Sony Walkman turns 35 years old

Sony launched the first Walkman in 1979, and this is this week the tech breakthrough is celebrating its 35th birthday.

Nowadays there are iPhones, devices that one can use as a phone, a computer and a music player. Before that, there were just iPods that enabled people to put their favorite music all onto one device and create playlists to fit their mood or preference. However, what many younger kids today won't know is that what started this whole process and changed the way we listened to music entirely was the introduction of the Walkman.

It was revolutionary. The idea that someone could listen to the music of their choice without disturbing anyone else really changed the impact music had on society, as it meant people could discover their own unique genre of music and just put on some headphones to listen to a whole tape of it really was something special.

Many features that the iPod now has originated from the Walkman like the small headphones that truly were different at the time but now are extremely popular with millions of people using them daily and thousands of different designs and types.

The Sony Walkman certainly did affect all areas, such as exercise due people were able to create their own music to exercise to which actually caused a boom in exercise. It also was used a lot during travel; in fact, the reason the Walkman made headphones was due the co-chairman of Sony wanting something that meant he could listen to his opera music while travelling on long journeys and that of course has led to the mass use of headphones and iPods being used today on a very regular basis.

So even though in this day and age we see the Walkman as a chunky, old fashioned MP3 player, it actually was the main and maybe only reason that iPods and other handheld MP3 were even thought of so for that reason and many others, it was and still is brilliant.

PlayOn giving away free Chromecast with lifetime subscription

PlayOn is one of the best cord-cutter services that flies largely under the radar. The online TV and DVR service is completely legal, thanks to the way it operates and, in the past, has partnered with Roku to distribute devices. Now PlayOn and its PlayLater service are going to distribute even more devices to customers.

The company is announcing that new "lifetime subscription" customers will receive a free Chromecast with the purchase. "With Chromecast and PlayOn, smartphones and tablets become powerful remote controls for TV viewing. Users can browse through hundreds of channels and thousands of movies and shows in an easy-to-navigate interface on their mobile device. PlayOn's PlayLater software gives Chromecast users DVR capability to record almost any online video for casting later when they are no longer available online. The included PlayOn browser extension gives users the ability to cast almost any full screen video from any browser on their PC to their TV with ease and without any web browser frames", the company says.

This does require some effort on the user's part, though it's minimal. You will need to download the free apps for the PC and mobile devices that you wish to use.

"PlayOn and PlayLater when used in conjunction with Chromecast is a really killer cable-cutting solution”, says Jeff Lawrence, CEO of MediaMall Technologies, which produces the software.

The company did not state how long to deal will be on, so sooner, rather than later, would be the wise move if you wish to take advantage of the option.

Swapping 'Surface' for 'Lumia' -- is Microsoft really about to commit branding suicide?

Boneheaded. That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think about Microsoft abandoning its Surface branding in favor of Nokia Lumia.

You see, successful branding is a tricky business. Getting people to internalize your brand or product name as part of their everyday vocabulary is a herculean task. Coke did it. So did Xerox and Kleenex. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to "Xerox" something, or asked the person next to me to pass me the box of "Kleenex".

And Coke? I’d like to buy the world one and then teach it to sing in perfect harmony. Enough said.

Now we have Surface. And for the first time in my rapidly declining memory, an IT product not made by Apple has achieved this kind of popular brand identity.

When I’m in a meeting, and someone asks me to pass them their iPad, there’s no question as to which device they’re referring. Likewise, when someone asks me to pass them their Surface, there’s absolutely no confusion about the request. They want me to pick up that slick-looking slab of magnesium and glass -- the one with the Microsoft branding all over it -- and hand it across the table.

You can’t say the same about any other Windows-based PC or device. You don’t hear people saying "pass me my HP Envy x2," or "hand me my ASUS Transformer Pad T-whatever".

You might hear them say "pass me my tablet". But tablet is a generic term. There is nothing uniquely identifying or iconic about the word tablet. They could just as well be asking you to pass them a slab of baked clay covered in cuneiform.

But Surface? Here, Microsoft has actually pulled-off the impossible: It’s created an iconic product/brand identifier and embedded it into the public’s consciousness.

