Our substance is short yet to the point, and intended to challenge you to live in and nurture with IT technologies. @http://thecorlissreviewgroup.com

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: Security experts offer online shopping tips



As Americans spend billions on holiday shopping this month, online security experts say a little caution can go a long way when it comes to avoiding identity theft.

“In general online shopping is good. It’s safe for the most part, but it’s the safest when you initiate the contact, when you log onto a known website,” said Rick Avery, president of Boston-based Securitas Security Systems.

Directly visiting trusted, reputable online retailers is just one way to attempt to avoid the cyber criminals who try to steal sensitive information from vulnerable computers and unsuspecting consumers.

“There is a risk in commerce …” said Sam Ransbotham, an information systems professor at Boston College. “There is also a risk from walking around with a wad of cash. We’ve got years and years of experience walking around with wads of cash that we just don’t have with these newer mechanisms.”

Purchases at brick-and-mortar stores aren’t immune to data breaches either. Last year, hackers stole data from 40 million credit cards from Target, while cyber thieves got information from 56 million credit cards from Home Depot earlier this year.

To reduce the chances of fraud, Avery advises that shoppers be wary of offers sent via email. Criminals, he said, may send legitimate-looking emails that appear to be from online merchants or banks. Rather than clicking on a link in an email, he recommends directly typing the website address into your browser.

“One of the most dangerous ways people get involved with credit card fraud or theft on the Internet is they get emailed a link offering 50 percent off, or saying it’s from the bank, and it’s actually a false website made to look like the authentic website,” he said.

Cyber criminals can use fraudulent websites to gather financial information from a person or install malware on their computers.

“If you’re shopping around and find an extra, extra really good deal, that might be the online equivalent to buying cheap speakers out of the back of a truck,” Ransbotham said. “If it’s too good to be true, it is.”

Avery also recommends using credit cards or one-time use credit cards instead of debit cards.

“Some banks have protections on a debit card, but not all do at the point of an ATM,” Avery said. “Usually, your debit card is tied to your other banking accounts, and it’s a lot more difficult to get your money back. It may be weeks before you get your money back.”


In some cases, a victim might never get that money back.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: Top tips to stay safe while shopping online on what promises to be one of retail's biggest days of the year


Cyber Monday is set to be among the biggest shopping days of the year - but how can you avoid becoming the victim of online shopping fraud on Monday?

Experian found that last year saw a huge lift in Black Friday’s significance, with a 19 percent increase in visits to retail websites last year (29 Nov) compared to 2012. Cyber Monday is also increasing, with a 9 per cent increase last year on 2012’s figures.

Meanwhile, the rise of ‘click & collect’ services, and a greater trust in retailers being able to deliver well in time for Christmas, has resulted in a trend for people being more comfortable leaving their Christmas shopping until a Monday later: Manic Monday, you might call it.

A few things to remember if you are doing the bulk of your Christmas shopping online, according to Experian:

1. It’s best to use websites that you know and trust. Always look for a security padlock icon in the top left hand corner of a page before you register financial or personal information on a website. And if an online deal you find, or have been emailed, sounds too good to be true, it quite probably is.

2. Use strong passwords, especially if you have stored payment details, and it’s a good idea to change them every now and then. If possible, install the latest anti-virus and firewall software. If you’re out and about, make sure you can’t be overlooked when you make a mobile payment – be especially careful around wi-fi, even at home.

3. Keep an eye on your bank and credit card account balances. Your credit report can also show you if there are any irregularities, such as suspect applications for credit and rises in card balances. As a CreditExpert member you can get unlimited views of your Experian Credit Report and alerts to credit activity in your name so you can spot potentially fraudulent activity.

4. Buying on credit can give you protection. If you buy goods or services on your credit card, you have extra protection if things go wrong (clothes don’t fit, unwanted gifts etc.) compared with paying by cash or even debit card, under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

Corliss Tech Review Group provides some tips and reviews on how to secure you through online and technical issue. Our substance is short yet to the point, and intended to challenge you to live in and nurture with IT technologies. For more update, just visit our blog site.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Corliss Tech Review Group: Google Glass barely alive

Two years ago, Google has hyped its Glasses device as the greatest thing since sliced bread -- and for a moment, many of us believed it.

