New Technology News

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Every year at CES, the Eureka Park outpost where they stick the scrappy startups is the best damn part of the whole shindig. This is where all the people with a screw loose or a decided lack of good common sense come to peddle their spaghetti-cooking robot or aroma-powered computer – or, as happened this year, their solar-powered beer cooler.

SolarCooler is a “world first,” which is a common epithet at Eureka Park, and it’s currently undergoing crowdfunding on Indiegogo. The startup is looking for $150,000 to make their portable refrigerator (it even makes ice!) a reality, but it’s currently looking like it’ll need a real groundswell of support to get there.

Here’s the big issue: the entry-level model costs just under $1,000, and that’s a special backer-only price. Retail for the SolarCooler is $1,200, which is bound to be a bitter pill to swallow even for the most ardent of tailgaters. Still, this is essentially a solar-powered 12V battery backup for everything combined with a cooler that offers true, continuous refrigeration, so that price tag starts to look at lot more reasonable when you consider its other potential uses.

It also has a lot of potential to help out in commercial and medical settings as a transport for goods that need to be kept cool when direct power is in scarce supply and loading up a device with a significant number of batteries would make it cumbersome to use.

SolarCooler is pursuing a flex funding goal, meaning it walks away with whatever it raises, and the founder seems keen on building it whatever the outcome, but there are still over 40 days left in the campaign, so it could still turn into a Cinderella story. All I know is I like beer, and I like it cold (that ‘best served at room temperature stuff’ is BS) so SolarCooler makes sense to me.

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SolarCooler Keeps Your Brews Icy With The Power Of The Sun, But It’ll Cost You $1K

12:40 PM

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Every year at CES, the Eureka Park outpost where they stick the scrappy startups is the best damn part of the whole shindig. This is where ...

Apple aired a new iPad advertisement during the NFL playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers today, and it’s all about creativity. It’s no secret that Apple wants to push the creative aspect of its mobile devices, which are still seen largely as consumption gadgets, and this new ad embraces a grand vision of iOS as fertile ground for inspiration and creation.

“What will your verse be?” is the tagline for the ad, and the idea is that each person gets to contribute one verse to the overall poem of human experience (which is a terrible poem by the way). The iPad in the commercial is used in a number of different creative capacities, including as a filming accessory, as a prototyping tool, as a means for writing, and as a way to 3D prototype and work in the depths of the ocean.

It’s telling that many early iPad commercials depicted users in familiar settings using the gadget on their laps, on their couches or in other similarly mundane situations, while this one takes the tablet to the far corners of the earth. Apple also lists the uses depicted in the commercial in greater detail on its ‘Your Verse’ microsite to give more context.

The message is not only that the iPad is capable of true creativity, but also that it’s an aspirational device: This is a lifestyle ad akin to the kind of thing you see from Lexus and other high-end car manufacturers, and that’s a good marketing strategy for the iPad in terms of capitalizing on Apple’s brand cachet. The perceived superiority of Apple tablets in terms of quality is a key weapon the company retains in its ongoing battle with Android slates, after all.

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Apple Gets Serious About The iPad’s Creative Power In New Ad

11:09 AM

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Apple aired a new iPad advertisement during the NFL playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers today, and it’s a...

Smart locks are all the rage these days, and it makes sense: using a device instead of a hardware key means you’re far less likely to lose the means to opening the lock, and you can do it remotely from anywhere with a connection. TEO is a new Kickstarter Project that wants to bring smart features to that most basic of everyday security devices, the padlock.

The TEO uses an app to control a Bluetooth LE lock device, which has a basic hinge and a design that instantly sets it apart from other padlocks out there. It’s also a rights-management platform, whereby you can see the location of your TEO locks on a map, and share access to each individually with anyone else that has the TEO app as you choose. So if you need a friend to pick up the bike you left outside their apartment last night and bring it back to you, it’s as simple as granting them temporary access to that TEO.

The padlock hardware itself is designed to be at least as theft-resistant as existing options on the market, as well as rugged and able to withstand all kinds of weather while keeping the smart features operational. It’ll be made by Heliox Tech, a manufacturer based in California that has worked on U.S. military and underwater tech for nearly a decade, though the design is from Vancouver-based Form3.

teo Of course, using BLE means that battery is a concern; TEO says that using a sophisticated sleep mode, it will last for at least one year in its final design. Users will be able to monitor battery life via the companion smartphone application, too, to make sure they don’t run out of juice and get left with a locked locker. The company also offers support that will swap out exhausted batteries, and help with bugs that cause locks to become unresponsive.