I knew this to be true the first time I heard Joe Average Consumer asking his companion whose "Surface" she was holding while waiting in the return line at a local retailer (just to be clear, she was NOT there to return the Surface).

And this was way back in April of 2013! A year of additional brand building progress later and what does Microsoft do with its miracle baby? It tries to kill it by replacing the now iconic brand name "Surface" -- which implies a flat area that you can work on (i.e. the perfect metaphor) -- with the nebulous "Lumia" moniker that has no such branding chutzpah.

I mean, what the hell is a Lumia anyway? The closest thing that comes to mind is a crappy early 90’s coupe from Chevrolet, the "Lumina". Given the poor build quality of that wretched Detroit abomination (so much plastic!), Microsoft would do well to steer well clear anything with even a remote phonetic similarity.

Is this really happening? Are we really doomed to watch as Microsoft destroys its most iconic brand outside of Windows and Office? I’ve heard that the Lumia rebranding is just a rumor, or that it might be isolated to the company’s smaller-screened, Windows RT-based offerings (thus leaving the deliciously iconic Surface Pro untouched).

God, I hope that’s the case. Because I, for one, will not be buying anything from Microsoft called "Lumia".

Connected cars will help to make our roads safer

As a young Londoner, I'm not much of a driver, but boy do I see some congestion. Our capital's streets are bursting at the seams with cars, buses, bikes and trucks, and the majority are completely unconnected to each other.

So it was with interest that I attended NXP's Innovation Day in Eindhoven, Holland, to witness a range of technologies developed by the semiconductor company, including the latest automotive innovations. Falling under the ever-expanding category that is the Internet of Things, the connected car is seen by many to be the future of sustainable transport.

This is not to say though that you'll be seeing a Johnny Cab pull up at your door tomorrow. Maurice Geraets, senior director business development automotive, NXP, was keen to make this clear. The great shift into autonomous driving lies years ahead, he insisted. In the meantime we shall see a period where assisted driving will coexist with traditional vehicles. Bringing in-car data real time to the cloud is hoped to improve traffic safety and reduce congestion and emissions.

Safety

The safety benefits of cars that effectively talk to each other are easy to imagine. Whereas the traditional driver relies on human senses to avoid collision, the assisted driver is aided by the vehicle's connection to others around it. The connected car can warn all those behind it, should it be involved in an accident, thus preventing a pile-up. In January 2013, both NXP and Cisco invested in Cohda Wireless to this end, in a move to advance automotive connectivity.

Mobility

Likewise, removing the human element presents opportunities for congestion reduction and maximized mobility. If in 2030, as the World Health Organization predicts, six out of every ten people will live in urban areas, then more efficient road usage will be welcome to many-a city. "Car-to-X communications," as NXP has so termed them, will provide traffic jam management and rerouting options that will streamline our cities' streets, and hopefully help cope with projected population influxes.

Human error

A car is more than just a machine to many though. The tangibility of being in control of one's vehicle is a beautiful thing that some drivers will cling to. Therefore one can foresee a potential conflict on the country's roads, between the connected and the disconnected, and this includes cyclists and pedestrians. I posed the issue to Maurice.

"The highly automated vehicles -- not to call it fully autonomous yet -- will have to anticipate what is happening with the other traffic," he said.

"On pedestrians we have a project... which is called VRUITS (vulnerable road user intelligent transport systems) to really see how we can also incorporate the technology into the pedestrians, because the vulnerable road users are a quite important role in road safety and road faculties".

"You could imagine that you have, for example, cameras on dangerous intersections that monitor what's happening and do warn cars that are approaching, in the beginning not even with a specific instance, but just with the warning: 'Ten children are playing around here.' Then the driver can take over the control of his highly automated vehicle more so that he can carefully steer his car through that situation".

Clearly, working out how to deal with us unpredictable human road users is still in the development stage.

NXP faces competition from Google, whose driverless cars can sometimes be seen on the roads of California and Nevada. The search giant's vehicles have now logged 700,000 miles of accident-free autonomous driving, and the cars can react to cyclists, sensing when they are turning left or right or approaching from behind. Hesitant to focus on full autonomy yet, NXP has aligned itself with market leaders such as Audi to develop interfaces for the connected car.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Big data makes research more difficult say data scientists

Given the amount of hype surrounding it you could be forgiven for thinking that big data is the answer to most business and scientific problems.