During its launch, there was much enthusiasm on the part of the consumers and developers but now people seemed to be losing interest. (Whether that's because of the $1,500 price tag or the fact that you can't really find a place to buy it from remains unknown.)

While it may still sound supercool to geeks, Glass might not even reach the hands of the general public as developers are jumping out of the bandwagon. Some of them have felt the lack of support from Google, especially since an official public launch date is yet to be set. When Glass became available for developers in 2012, 10,000 units were reportedly sold. Then last year, it became available to tech lovers and media people but as of now, there's no news when it would become commercially available.

"It's not a big enough platform to play on seriously," said the founder of Normative Design Matthew Milan who discontinued their Glass app supposed to target fitness buffs.

According to Corliss Tech Review Group, out of more than a dozen Glass app developers, 9 have already put their efforts on hold owing to the limitations of the gadget and perceived lack of customers. Meanwhile, 3 of them have instead switched their focus on developing software for businesses.

"If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, CEO of a game developer firm that held back its efforts to make a Glass game.

What's more, in the past 6 months, a number of Google employees responsible for the Glass development have reportedly left. Also, the Glass Collective, a funding consortium by Google Ventures has invested in only 3 startups this year and has taken down its website without notice. A spokesperson from Google Ventures said that the reason for the website closure is for entrepreneurs to come to them directly.

Google insists it's still committed to developing Glass. Chris O'Neill, its head of business ops said, "We are completely energized as ever about the opportunity that wearable and Glass in particular represent. We are as committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to take time and we are not going to launch this product until it's absolutely ready."

The formerly proud "Explorers" who go around the streets touting their Glasses are now getting flak for being "Glassholes". After all, no one really wants such evident threat to privacy hanging around in obvious, or obscure, places. In fact, someone from Google admitted himself that Glass is a perfect example of privacy issues concerning wearable devices.

Experts from Corliss Tech Review Group have already predicted that it's a tall order for Glass to be a mass-market gadget. It's more likely to go down the road of Segway; a supposedly cool invention that ended up being used only in professional and industrial settings.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review on Bitdefender Total Security 2015

Regarded as one of the best technical Windows internet security suites for PC and laptop, and Total Security 2015 lives up to that rep.

Bitdefender is widely regarded as one of the best technical Windows internet security suites. Its Total Security product offers a very good range of the features you rightly expect in a security suite. The 2015 version aims to make life even easier for customers by introducing Profiles, which adapt the software for particular tasks, like playing games, watching movies or general office work. Also see: Best internet security software 2014.

After installation, you’re presented with a very Windows 8-looking tiled interface. Rather than having a lot of tiles slide awkwardly through the Bitdefender window, as in the 2014 version, here there are three large tiles and four subsidiary ones, giving quick and easy access to all the program’s key functions.

The modules provided by Bitdefender Total Security 2015 cover AV, anti-malware and anti-spam, tune-up, online banking protection, a 2-way firewall, parental control, online backup and anti-theft provision.

Online backup, which Bitdefender Total Security 2015 refers to as Safebox, is handled from the My Bitdefender online site, which is unusual – it’s more usually set up and managed locally. 

It works by syncing the files and folders you select with off-site storage and offers 2 GB of space. This is paltry in a Bitdefender Total Security 2015 package catering for three PCs, though you can, naturally, buy more. 

System optimisation looks at three different areas that might need attention: disk, Windows Registry and privacy. 

After we’d adjusted the default settings to leave browser caches and history alone, Bitdefender Total Security 2015 still managed to recover 8.7 GB from our test system, which is worth having back. You can run the optimiser with a single click.