TEO creator OckCorp is looking for $165,000 to get its product off the ground, and has already raised around $34,000 as of this writing. A $79 pledge will currently get you one of the first production units, with a target ship date of December 2014. While the basic combo lock won’t be going out of style anytime soon, this definitely suit the needs of bike sharing organizations, delivery locker companies and others who have the need for a distributed, managed solution, as well as adventurous early adopters.

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TEO Is A Smart Padlock That You Control Via Bluetooth From Your Smartphone

9:25 AM

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Smart locks are all the rage these days, and it makes sense: using a device instead of a hardware key means you’re far less likely to lose ...

Before this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I issued a challenge: I wanted makers of wearable tech to prove to me that the time had come for this category of gadgets. What I was seeking was irrefutable proof that there was technology out there in wearable form factors that demonstrated such clear and immediate benefit that consumers would flock to it in droves.

That’s not what I found.

Which is to say that nothing I found at CES offered up the kind of ‘love at first sight’ that did my first iPhone (which was an iPhone 3G), my first smartphone of any kind. The smartphone needed no additional argument beyond itself to prove its worth: no discourse on market trends, no explanation of how it will appeal to specific niches, no apologies about its current limitations. Of course smartphones had their doubters, as will any new tech, but simply using a good one was enough to convince most of their worth.

Not so with wearables. CES 2014 was a veritable explosion of wearable tech, with major companies including LG (the Life Band Touch) and Sony (the Core) both debuting activity trackers at the show. Many others also added their respective hats to the ring, including JayBird (the Reign), Garmin (Vivoki and Vivofit) and GlassUp (plus a slew of other Glass-type eyewear). At best, however, each of these devices only edged forward the potential of the wearable space; at worst, they represent a descent into a major growing area of concern with the category.

The new Sony and LG devices serve as the best examples to articulate the inherent problem in wearable tech. The category isn’t popular with OEMs simply because it looks to be a new area where people are willing to spend money – it also represents a tremendous opportunity to continue the kind of consumer behavior tracking and analysis begun with smartphones.

Smartphones have proven a veritable treasure trove of data about the people who use them, and that data is immensely useful in developing a product pipeline, and in attracting content and marketing partners. Sony’s Core is designed not just to track fitness, but to provide a log of essentially every connected AND real-world activity a person undertakes throughout the day. In the right (wrong?) hands, it could provide a near-perfect profile of the average day of actual consumers, which is the kind of data portrait that makes marketers weak at the knees.

That’s why Google created Glass, in case anyone was wondering. The search giant’s first and still most influential success was targeting ads at users based on expressed intent (search ads). Arguably, everything it’s done since then has been designed in some way to gather more info on its users for a more complete picture of what they’re looking for (Android, Google+ are just a few high-profile examples). Wearables is simply the next evolution, and that’s why we’re seeing everyone chase that carrot, rather than any especially huge market opportunity in terms of consumer appetite.

pebble-steel

It’s telling that the most impressive wearable at CES for me was a mostly aesthetic iteration of an existing product. The Pebble Steel is the Pebble I always wanted to begin with, though the underlying software and feature set remains mostly unchanged. In fact, my existing Kickstarter edition Pebble never left my wrist during the show, providing a tether to our coverage team that proved superior to any system we used previously. I think it’s telling that Pebble has never positioned itself as a monitoring or logging device, in the context of the argument above, and that may have a lot to do with its continued success.

I still think there’s a lot of potential in the wearables market, but to explore that potential fully, device manufacturers need to at least couch their salivation over the data vein they have to power to break right open in a very convincing veil of consumer concern. Especially now that the Snowden whistleblowing has shed additional light on the value of our privacy, wearables need to concentrate on showing consumers what they offer, rather than just providing a list of what data they keep track of, and that’s why CES 2014 wasn’t quite the proving ground for wearables I’d hoped it might be.

Top image courtesy Richard Stevens 3 of Diesel Sweeties

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CES 2014 Proves Only That Wearables Are Still A Work In Progress

7:40 AM

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Before this year’s Consumer Electronics Show , I issued a challenge: I wanted makers of wearable tech to prove to me that the time had come ...

Saturday, January 11, 2014

In the weeks following Thanksgiving, Target became the unlucky victim of a massive attack and data hack, which reportedly affected as many as 110 million people and exposed an array of personal data, including names, addresses and credit card information. With a second retail giant beginning to notify customers that it, too, has been hacked, it seems that we may just be scratching the surface of a larger cyberattack that took place during the holiday season.

This morning, Krebs On Security reported that upscale retailer Neiman Marcus has teamed up with the U.S. Secret Service to investigate its own data breach which led to the theft of credit card and personal information. The company reportedly discovered the cyberattack in December from its credit card processor but has still yet to disclose how many shoppers have been affected by the hack.