But a new survey by database specialists Paradigm4 reveals that almost three-quarters of data scientists believe that big data has made their research harder. The reason for this is not, as you might expect, the volume of data but the variety.

The results, from a survey of 111 US data scientists, show that 40 percent say they struggle managing new types and sources of data and 36 percent say that getting answers from big data takes too long.

Hadoop comes in for criticism too with 76 percent saying it's too slow, takes too much effort to program or has other limitations. So much so that 35 percent of scientists who have tried using Hadoop or Spark say they have now stopped using it.

Problems cited include 39 percent saying it takes too much effort to program and 37 percent saying it's too slow for interactive ad-hoc queries. 30 percent also say it's too slow for performing real-time analytics.

It seems that despite all this, however, big data still has a key role to play. 91 percent of those surveyed say they’re using or plan to use complex analytics on their big data within two years.

If you want further insight into the trials of being a data scientist, you can get hold of the full survey results on the Paradigm4 website or there's a summary of the findings in handy infographic form below.

Image Credit: aslysun / Shutterstock

Mobile Identity Connect provides secure single sign-on for enterprises

One of the biggest concerns that businesses have about the increasing use of mobiles and BYOD is how to keep their data secure. Traditional security tools were built to cope with desktop devices rather than the on/off existence of mobile connections.

Mobile platform specialist Kinvey aims to help mobile developers to seamlessly secure mobile, tablet, and responsive Web apps with its newly-launched Mobile Identity Connect product.

Using already proven mobile standards, Mobile Identity Connect eliminates the complexity of authenticating mobile apps with existing enterprise security systems. It manages the mobile security layer and provides single sign-on using Kinvey's AuthLink Connector technology to bridge existing enterprise identity into a mobile-friendly OAuth-2 authentication flow.

By using secure pre-built mobile ID management it frees developers to concentrate on the user experience. It gives IT departments a controlled and secure self-service platform for app development which has the four key features required for all mobile applications: identity management, data services, business logic, and engagement services.

"Most enterprise-grade identity and single sign-on systems were designed in a pre-mobile world, and don’t take the unique challenges of mobile technology into account," says Sravish Sridhar, CEO of Kinvey. "Kinvey Mobile Identity Connect provides enterprise mobile developers an OAuth-to-anything connector to enable enterprise-grade security with authentication protocols designed with mobile in mind. Mobile developers don’t want to deal with the complexity of tying directly into identity systems that were not designed for mobile every time they build an app".

By managing the handshake between the mobile app, the identity system, and enterprise data, Mobile Identity Connect ensures that existing security policies are maintained and data can be consumed by the mobile app in a consistent manner across identity and data sources.

For more information Kinvey's backend as a service mobile development platform and Mobile Identity Connect, visit the company's website.

Image Credit: bloomua / Shutterstock

Tablets more popular with children for gaming than Nintendo 3DS

When it comes to portable gaming, the iPad and whole ensuing tablet explosion saw the start of a shift away from traditional gaming handhelds, and a new piece of research has underlined this with the news that tablets have now outdone the Nintendo 3DS.

The study from Futuresource Consulting posed over a hundred questions to children aged three to twelve across the UK (and also the US, Germany and China). It found that in the UK, tablets are now the most popular personal device owned by kids -- with 44 percent having a slate, meaning that they've overtaken the 3DS as top gaming dog.

Even the lowest age group, three to four, showed a result of 30 per ent tablet ownership (most likely of the kids variety, we'd imagine, with offerings like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Kids around).

Parents also said that tablets were the most likely future purchase for their children (within the next six months), as well, meaning this trend is set to continue. Indeed, a tablet is more than twice as likely to be bought for kids than a smartphone or games console.

Speaking of smartphones, they are of course still getting more popular with youngsters aged nine and up, with one in four nine to ten-year-olds owning one. At eleven, that rises to 46 percent. And 17 percent of parents spend £100 or more on mobile tariffs for their offspring, the study found.

Futuresource Consulting did also note that tech isn't everything for kids, and more traditional activities still have quite a hold. 45 percent read books every day (across all four countries where the survey was undertaken), and 39 percent spend five or more hours doing jigsaws and playing board games.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.