactless payment technology as Apple Pay and a new generation of payment cards from banks and credit unions. They use NFC (near-field communication) to complete a transaction once a payment card or phone is brought within a few centimeters of a terminal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hackaday member CNLohr has created some stunning images of a Wi-Fi network using a remarkably simple technique. He documented his experiments on his Hackaday project page.He achieved the results by capturing wireless signal strength using a Wi-Fi chipset hooked up to a single multi-color LED. The LED rapidly changes color depending on signal strength. He then captures long-exposure photographs of the LED, as his buddy, holding the piece of kit, moves around a space. The result is a multi-colored graphic with variations representing signal strength.Pinging the chipsetTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With less than a week left until the event at which Samsung Electronics is expected to launch the Galaxy S6, two new images and a video of the company’s next high-end smartphone seem to confirm its name and the presence of a curved screen.The images, posted by Samsung and network operator T-Mobile U.S., show the smartphone from the side. The T-Mobile image has the tagline “six appeal” and shows the side of the device lit up, all but confirming the name and the expected launch of a device with a curved screen that wraps around one or both edges. Samsung first used such a curved screen on the Galaxy Note Edge, which it announced last year.The T-Mobile image along with another image Samsung has posted on Twitter also tease an improved design, which the Galaxy S6 needs if Samsung wants the smartphone to be a bigger hit its predecessor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LG Electronics has announced four new smartphones, including the Magna. The device has a spec that gives Motorola Mobility’s Moto G a run for its money, assuming LG doesn’t screw up the pricing too much.Motorola has had the market for unlocked smartphones costing US$200 or less largely to itself in the U.S. and Europe, helping it regain its footing with the Moto G and the Moto E. But it seems the now Lenovo-owned company will face some tougher competition this year from products like the LG Magna.The Lollipop-based smartphone has a 5-inch, 720 x 1280-pixel screen and an unspecified 1.2GHz or 1.3GHz quad-core processor. The Magna also has an 8-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel camera on the back. There’s 1GB of RAM and 8GB of integrated storage backed up by a microSD card slot.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Remembering the ShackRadioShack announced recently that after 94 years the company would be going into bankruptcy, selling off a number of stores and shutting some others down. As a techy who was born in the 60s, RadioShack was a huge part of my life. I remember hitting the RadioShack every time I visited the Duncan Mall just to see what was new. For you younger people out there, understand that at one point, there were no other options for many of the products you could find at RadioShack. No Best Buy, no Amazon.com or Tiger Direct. Here are 10 of the products that I could only get from RadioShack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Absolute Computrace with Device Freeze Offline PolicyKey features: Absolute Computrace with Device Freeze Offline Policy allows IT to set an automated freeze command for any device that remains offline for a specific period of time. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here