The anti-theft features include locating, locking down and wiping a stolen laptop, although still no facility to take a photo of the person using it. While testing on a desktop PC, we tried the locate facility, which repeatedly reported we were in a suburb of Doncaster, a place we’ve never knowingly visited (although we’re sure it’s very nice). Since this writer is based in Devon that’s not very encouraging.

The Profiles, apart from the Standard one applied by default, are for work, games and videos. They postpone protection and maintenance tasks which impair performance and put off automatic Windows updates. Like many tasks in Bitdefender Total Security 2015, you can leave selection of the correct profile to AutoPilot, which automatically manages the IS suite when engaged.

Our tests showed a fairly low scan rate of 54.5 files per second, but good file fingerprinting, dropping the number of files scanned from 79,145 to 14,703 on a second scan.

We measured very little resource hit, too, with just a 10 percent impact on our copy test, when also running a background scan with Bitdefender Total Security 2015.

The German test site AV-Test (www.av-test.org) has awarded Bitdefender Total Security 2015 top marks in its test groups for the last three years, which is a notable achievement.

Most recently, using the 2014 product, the product managed an overall score of 17.5/18.0, which breaks down into a perfect 6.0/6.0 for Protection, the same for Usability and 5.5/6.0 for Performance.

Performance looks at how much the software affects the overall speed of the system it’s run on, and here it gave just a 1 second knock-back, against 5 sec for the group Bitdefender Total Security 2015 was tested in, as a whole. A very good result.

Monday, September 15, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: Logitech K480 Keyboard Works with Anything You Own

It’s a truth as universal as it is annoying; if you want all your devices to work with a specific keyboard, well, you’ll probably need either one for each, sign on for precisely one device ecosystem, or get used to swiping in words. Travelers in particular are driven insane by this problem, so Logitech decided, quite cleverly, to solve it with the K480.

Swiss Army Keyboard

There are two problems with modern portable keyboards. The first is, as we noted, device compatibility. Ask anybody who’s had to install drivers just to get a basic keyboard to work, the various device ecosystems out there don’t play well with each other and seemingly want to drive you insane.

Logitech solves this with some clever design. You can switch between three different places to send your words, so that regardless of whether you’re all Apple, or a mix of Apple, Chrome, and Windows, you’ll be able to use the keyboard and get the point across. Basically, if it uses Bluetooth, you’re all set to type.

At The Trough

The second problem is keeping all your stuff organized; you’ve got your phone over here, your tablet over there, and your laptop in front of you… and many keyboards want to be docked solely at your tablet. How does Logitech solve this? Simple: It puts a trough at the top of the keyboard that can easily be used to stand up both your tablet and your phone, and to type away at both of them with ease.

A Keyboard For The Multitasker



Multitasking, or at least sorting through your various tasks properly, can be a profoundly annoying experience, and Logitech deserves credit for looking at how we actually use our gadgets and creating a keyboard that fits in with them. If that’s something you need, it starts at just $50.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review on How Anqor Gets You Online

If you travel, you know the pain of getting online wherever you go. Either you pay offensive tethering charges when you really shouldn’t be, or, in some cases, it’s just impossible to access the Internet unless you’ve got an in-country SIM card. As we’re increasingly global, this is increasingly annoying, but there’s one Kickstarter, Anqor, that supposedly has the solution.

Always Online

The Anqor itself is fairly straightforward, as a device. It’s about the size of a novelty paperback you get as a gift, and relatively light, although that’s just the prototype; the end goal device is roughly the size of an iPhone. And it works relatively simply, as well; it connects to a 3G or 4G network in the area you’re in, connects to up to ten of the devices you have handy, and we’re off to the races. It’s how it connects that’s more interesting.

SIMulated Card

As we all know, to access a local mobile network, you need a SIM card, which is profoundly annoying. What the Anqor does is determine where you are, riffle through the company’s library of SIM cards, upload the profile, and you’re done. The tradeoff, of course, is that this doesn’t come cheap. Global travelers looking for this convenience will be paying roughly $52 a month for the library, although you can pause a subscription at any time, and for just one country, it’ll be a more reasonable $16 a month.

