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Boot up: Ara assembles, BMW OLED, NFC not found, LaCie breached and more
[April 16, 2014]

Boot up: Ara assembles, BMW OLED, NFC not found, LaCie breached and more


(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team Building blocks: how Project Ara is reinventing the smartphone >> The Verge Dieter Bohn: For example, having different components physically far away from each other should mean that they're slower to communicate (since the bits need to travel farther), but ATAP is trying to push a communication standard called "UniPro" into widespread adoption a year or two ahead of schedule. Eremenko says that once UniPro is utilized by modules, an Ara phone should be fast enough to overcome that speed issue, thanks to "10 gigabits of throughput to most modules from the on-device network with a couple-microsecond latency." That's good enough for things like storage and cellular radios but not good enough for RAM, which will need to be on the same module as the processor.



Ara modules need to have a way to communicate with the rest of the phone, but physical contacts are often dirty and unreliable. So instead, the modules will use "capacitive interconnects," which are wireless and theoretically more reliable, especially at high speeds. The capacitive pads also will help save space on the modules, since they're smaller than physical pins.

When it comes to keeping the modules in place, physical latches are fiddly and can easily break. Instead, Ara phones will use electropermanent magnets to hold them in place.


The smartphone business is zero-profit for most players. How would a business made up of competing parts suppliers be any more profitable - even if the finished product can be made to work as well as a unified phone designed by a single company? It would either flop, or be driven to commodity (and so drive out suppliers) almost at once.

GSMA reports on NFC adoption at MWC, SIM trends and HCE >> NFC World In all, 10,000 of the event's 85,000 visitors used the NFC Badge service and a total of 51,000 NFC interactions were made across the Fira Gran Via venue. Last year, 10,500 people used the NFC Experience.

Incipio distributed 12,000 NFC cases for iPhones free of charge in the "first couple of days" of the event. "That was a real positive," GSMA media director Claire Cranton told NFC World. "We heard a lot of very positive comments about the opportunity given to participate and it wasn't just tapping and downloading information, there was more interaction and networking." If you can't get a majority of people attending the premier mobile phone conference to use NFC, what hope is there of persuading any significant proportion of the general population? Hardware giant LaCie acknowledges year-long credit card breach >> Krebs on Security Computer hard drive maker LaCie has acknowledged that a hacker break-in at its online store exposed credit card numbers and contact information on customers for the better part of the past year. The disclosure comes almost a month after the breach was first disclosed by KrebsOnSecurity.

On 17 March 2014, this blog published evidence showing that the Web storefront for French hardware giant LaCie (now owned by Seagate) had been compromised by a group of hackers that broke into dozens of online stores using security vulnerabilities in Adobe's ColdFusion software. In response, Seagate said it had engaged third-party security firms and that its investigation was ongoing, but that it had found no indication that any customer data was compromised.

Seems to be the same gang which broke into Adobe, among others.

BMW Organic Light: OLED Tail Light >> DisplayBlog BMW's release, quoted: Initial applications in production cars could see OLEDs taking over the function of the tail light as part of a so-called hybrid light, while brake lights and turn signals continue to employ LEDs...

As development progresses, flexible OLEDs that are also transparent will be brought out. Three-dimensional OLEDs with freely definable shapes are a likely prospect in the medium term. The fact that OLEDs are formable and require neither reflectors nor lenses paves the way for a whole new range of uses that are not feasible at the current time.

BBC iPlayer video downloads now available for all recent Android devices >> BBC Internet blog David Berlin, senior product manager: In response to public demand, instead of our previous policy of comprehensively testing specific devices before enabling downloads, we are now offering video downloads functionality by default to all Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) or above.

The opening up of this feature to more than 96% of current users of the BBC iPlayer Android app is the result of development by the BBC iPlayer team and extensive testing via the BBC Mobile Compatibility Programme (MCP). We believe that the vast majority of devices will enjoy a great video downloading experience. However, with more than five thousand different phone, phablet and tablet models able to install the BBC iPlayer Android app, there are likely to be a number of devices that exhibit bugs concerning download behaviour.

Blackberry CEO: Opting out of a BYOD world >> CITEWorld Nancy Gohring: [John] Chen hammered home the idea that BlackBerry has lost interest in the consumer and thus the BYOD market when he discussed the falling out the company has had with T-Mobile. BlackBerry pulled its phones from T-Mobile following a T-Mobile promotion that rewarded customers for switching from BlackBerry phones.

He told Bloomberg that cutting ties with T-Mobile was easier than with AT&T or Verizon, given that T-Mobile is focused on consumers and not enterprises.

In a world that's increasingly supportive of BYOD, it's hard to see how Chen's strategy will keep BlackBerry phones alive. He might be able to continue to develop BlackBerry's server products to attract the most security conscious businesses. But since the server now supports other handsets, there's little reason for buyers - be they companies that are issuing phones or individuals told they can buy what they like - to choose BlackBerry phones.

The clock's ticking, she says.

March 1998: How Yahoo! won the search wars - and could be the next America Online >> Fortune A stroll down memory lane with Randall Stross: Let's leave aside, for now, questions of whether Yahoo! will be around in ten years or whether there's any way its stock might be a good investment. This much is clear: Yahoo! has won the search-engine wars and is poised for much bigger things.

Its triumph could hardly be less likely. Yahoo! has emerged from a crowded corner of the Web, where at least three other major services help people do the same thing--find things on the Internet. Type in "Pamela Lee" or "IBM" at any of these so-called search sites, and you'll find that the others-- Infoseek, Excite, and Lycos--tell you about more Websites faster than Yahoo! does. Its technology is not nearly as robust as that of its rivals. Yet Yahoo! gets twice as many visitors as its nearest competitor.

At the time the "next America Online" tag was high praise. Now, however...

A small tablet company brings high-tech hopes to Haiti >> NPR Haiti has struggled to rebuild since a devastating earthquake more than four years ago. Most of the population lives on less than $2 a day and there are few open jobs for the millions of unemployed.

But there's a bright spot: The Western Hemisphere's poorest country is getting into the high-tech race thanks to Surtab, a Port-au-Prince-based company that makes Android tablets.

"Last month we [produced] 2,500. This month, as soon as we get components, we're now going to have a run rate of about 3,000-3,500," says Maarten Boute, Surtab's CEO. "So we're gradually ramping up." Google, once disdainful of lobbying, now a master of Washington influence >> The Washington Post In May 2012, the law school at George Mason University hosted a forum billed as a "vibrant discussion" about Internet search competition. Many of the major players in the field were there -- regulators from the Federal Trade Commission, federal and state prosecutors, top congressional staffers.

What the guests had not been told was that the day-long academic conference was in large part the work of Google, which maneuvered behind the scenes with GMU's Law & Economics Center to put on the event. At the time, the company was under FTC investigation over concerns about the dominance of its famed search engine, a case that threatened Google's core business.

In the weeks leading up to the GMU event, Google executives suggested potential speakers and guests, sending the center's staff a detailed spreadsheet listing members of Congress, FTC commissioners, and senior officials with the Justice Department and state attorney general's offices.

A fascinating, in-depth article. (Side note: FTC staff were in favour of pursuing litigation against Google over search; the FTC commissioners disagreed, in a decision taken in late 2012.) You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on Pinboard. To suggest a link, either add it below or tag it with @gdntech on the free Delicious service.

(c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited.

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