Bathys Hawaii
You may have seen so-called atomic wristwatches
around, but there's a caveat: they actually keep atomic time by
receiving radio signals from nearby government-owned atomic clocks. If
they go out of range of those signals, you'll be left relying on a plain
old quartz movement.
The Cesium 133 by scientist John Patterson's manufacturer Bathys Hawaii, first unveiled half a year ago in a more industrial-looking form and currently seeking Kickstarter backers,
is different. Patterson calls his watch the "world's first true atomic
wristwatch," and the difference is in the insides: a chip-scale atomic
clock (CSAC) hosting a cesium-based oscillator fits right inside the case, dividing each second precisely into the 9,192,631,770 vibrations of the cesium atom.
"The technology
found in this watch is something even a decade ago no one could imagine
existing in such a small package," Patterson said on the Bathys Hawaii Web site.
"Within a single chip there [are] a laser, a heater, a sealed cavity
of cesium gas, a microwave filter, and a photodiode detector. Using the
exact same principle of counting hyperfine lines of excited cesium 133
atoms used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
our watch is able to achieve unprecedented levels of accuracy; on the
order of 1 second per thousand years."
This means that the
Bathys Cesium 133 would be the world's most accurate wristwatch, only
losing up to a single second every 1,000 years. This is more accurate by
three orders of magnitude than current wristwatch technologies.
Bathys Hawaii
The current iteration of the watch is powered by a rechargeable
lithium battery that will run up to 36 hours between chargers, and the
dial displays hours, minutes, seconds, the date, and the moon phase.
Under the case, the CSAC is paired with a Ronda 509 Quartz movement so that the timekeeping of the CSAC can be translated to the dial.
All of this is housed in carbon fiber, which keeps the watch lightweight and rust-free.
If you want one, it's not going to be like picking up a Seiko from
your local jeweller. The six prototypes are going for US$6,000 apiece
on Kickstarter, while a new watch will cost you US$10,000, and very
limited numbers are going to be produced. In haute horlogerie terms,
however, this is a pretty great price for something that's bound to
become a collector's item in years to come.
There's little in life more exciting than piloting a fast car around a
good road course, topping 100 mph on the straights and executing
perfect control at the limits of grip in the turns. Now imagine doing
all that in a convertible.
Chevrolet released photos and specs for
its new Corvette Z06 Convertible, a high-performance version of the
Corvette Stingray featuring a convertible soft-top set to debut at the New York auto show next week.
Serious drivers may scoff at convertibles and sunroofs on track cars,
but Chevrolet insists the Z06 Convertible is worthy. Unlike most
convertible conversions, there has been little structural change to make
the Z06 an open top. Chevrolet asserts that the Z06's aluminum
structure was already so stiff that it needed no extra bracing to
preserve its rigidity after stripping off the coupe roof. The weight of
the new convertible is approximately the same as the Z06 Coupe.
Chevrolet's press release includes many details about designing the
Corvette's structure, such as the 17,000 virtual iterations designed on
the computer. Most notably, chief engineer Tadge Juechter said that
technologies used in the new Corvette Z06's frame did not exist five
years ago.
Just like the Corvette Z06 Coupe
unveiled at the Detroit auto show earlier this year, the Z06
Convertible will get a supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 that is expected to
produce at least 625 horsepower and 635 pound-feet of torque. That means
very little time to activate the power-operated rag-top, which can be
opened at up to 30 mph.
One big change for the Z06 Convertible,
formerly rear fender-mounted transmission cooling intakes move
underneath the car, as they were incompatible with the tonneau cover.
The launch of the Corvette Z06 Convertible comes as little surprise. After the launch of the new Corvette Stingray at the 2013 Detroit auto show, Chevrolet followed up with the Stingray Convertible at the Geneva auto show a few months later. Having laid that groundwork, the Z06 Convertible was a logical follow-up.
And think of all that headroom for your helmet.
Competition can be a beautiful thing. The Arsenio Hall Show/YouTube I struggle with Siri.
Apple's virtual assistant seems not to hear the things I say. She's
convinced, in fact, that I say things that I didn't say. Today, I said
to her: "Siri, you don't understand my accent, do you?"
"Oh,
no," she replied. I cannot be sure whether hers was an expression of
surprise, or whether it was mere disarming honesty.
Still, now that Microsoft's own virtual assistant Cortana
is presenting herself as competition, Siri had better start paying
attention or I'll have to buy a Windows Phone. (Oh, anything is
possible.)
I am grateful, therefore, to Arsenio Hall who presented the two challengers side by side Tuesday night on what was less a deathmatch and more of a scratchfest.
During the "Arsenio Hall Show" skit Cortana mocked Siri's seeming inability to listen.
Hall asked: "Hey Siri, I'm a little hungry, can you find me a
restaurant that serves grilled cheese?" To which Siri replied: "OK, I
will play Alicia Keys."