Online Anywhere

If you’re a world traveler, you know from experience that you’ll be running around juggling SIM cards anyway, so you may as well clean some of the clutter out of your life. And, if you never leave the country but your job requires constant Internet access, this might be worth it as well. The device, without data plan, will start at around $270 if you get in early on the Kickstarter.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: The Bluetooth Tracking Gadget




In 2013, a crowdfunded project known as the Tile became a smash hit, racking up over $2,500,000 in funding from nearly 50,000 backers. The secret to its success? Simple: The Tile promised to help users locate any object attached to the coin-sized Bluetooth-connected tag priced at $20.

I signed on as a backer mostly out of curiosity. After all, compared to some crowdfunded tech projects like the Pebble, the 3Doodler or the Micro 3D printer, the $20 Tile seemed like a no-brainer.

So I committed my cash and then, just like thousands of others, I began a very long wait for my Tile to arrive. I had almost given up hope of ever seeing a Tile in the flesh when finally — nearly a year after having backed the project — my Tile showed up last week.

“So far we’ve delivered to over 50,000 people,” Nick Evans, Tile’s co-founder and CEO said in an interview with VentureBeat.

I guess I was lucky to be amongst the first third of buyers. Evans sympathizes with those who feel the wait has been too long, “I’ve pre-ordered items too and there can be a lot of frustration, like, where is this thing? We’re working as hard as we can to get everyone’s Tiles to them.”

First impressions
My neighbor ordered a Tile at the same time I did and his showed up the same day as mine. “It’s a lot bigger than I expected,” he said. It’s true: The Tile looks and feels a lot larger in real life than it did in the photos and videos that Tile posted to its website during the funding period.

Wondering why both my neighbor and I (and other reviewers) had the same reaction, I checked one of the ads that was — and is still — used to promote the Tile. Sure enough, the image Tile chose does an excellent job of masking the Tile’s thickness. The ad makes it appear as though the Tile is barely thicker than a coin — or a key for that matter.

The actual dimensions are 37mm x 37mm x 5.3 mm. The effect is that, when attached to a keychain, the Tile feels more like the largest object on your ring, not just another key.

Evans claims there was no attempt to mislead customers and that the Tile used in these promotional images is the same size, shape and thickness as the units that have been shipped: “That’s the actual size. We of course wanted to advertise the correct size […] we didn’t want people to be disappointed,” he says.

How it works
Getting a Tile set up is very easy. After you download the free Tile app (iOS only, for now), enable Bluetooth and location services, and register for a free Tile account, the app prompts you to add your first Tile.

To do so, simply press and hold on the “e” portion of the “tile” word on the Tile until the Tile emits a little tune and hold the Tile close to your iOS device when prompted to do so. Your Tile is now paired. You can add up to 8 Tiles per account.

The Tile app will always show you the last place it “saw” (i.e., where it was in direct Bluetooth contact with) your Tile and how long ago it saw it.

A killer community
I gave my Tile to my neighbor to take with him to work. My Tile app was able to locate it perfectly.

Above: I gave my Tile to my neighbor to take with him to work. My Tile app was able to locate it perfectly.

So what happens when your Tile can’t be located by going back to the last place your app saw it?

Tile calls it the “Community Find” feature. Turns out, every person who keeps the Tile app open on their iOS device becomes a node in a much larger Tile network.

Annual renewal
The other drawback to the Tile is its non-user-replaceable battery. Because Tiles are sealed, which gives them a splash-proof exterior, there’s no way to access or replace any of its innards, including the battery. Tiles are only good for one year, after which Tile will get in touch to facilitate the return of your now-dead Tile and presumably give you the option to re-up for another year for another $20.

This works out to about $1.66 per month per object tracked, on an indefinite basis. Is it worth it? I guess it depends on what you’re tracking and how often you think you might misplace it.

Conclusion
The $20 Tile is a device that does exactly what it claims: It helps you locate misplaced objects using your smartphone in a way that is easy and intuitive.

