Technology Update October 2014

A lot of tech firms are now opening offices on the west side of Los Angeles. Some of the firms are Google, Microsoft, Facebook and YouTube. Along with these famous firms are hundreds of startup tech firms. The city of Los Angeles had decided to hire a chief technology officer and they hired Qualcomm executive Peter Marx. Some are saying the days of Silicon Valley are numbered, but others think this is being hasty. Some believe the prices near Silicon Valley are the reason for the movement with it being almost impossible to find a home for less than one million dollars. New York has its own Silicon Valley and it is getting bigger. It is getting easier to set up companies almost anywhere and with generous tax incentives being offered by some states it is very tempting.

A new startup company has developed a technology which will let dispatchers know when a cop fires his gun. The company is Yardarm Technologies. It will also let dispatchers know when the gun is removed from its holster. The technology can track where the gun is and the direction it was fired. Β The Sheriff of Santa Cruz County is in charge of one of the agencies testing the gun and he thinks it is a good thing, Β because it would let the police know when a deputy is in trouble and can’t ask for help. Originally the system would have triggered an alarm on the owner’s cell phone and they would have been able to disable the gun with their phone. This would have been useful if someone lost their gun or it was taken away from them and the owner had time to do all this, but the effort was abandoned. Some gun owner’s organizations in California say they are not opposed to the technology being used by the police, Β but do object if they are forced to use it. So how does all this work? A small device is attached to the bottom of the officer’s gun. It connects to the officer’s smart phone using Bluetooth and then uses the internet.
Apple Pay seems to still have some bugs in it that the company is trying to correct. It is being said some people using Apple Pay, Bank of America and Visa credit cards with it have been charged twice for the same transaction. As of the writing of this article Apple Pay has only been out a week. It has also been said it could be tricky to make an online purchase using Apple Pay. One of the problems seems to be a crash. I hate those when I am trying to pay for something, because it is hard to know if the payment went through and this means more work for the purchaser who has to now check. Β Apple has said it now knows what is causing the problem and will have a fix for it shortly.

The major auto makers have decided it is important to protect your vehicle’s data. I guess there have been too many stories of cars being able to be hacked lately. Our cars are going to be gathering more and more information about our bodily functions, such biological data and this may become akin to medical information. This also has to be protected. I think we have seen once data is able to be accessed on the Internet it is open to being hacked. One has only to look at all the banks and stores which have lost our data lately and I am not even mentioning the various government agencies who have also lost our data. The question is can our data really be protected? It certainly does not seem so. Auto makers are saying soon cars will communicate with each other and this will prevent many crashes. As cars communicate it may be possible for others to pick up this data as they do with other wireless systems and they could cause all sort of mayhem.
All this talk about Microsoft being on the decline has yet to come true. The company has just posted higher than expected quarterly revenues. Some of this is due to stronger sales than expected of its phones, Surface tablets and cloud-computing products for companies. It was said that cloud services have a lower profit margin and this had worried investors since Microsoft was becoming a large player in cloud services. Some other tech companies are not faring as well. There have been recent negative earnings for Oracle, SAP, EMC, IBM and VMware so Microsoft is actually bucking the trend. They always seem to come out on top even when their products have problems, don’t they?

Is it good or bad, I don’t know yet but I am sort of leaning to bad. I am talking about the new Facebook app which lets someone post anonymously. Facebook says this is for people who want to discuss sensitive issues without using their real name. I think we all know it will lead to abuse and bullying as it always does and those who think they are really anonymous may find out the hard way they really are not for those who want to find out who is saying something, particularly the government. The site will use a “room” for discussions on a particular topic. The person who sets up the room chooses the topic and the photos. Maybe this will be a good way to catch some of those child porn people.

One has to wonder why Google is messing with email AGAIN? They have just come out with an app for email called Inbox. When questioned they said it was for email which really matters and you get to choose what matters. Β Google says Inbox is not a replacement for Gmail. They claim it can be compared to an add-on with additional features. Do we need these new tools? I guess this is up to the individual. All I know is you can have too much of a good thing. When the computer first came out it was said it would reduce work, but instead employers found they could get much more information and demanded it, causing more work. Anyone who has gone to the doctor lately and has had to keeping filling out the same forms over and over knows what I mean.

Apple has issued a security warning for users of its iCloud online storage service. There are reports of a concerted effort to steal passwords and data from it. An Apple representative said, “Apple has posted a new security warning for users of its iCloud online storage service amid reports of a concerted effort to steal passwords and other data from people who use the popular service in China”. "We're aware of intermittent organized network attacks using insecure certificates to obtain user information, and we take this very seriously,"