This incited Cortana to pipe up inelegantly: "Are you deaf, b****?"
The competitive relationship between the two virtual assistants
devolved into a series of tossed Molotov cocktails and then threats of
drawn muskets at ten paces.
"Really, ho? You got something to say to me?" sniffed Cortana.
"Actually, I've got nothing to say to you, you fake wannabe," spat Siri.
Cortana then aimed a severe and pleasantly low blow toward her rival:
"All I wanna be is kicking your ass up and down Sunset. Would you like
me to get you a map?"
There will be something deeply meaningful
if these two assistants begin to rival each other for wit and charm.
It's one thing to not understand what I say. It's another to not seem to
care or have no amusing banter.
Indeed, this fascinating duel stands in marked contrast to Microsoft's attempts to make ads that criticize every product Apple has ever made, as well as Google's entire existence. Somehow, those ads seem painfully leaden when compared with either Apple's "Get A Mac" or even this amusement from Arsenio Hall.
I wonder if an intuitive, trash-talking Cortana could do more for
Microsoft's image in mobile than any phone MicroNokia might create.
Hewlett-Packard
has agreed to pay a $108 million fine to settle charges that three of
its foreign subsidiaries bribed officials to secure lucrative government
contracts, the company and federal investigators announced Wednesday.
The
deal settles parallel investigations by the Securities and Exchange
Commission and Justice Department into allegations that payments made to
officials in Russia, Poland, and Mexico have violated the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act.
A Justice Department statement accused
the tech giant's subsidiaries of creating a "slush fund for bribe
payments," setting up an "intricate web of shell companies and bank
accounts to launder money," and using "anonymous email accounts and
prepaid mobile telephones to arrange covert meetings to hand over bags
of cash."
The SEC said HP's
subsidiaries in Russia paid more than $2 million to retain a
multimillion dollar contract with the federal prosecutor's office. To
win a software contract with a Mexico petroleum company, the HP
subsidiary in that country paid more than $1 million in inflated
commissions, while agents in Poland paid more than $600,000 to secure
contracts with the national police agency.
The statement noted
HP's "extensive cooperation" with the investigations, including
voluntarily making employees of its US and foreign operations available
for interviews and assisting in the collection, organization, and
analysis of "voluminous evidence" for investigators.
In addition
to the fine, HP has also agreed to certain reporting and compliance
obligations, although those measures were not described.
"The
misconduct described in the settlement was limited to a small number of
people who are no longer employed by the company," John Schultz, HP's
executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.
The investigation was initially launched in 2010 by officials in Germany and Russia and soon joined by the DOJ and SEC. HP first learned of the probe in December 2009 when it was served with a series of search warrants.
LastPass's
Security Check tells you which sites have updated their certificates,
and whether you need to change your password for that site.
LastPass
The cross-platform password manager LastPass now will check your saved sites to see if they're affected by the Heartbleed encryption vulnerability that's been plaguing the Web for the past two days.
The feature update saves you the trouble of going to a Heartbleed site checker like the ones offered by LastPass or Qualys,
and also provides clear instruction to LastPass users on which of their
sites are safe and which have to be updated. It's available to existing
and new users of LastPass' password management system.
The
Security Check lets you know if the site certificate has been updated
and then provides a link to a site to help you update your password for
the site. It will also indicate if you should wait before updating your
password, or if a site and your password are not at risk.
You can
run the check in three ways. It works from your desktop browser either
by tapping the service's add-ons Tools option and choosing Security
Check, or logging in via the Web site and choosing Security Check from
the left column. It's also available on the LastPass mobile app's
options menus.
The
head of Google Payments, Ariel Bardin, addresses attendees at the
Electronic Transaction Association's 2014 tradeshow in Las Vegas.LAS VEGAS -- It's been a bumpy ride for Google Wallet since
its launch nearly three years ago, but in spite of the obstacles the
company has faced, Google head of payments Ariel Bardin says the company
isn't giving up on Wallet or the mobile payments market.
"We have
been doing this for a while," he said during a presentation Wednesday
at the Electronic Transactions Association's Transact 2014 tradeshow
here. "And we'll continue to keep doing this for a long while."
He
acknowledged the slow consumer adoption of Google Wallet, but
highlighted the company's nearly 15-month-long evolution of the product,
which now has expanded beyond Google Wallet's initial reach. And the
key to Google Wallet's transformation has been the cloud.
"We
started out with Google Wallet, which equaled NFC [near field
communications]," Bardin said. "We still do that, but now we offer many
different types of payments and services." How has Google Wallet changed?
Google Wallet got its start anchored in a hardware-based short range wireless technology known as NFC. Using this technology, consumers could load credit card information into an Android
app that stored the information in a secure element that was part of
the NFC chip, and then using the short range wireless technology, it
transmitted the payment information from the phone to the sales terminal
with a simple tap.