For most people, even though the Tile is only effective for a year, it offers a convenient, expandable and soon — according to Evans — shareable way to track your most commonly lost articles.

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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: Closing the High-Tech Gender Gap


This year’s Lemelson-MIT Prize winner discusses grassroots ways for boosting the number of women in technology and business.

I have a confession to make: I’ve been living under a rock.

I’ve actually been busy under here — running a bioengineering lab at MIT, starting companies, teaching, consulting, being a mom. But I’ve been so focused on keeping all the balls in the air that, until recently, I hadn’t noticed that women typically aren’t the ones starting technology companies.

To be fair, I had recognized that:

• Girls choose engineering less often and drop out of engineering disproportionately (the so-called “leaky pipeline”).
• The percentage of women computer science majors peaked 30 years ago.
• The higher I climb, the fewer other women there are at the table with me.

I’ve also seen progress in gender equity in higher education. I just didn’t realize until recently that the technology industry is light years behind.

In case you’ve also been under a rock, here are some numbers that I found truly astonishing. Women lead only 3 percent of tech startups, account for only 4 percent of the senior venture partners funding such startups and represent only 5 percent of the founders, advisors and directors at MIT technology spinoffs.

Are you as shocked as I was? What if I tell you that more than 50 percent of students in some MIT undergraduate science majors are women — and that’s been the case for almost 20 years? Where do these talented women go, and what are the implications of that drain?

If we believe that entrepreneurship is a fundamental engine of progress, that it is a path to getting ideas into the world, then what does it mean for our society if the ideas that germinate in the minds of all those young women rarely turn into companies with products? (By the way, women-led private tech companies have 12 percent higher revenue and 35 percent higher return on investment than those led by men, according to the Kauffman Foundation. This shouldn’t have to be true to make us care, but it actually is.)


The Lemelson-MIT Prize is an award for invention, for making discoveries useful through commercialization, and for inspiring the next generation. As the 2014 recipient, I am truly honored and grateful to the many people who have contributed to our collective track record using miniaturization tools to impact human health.

Here are three things that made a difference for me:

Great expectations: My biggest fan and mentor has always been my dad, himself a serial entrepreneur. When I became a professor, he had mixed feelings about me climbing the ivory tower. To encourage me, he asked one simple question: “When will you start your first company?”  (As it turned out, I started my first company within five years. Since then, my students and have founded 10 companies between us.)

Microclimate: Many have noted the chilly climate for women in engineering. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Of my college tribe of girlfriends, four of us are now successful entrepreneurs. My best friend is among that 4 percent of women venture capitalists; in fact, she was named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women. I’m fortunate to work alongside female founder colleagues, MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, and the ever-inspirational Professor Robert Langer. Indeed, my microclimate is actually pretty warm.

Men who believed in me: Much has been written about visible role models for women. I try to be one, even when it’s hard to put myself “out there.” Along the same lines, I appreciate having had a working mom who was a trailblazer, having been one of the first women in India to receive an MBA. However, it’s worth noting that the people in my life who have seen more for me than I saw for myself, who believed in me and promoted me, were mostly men, including my graduate advisor, my first investor, and my husband. The truth is that changing the face of technology requires the involvement of men who care about it.

I will donate some of the prize money to the MIT Society of Women Engineers. This organization runs fabulous outreach programs designed to keep young girls interested in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math). I also look forward to supporting a program for women’s entrepreneurship in MIT’s upcoming Innovation Initiative.


I hope other institutions will follow suit and such initiatives spread as quickly and far as the ideas set forth in the gender equity report championed by MIT’s beloved former president Charles Vest. I encourage you to also do your part: If you believe strongly in a talented woman you know, why not ask her when she will be starting her first company? It could be just the kind of great expectation that makes a real difference.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review on Neuroscientists Object to Europe’s Human Brain Project

More than 180 neuroscientists have signed an open letter to the European Commission calling on it to reconsider the technical goals and oversight of one of the world’s largest brain-mapping projects, predicting it is likely to fail.