However, the company said via its Twitter account that it is beginning to notify customers whose credit card information has been “used fraudulently” since the breach in December. The company said that the forensics team it has been working with had discovered that customer personal information had been compromised, but that it has “begun to contain the intrusion and have taken significant steps to further enhance information security,” it said in a statement about the breach.

Beyond how many of its customers were exposed to the attack, the company has yet to share details on how the breach occurred. There is no concrete evidence that the two attacks on Neiman Marcus and Target were linked, as, at least according to Krebs. Target has yet to publicly share details on its investigation which could help other retailers discover whether or not the attacks were perpetrated by the same hackers.

However, Reuters has since reported that Neiman Marcus and Target were not the only victims of the Holiday Hack Attack ’13, as I’m calling it. According to Reuters, at least three other “well-known U.S. retailers” were subject to data breaches, which used “similar techniques” to the attack on Target. Not only that, but those investigating the events indicated that similar breaches may also have “occurred earlier last year.”

The report claims that hackers used “malicious software” to infiltrate the retailers’ databases and steal credit card information. Reuters’ sources indicated that one of the Trojan horses used by hackers was a “RAM scraper,” which allows the burglar to snatch encrypted data at a moment of vulnerability. This happens at a point at which it appears in plain text as it moves through the live memory of the customer’s computer, according to Reuters.

Visa apparently warned of a series of attacks using this method that had been attempted on its network earlier last year, but while this kind of “RAM scraping” attack has been around for years, the report said that the attacks on Target and others were much more sophisticated. While cyber security itself has increased dramatically and become more sophisticated over the last few years, it appears there’s still headway to be made.

But what is perhaps more noteworthy: While the attacks reportedly took place during the holiday season, the major retailers affected have delayed any public announcement about the cyberattack. The reason is that many credit card companies and banks are “forbidden” from naming merchants affected by attacks unless “they disclose that information themselves.” Naturally, big brand merchants would rather protect their image and business, rather than publicly announcing a breach.

It’s an understandable move to protect their business and prevent mass hysteria, but it’s also frustrating to customers, banks and many others who may not become aware of their exposure until days, weeks or months after the attacks occur. Many states require companies to contact customers when their information is exposed, and usually its payment processors who bear that responsibility. But that’s not the case everywhere.

As more information on this comes to light, we may learn that the hackers ran a series of test-runs of their new methods involving RAM scraping and other techniques, which could have been a harbinger of things to come. We also may learn that a host of companies have been exposed to these sorts of attacks, even though those companies may resolve try to prevent that information from coming to light.

Image credit: SalFalko via Flickr

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Neiman Marcus Breach Could Be Part Of Larger Holiday Cyberattack On U.S. Retailers

11:40 PM

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In the weeks following Thanksgiving, Target became the unlucky victim of a massive attack and data hack, which reportedly affected as many ...

Bad posture is collectively turning the desk-chained workforce into a mass of unhealthy hunchbacks. The Lumo Lift is a magnetic shirt pin that delivers gentle buzzing nudge whenever it senses poor posture. It’s a reminder “to keep your shoulders back and down and your head lifted,” explains Lumoback Founder, Monisha Perkash.

Because Lumoback collects all the user data on their servers, they actually know that it’s consumers are changing their posture over time. Many of “our users report significant improvement in days or weeks,” says Perkash.

The Lumo Lift is also relevant for folks with a Standing desk, since proper posture is important while standing or sitting.

Perkash revealed to TechCrunch an even cooler feature of Lumo Lift that’s on their product roadmap: Yoga poses. In our CES 2014 interview above, she demonstrated how an upcoming version of the Lumo Lift software will make sure our cobras and downward dogs are top notch.

The Lumo Lift will be available for around $79, launching in the Spring.

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A Gentle Buzz To Improve Your Posture And, Soon, Yoga Poses

12:54 PM

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Bad posture is collectively turning the desk-chained workforce into a mass of unhealthy hunchbacks. The Lumo Lift is a magnetic shirt pin...

The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — digest the complete lack of CES news and the consolidation of the aggregation newsletters. Jason Calicanis’ Launch newsletter went pay-only today, as tech news and events appear to be in a maturing phase. With new sites appearing from All-Things D vets Mossberg and Swisher and a NY Times redesign, the impact of mobile is beginning to sink in.

4K Netflix awaits a broader adoption of plus-15megabit download speeds, but if House of Cards can make Kevin Spacey VP without a vote, anything is possible. PC sales dropped another 10%, iOS content surged, and battery case sales are booming. It was a very Binging New Year at the streaming box office.

@stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @kteare, @kevinmarks

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor