A new generationA new generation of gadgets is poised to hit the market in 2015. In fact, some launched with limited shipping just before Christmas. Others are highly anticipated, but won’t be out until later in the year. Some will change the world. Others will end up in the tech scrap heap. Here’s a preview of what’s coming.Amazon Echo (Siri in a can)Ship date: Began shipping right before ChristmasTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund, has made its RapidPro suite of apps available to Airtel customers for free across the 17 African countries in which the telecom company operates.The open-source family of applications is designed to help governments deliver rapid and vital real-time information and connect communities to lifesaving services. The apps offer health, education and youth-focused content.By introducing the apps to Airtel users, UNICEF content will be more accessible and data-gathering across regions made easier. RapidPro makes data related to interactions on the platform available in Excel for analysis.RapidPro also allows organizations to create personalized messages based on information collected from users, which could in turn increase response rates.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve tested any number of portable backup batteries designed to keep your phone running when you’re not near a power socket and I thought I’d pretty much seen most of the good ideas … until I opened a box that just arrived from Nomad. Nomad
NomadKey with Apple Lightning connector
Nomad
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If you’re a small company without developers or maybe a group within a large organization that can’t get any love from the corporate development team and you need a mobile app, where are you going to go? The whole process of connecting with third party developers, getting non-disclosure agreements signed, getting bids, correlating bids, and selecting which developers to work with is a daunting and non-trivial workload.Should you be in this particular boat, a service that launched late last year, AppFutura, can help you. AppFutura connects project owners and developers in a systematic way making the mobile app development process potentially less complicated and much more organized.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A teenager not even old enough to drive a car was able to wirelessly connect to a vehicle's internal computer network and control various functions.The 14-year-old built an electronic remote auto communications device with $15 worth of Radio Shack parts that were assembled in less than a night.Auto executives at a conference this week sponsored by the Center for Automotive Research revealed how stunned they were by the feat, which actually happened last summer, noting it shed light on the need for greater security as vehicles gain more wireless capabilities.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch
The boy, whose name is not being released, was among 30 other students ranging in age from high school to college undergraduates to PhD students who participated in the third annual Battelle CyberAuto Challenge. The year, make and models of the cars experimented on during the challenge were not disclosed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In just a week's time, the news cycle around Apple has transitioned from the impending launch of the Apple Watch to reports that the company is actively working to develop an electric car.More than just an anonymously sourced rumor, a number of reputable publications have all reported that Apple is looking to get into the car industry. Tthe Wall Street Journal, for example, reported a few days ago that Tim Cook has already authorized the development of a 1,000 strong team to get things rolling.Stoking the Apple car rumors considerably is a recent report from Bloomberg which relays that Apple has designs to begin vehicle production as early as 2020. Now given that the car manufacturing process for a veteran automaker-- from design to production -- can often take upwards of 7 years, a five year time frame for a newbie like Apple seems curiously short.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The Apple community is buzzing today over a report from 9-to-5 Mac that the iPhone and iPad maker will be holding its first public open beta for iOS next month.
This would be Apple's latest effort to do away with buggy releases for its mobile operating system. Early adopters of iOS 8 ran into various troubles, as did those early to download the first updates to that OS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wide-area wireless networks for connecting Internet of Things devices may go global through a partnership between hot IoT startup Sigfox and aerospace company Airbus.Sigfox builds long-range networks for devices such as sensors that need a wireless connection but are too small and power-constrained for cellular radios. Its networks use unlicensed frequencies and don't go more than a few hundred bits per second, but they cost as little as US$1 per connection, per year.The French company has now joined the Mustang Project, co-founded by Airbus Defence and Space and two R&D partners in France. The project plans to combine Sigfox's terrestrial networks with satellite coverage to achieve global coverage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Looking good and working wellImage by ShutterstockOne sign of a successful technology is when manufacturers start considering how it looks as well as how it works. Take portable battery chargers: Once upon a time, they were clunky, heavy and came mostly in basic black; not exactly the kind of thing that you wanted to haul out during a business lunch (unless you needed to impress your guest with how seriously geeky you were).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Gauging what a smartphone is going to look like before its released is sort of like solving one of those toss-up puzzles on Wheel of Fortune – the answer gets clearer the longer you wait.And the Samsung Galaxy S6 – probably the most-hyped smartphone being made by a company besides Apple – is no exception. While its release at the upcoming Mobile World Congress may yet provide a surprise or two, it seems fairly obvious that the Galaxy S6 will be a slick, metallic powerhouse of a device.