A Bitcoin wallet on a smartphone: coming (back) soon to iPhones. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty ImagesA burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
According to the Developer Guidelines section 11.17:
Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions
This means that developers can now build iOS apps for Bitcoin wallets. And Coinbase, Blockchain, and Fancy can all return their apps to the store.
Want to blame someone for the death of the open web? Blame O'Reilly. Blame Web 2.0. Blame the swaths of 'open web' evangelists at companies like Google, Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook who — either through naïvety or vested interests — pulled the wool over our eyes by evangelising Open APIs.
It was Web 2.0 — with its central axiom that Open APIs would result in an open web — that got us to enthusiastically expend our energies building on closed platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Because, hey, if they have an Open API, they must be open, right?
Wrong.
He coins the term "openwashing". There's an undercurrent building up in some of the commentary online - which is that the promises of 2005, of eternal and open APIs connecting to forever-available data have been betrayed.
Spoiler: Dropbox, Swiftkey/TouchWiz (really?), Android, Snapchat, MightySMS on Android or Skype, OK Google, Windows Vista. Though Apple had cloud-based files and desktop syncing long before Dropbox - it introduced iTools in 2000.
Apple has moved cautiously with iBeacon, in part because it might raise concerns about being tracked. Apple says iBeacon transmitters don't track users, because they only send out a signal, and don't receive information. The technology is in relatively limited use, deployed in many Apple retail stores and some Major League Baseball stadiums.
…Here is how the technology works: Transmitters called beacons emit a low-power Bluetooth signal to smartphones within about 500 feet, depending on conditions. Apps are programmed to respond to those signals, so that a retailer can beam a coupon for detergent when a shopper is in the appropriate aisle, for example.
By understanding a user's location, apps can begin to guess what users need or want to do next. It opens the door to a world of "ambient intelligence," an industry phrase describing an environment that senses a person's presence and responds accordingly.
Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. has installed beacons in London's Heathrow Airport so a passenger's smartphone automatically displays a boarding pass when he approaches the gate or airport security. LabWerk, a Dutch startup, has an app to help drivers navigate parking garages and alert them to empty spots or guide them to their cars.
Lots of really inventive applications of this.
Paul Bischoff:
as cyber security tensions between the US and China ramp up in the wake of Snowden/NSA, the perceived need for domestic operating systems is higher than ever. At a tech conference sponsored by China's Ministry of Telecommunications, Ni Guangnan from the Chinese Engineering Academy said China will kick its dependency on foreign mobile OSes in the next three to five years, according to Techweb.
While Ni didn't mention exactly which OS China is pinning its hopes on, the front runner appears to be COS, short for China Operating System. We caught a glimpse of the Android lookalike back in January, but it hasn't been made available to the public yet. It appears HTC is assisting with development, as well.
Doug Smock:
one of the really huge benefits of additive manufacturing is that it can create complex internal geometries, such as cooling channels. But it's expensive. And for mass production, it's way too slow a process to be realistic. And there aren't really that many parts that benefit from its capabilities. Surface finish? Not Class A. Materials costs? Much more than molding grades of plastics or stamping grades of metals. Materials used in many of the technologies are exotic and have limited, if any, functional applications.
Stratasys created a neat niche in the assembly market (thinks jigs and fixtures) for its 3D printing systems, which have the advantage of using common plastics. 3D printing works great when there are a lot of design changes and volumes are low.
It's the greatest invention ever for prototyping. It works great for dental and some medical applications. It works great for making custom designed, one-off toys and monsters. It works great for custom cranial implants, although many are still machined from stock shapes. Works great for architectural models. Some goofballs are even using cheap 3D printers to make guns.
But a manufacturing revolution?
Still, what does he know? He's just the former chief editor at Plastics World and been covering 3D printing since 1986.
The prototype, which is called Llama Mountain, will be among the thinnest hybrid devices shown by Intel, and will be based on a fifth-generation Core processor, sources familiar with the company's plans said. No more details about the Broadwell chip, or the hybrid's size or weight were shared.
The manufacturing problems with Broadwell are a rare misstep for the world's biggest chip maker.
Intel typically releases new chips on an annual basis but the multiple problems mark the first major processor delay since the Pentium 4 chip more than a decade ago.
Intel has said Broadwell chips will be 30 percent more power-efficient and faster than their Haswell counterparts, and also boast better graphics. Desktop variants of the chip will support new technologies like DDR4 memory, and also have new graphics cores.
Janko Roettgers:
Android TV won't be another device, but rather a platform that manufacturers of TVs and set-top boxes can use to bring streaming services to the television. In that way, it is similar to Google TV, the platform the company unveiled at its 2010 Google I/O conference. But while Google TV was focused on marrying existing pay TV services with apps, Android TV will at least initially be all about online media services and Android-based video games.
…The big question is whether Google will get consumer electronics manufacturers to support this vision. The failure of Google TV cost the company a lot of goodwill, but the success of Chromecast may have made up for at least some of that.
It's unclear how Chromecast - made by one manufacturer - would make the consumer electronics companies that saw Google TV plummet (and the Nexus Q dumped after being shown off publicly) suddenly feel good.
The Sunday morning strip is about the search for a corporate motto. It's all in the punchline.
From July 2008, pointing out (among other risks for Apple of building a mobile phone) that
If you fail, it would be a public fiasco of the first order, likely lopping off at least a third of your market cap and seriously eroding financial sector confidence in your company's ability to grow and diversify beyond the Mac and the iPod businesses.
What's also interesting, looking back, is that "a huge and risky bet" is precisely how Apple staff have described the iPhone - both in personal recollections and in court cases (against Samsung).
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