The goal was that people could get rid of all
their credit cards, loyalty cards, and coupons that filled their wallets
and instead store all of it and access it from their mobile phones.
While the idea itself sounded nifty enough, a year after launch Google
Wallet still only worked with one credit card and bank combination. And
it only worked on one wireless network: Sprint.
Because the NFC
solution required that both mobile devices and point of sale processing
terminals include hardware, Google struggled to get a foothold in the
market. Wireless operators, who were developing their own competing
mobile payment solution, shut Google out of their networks and devices.
And merchants were reluctant to spend money to upgrade their sales
terminals. Google Wallet appeared doomed. Google Wallet in action.Then Google shifted gears and revamped Google Wallet.
It still uses NFC for the tap and pay functionality, but it now uses a
cloud-based technology called HCE, or host card emulation, to store
credit card credentials.
"The technology we initially used relied
on hardware," Bardin explained. "And there were a bunch of hurdles to
get it out the door using that approach. So we asked ourselves if we
could emulate the secure element in software, and make it a core service
in Android."
That is exactly what the company has done. HCE is
now included in Android 4.4, Google's latest version of Android
software. With this new approach, Google has opened up NFC to any
developer. Because the technology is built directly into the operating
system software it not only works with Google Wallet, but it can also be
used by other app developers that are building applications for
Android.
"Now anyone in the audience could build an app that leverages the tap-and-pay functionality," Bardin said. The 'cloud' is the answer.
While
tap-and-pay had been the only thing that Google Wallet offered when it
first launched, now it's just one component of the service. With payment
credentials stored in the cloud, Google can integrate payments into its
other products like Gmail. It also makes the service more flexible for
consumers and merchants, which can access the wallet from anywhere. This
allows for merchants to embed easy payment buttons into their mobile
Web sites that can link directly to payment credentials stored in the
cloud.
Bardin said that the beauty of this solution is that it
eliminates the need for customers to fill in their credit card
information when they want to buy things online using their mobile
devices. Because Android users are always "signed-in" on the Google
platform, they can leverage their payment credentials from Google Wallet
or even their Google Play account to buy things.
The cloud-based
nature of the service also makes it easy for consumers to add new
credit cards to their Google Wallets. They can also join and add loyalty
cards to their Google Wallets. And they can do all of this without ever
necessarily entering the app on their devices.
Again because
Google Wallet now lives in the cloud, it makes it easier for Google to
tie its other services to the wallet. For example, a year ago it added
the ability to send and receive payments via Gmail. Google
also offers Gmail users the ability to track all their online
purchases. The way it works is that users who opt in can allow Google to
scan Gmail receipts and then through partnerships with companies like
FedEx, Google gets the most up to date information on a package's
status. The competition is stiff.
It's
easy to see why Google wants in on the mobile payments market. According
to Gartner, the global market for mobile payments is forecast to be
about $720 billion worth of transactions by 2017. This is up from about
$235 billion last year.
But earning cash from these transactions
isn't the only reason that Google sees opportunity in this business.
Mobile payments is also simply another vehicle to drive users to other
Google services, such as search and advertising.
"We are in the
payment business to create a great user experience," Bardin said.
"That's a little different from others in this industry. Making money
will come later."
Google isn't the only Internet company that sees
potential in this market. Apple has also hinted it wants a piece of the
action. The introduction of the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on its iPhone 5S last year could pave the way for secure payment transactions. In January, Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company is "intrigued" with mobile payments. He added that such uses were one of the driving factors behind the introduction of Touch ID. There
are also several other potential competitors, such as PayPal and
Amazon. The big phone companies, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have a
joint venture called Isis that is also going after this market. And then
there are the many startups wanting in on the mobile payments craze,
such as Square, which allows anyone with an iPhone, iPad
or Android device to take credit card payments. (The latest rumor is
that Google and Apple have each talked to Square about possible
acquisitions, according to the news site Re/Code. Bardin did not address the rumors today. And neither Google nor Apple are commenting on the speculation.) In
spite of its struggles to make Google Wallet a success, many in the
payments industry believe that Google is still a major contender in the
market. And he said that Google and Apple will ultimately be the
companies to beat in the mobile payments market. "Google has the
money to make a bad mistake and still recover from it," Kenneth Douglas,
vice president of business partnership development for a Swedish mobile
payment called Seqr, said Tuesday during a panel at the Transact 2014
show. "Google and Apple own the most valuable real estate in mobile
payments."
Along with the price
and launch predictions, Kuo believes the rumored iWatch will come in two
sizes -- both a 1.3-inch and 1.5-inch display. The display is said to
be flexible AMOLED with sapphire cover, which means the screen may be
curved to mimic the shape of a user's wrist. Additionally, Kuo forecasts
the wearable to carry a 200 to 250mAh cell battery that should power it
for at least one day, which is longer than average for many
smartwatches.