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Vendors lay groundwork for 5G with greener and faster mobile networks | Commercial spyware invades enterprises +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mobile users have become a vital part of Yahoo’s recovery effort, and on Thursday it tried to woo developers with new tools to help them build better apps using its services.The company held its first-ever mobile developer conference in San Francisco on Thursday, where it unveiled tools that help developers collect data about their apps and make money from them using Yahoo advertising services.Many of the tools come courtesy of Flurry, a mobile analytics and advertising company Yahoo acquired last year. Flurry now has more than 200,000 developers using it’s tools, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said Thursday. Yahoo hopes to get even more developers on board by giving them new ways to see how their apps are performing and by baking Yahoo advertising options directly into Flurry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A startup that uses the cloud to bring desktop applications to mobile devices has expanded its offerings for Mozilla’s Firefox OS.LibreOffice and OpenOffice are now available to people with smartphones running Firefox OS. The office suites can be found in Mozilla’s Marketplace app store along with other programs offered by rollApp, a venture capital-backed company based in Palo Alto, Calif.With the addition of LibreOffice and OpenOffice, rollApp has made 18 applications available for Firefox OS users.RollApp hosts copies of software on its servers and allows people to access the applications via browsers.The software hosted by rollApp cover a range of applications including computer-aided design, worker productivity and software development. The 130 apps offered also include games. However, don’t expect to find any popular proprietary programs like Microsoft Office. For now, all of rollApp’s software-as-a-service offerings are for free and open source applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies have reportedly hacked into the computer network of giant SIM card maker Gemalto and taken smartphone encryption keys potentially used by customers of hundreds of mobile phone carriers worldwide.The Gemalto hack, by the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), allowed the two spy agencies to monitor a large portion of the world’s mobile phone voice and data traffic, according to a story in The Intercept.The hack was detailed in a 2010 GCHQ document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the story said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A slower but more frugal version of LTE that has been customized for the Internet of Things will be demoed at Mobile World Congress next month.LTE was developed to provide high-speed transmission for smartphones and tablets, and has been a success in that regard. But with the growing popularity of connected wearables, smart meters and vehicles, the telecom industry has had to rethink LTE specifications to make it a better fit for related applications.At Mobile World Congress, Nokia and KT (Korea Telecom) will demonstrate a prototype of a customized version, which has been dubbed LTE-M. The alterations include changes to increase battery life and decrease the cost of devices that use it. The latter is in part achieved by decreasing bandwidth, which means less expensive components can be used.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Unlicensed spectrum would be the logical place to expand traffic if, as mobile networks are finding, their licensed spectrum is running out.Why not shift over to unlicensed spectrum? It's unlicensed, after all, so anyone can use it. Who would object?Well, the answer to that question may be a bunch of Wi-Fi users, like you and me, if it doesn't work as promised and stomps on existing use, such as Wi-Fi.Wi-Fi at 5 GHzThe new piggy-backing technology uses the same Wi-Fi band that mobile device users are beginning to take advantage of in the home and workplace. That is 5 GHz—the free-to-use band you'll find in newer routers and mobile devices, like tablets and recent phones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The prospect of government oversight and steady stream of security issues facing Uber haven’t scared investors from the ride-hailing company, which will expand its latest round of venture funding by US$1 billion.In December, Uber initially raised $1.2 billion during a funding round. At that time, Uber estimated there was room for an additional $600 million in investments.Investor interest, though, proved greater. To meet the demand, Uber will expand that round and issue approximately 30 million additional shares valued at $33.31, according to documents filed Wednesday with the Delaware secretary of state. Uber is based in San Francisco and incorporated in Delaware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new generation of mobile network equipment comes with lofty promises of better coverage and performance for subscribers, by making it easier for operators to add more capacity and support for new radio technologies.Mobile operators are facing a number of challenges, starting with building networks that won’t get overwhelmed by traffic growth mainly driven by video. The most straightforward way of doing this is adding more spectrum—or lanes, if you will—to their networks. It isn’t a coincidence that the recent AWS (Advanced Wireless Service) spectrum auction in the U.S. was a blockbuster and that operators want to use Wi-Fi frequencies for LTE.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sprint and T-Mobile separately defended their smartphone and tablet unlocking policies on Wednesday following criticism from independent researcher Sina Khanifar.Sprint in a short statement said that as of Feb. 11, it had "implemented all six of the principles contained in the CTIA [Consumer Code] unlocking agreement, and we appreciate the FCC's recognition that the country's major providers have met their commitment."The FCC last week applauded carriers for meeting voluntary unlocking principals by the Feb. 11 deadline.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Analytics is not a domain everyone’s brain can adapt to easily. Combining statistics, data visualization, operations research, programming savvy and more, the field has relied largely on specialists to make its data-focused interpretations useful in the practical sphere.That, however, is slowly changing. Along with the rise of Big Data, efforts are increasingly emerging to put the power of analytics in the hands of business managers, often using the tools for mobile devices that are popular today.A case in point is Salesforce.com’s Wave Analytics Cloud, which the company updated Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo wants to go beyond GPS with a more granular smartphone navigation system for complex indoor spaces.DoCoMo has partnered with mapping company Zenrin DataCom to develop the navigation system that makes use of sensors in smartphones. It’s designed to help users find their way through Japan’s dense indoor spaces such as subway complexes or underground malls where GPS signals may not reach.Japan has some of the busiest and largest rail hubs in the world, with multiple floors, overlapping rail lines and subterranean shopping arcades. The new platform uses smartphone motion sensors to track direction when a user walks around. The data is plotted against preloaded maps from Zenrin, which supplies mapping apps for all DoCoMo mobile phones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here