The European Union agreed last year to invest more than one billion euros in the Human Brain Project (HBP), a 10-year effort involving dozens of research institutions to create a simulation of how the human brain works, using supercomputers.

But according to a letter released by dissenting scientists, the project is doomed by opaque management and the pursuit of goals not widely shared by neuroscientists. “We believe the HBP is not a well-conceived or implemented project and that it is ill suited to be the centerpiece of European neuroscience,” the letter says.

Governments, including those of the United States and China, have all launched large neuroscience projects to study the brain (see “Brain Mapping”). But the brain is so massively complex—it has roughly 86 billion neurons and trillions of connections—that there’s little consensus on how to study it.

Europe’s HBP has been particularly controversial because it emphasizes large-scale mapping of the brain and computer simulations over traditional, small-scale bench research. The project’s core goal, according to its website, is “to build a completely new information computing technology infrastructure for neuroscience.”

Signers of the letter, including neuroscientists from the University of Oxford and the Institut Pasteur, intend to boycott 50 million euros per year of neuroscience research grants that have been linked to the EU project.

“Why should an information technology project determine neuroscience funding?” says Zachary Mainen, a researcher at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Portugal, which gathered the signatures after a component of the project it was involved with was cancelled. “It’s not a project that was planned by the neuroscience community. They say they are going to simulate the brain, but I don’t think anyone believes that.”

According to a report in the Guardian, the neuroscientists hope to influence a review of the project by European officials that is expected to be complete by the end of the summer.

The HBP is led by Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at the the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, who says critics are upset because there’s a scientific “paradigm shift” under way that threatens their way of working.

“It’s a natural reaction when you move from an old paradigm to a new one. It happened with the Human Genome Project,” says Markram. “That was also about large-scale, systematic teams working together, and you also had the individual labs saying ‘Oh my, I am going to be out of business.’ It’s very similar to that.”

Within two years, Markram says, the HBP will release the first phase of its technology platform, which will let any scientist contribute data and run simulations. He says this will bring neuroscience up to speed with disciplines like astrophysics or climate research, where scientists use simulations all the time. “You can’t measure everything in the Universe, but you can simulate it,” he says. “You can’t measure all of the brain, either, so we are going to have to predict a lot of it.”

That focus on computer simulations is what’s generating the most withering criticism. Konrad Kording, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, calls the European project “useless and misleading” and says there is “genuine concern that the neuroscience community in Europe will be damaged by a very high-profile project that is deeply misguided.” Continue reading…


Sunday, July 20, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review:New Algorithm Finds the Most Beautiful

The way we navigate in cities has been revolutionized in the last few years by the advent of GPS mapping programs. Enter your start and end location and these will give you the shortest route from A to B.

That’s usually the best bet when driving, but walking is a different matter. Often, pedestrians want the quietest route or the most beautiful but if they turn to a mapping application, they’ll get little help.

That could change now thanks to the work of Daniele Quercia at Yahoo Labs in Barcelona, Spain, and a couple of pals. These guys have worked out how to measure the “beauty” of specific locations within cities and then designed an algorithm that automatically chooses a route between two locations in a way that maximizes the beauty along it. “The goal of this work is to automatically suggest routes that are not only short but also emotionally pleasant,” they say.

Quercia and co begin by creating a database of images of various parts of the center of London taken from Google Street View and Geograph, both of which have reasonably consistent standards of images. They then crowdsourced opinions about the beauty of each location using a website called UrbanGems.org.

Each visitor to UrbanGems sees two photographs and chooses the one which shows the more beautiful location. That gives the team a crowdsourced opinion about the beauty of each location. They then plot each of these locations and their beauty score on a map which they use to provide directions.

The idea here is that the user enters a start and end location and an algorithm then finds the most beautiful route, rather than the shortest one. It does this by searching through every possible route, adding the beauty scores for each and choosing the one that ranks highest.

Quercia and co say that on average these routes turn out to be just 12 percent longer than the shortest routes, which makes them reasonable alternatives for a pedestrian.

To work out whether the routes chosen by the algorithm are really more beautiful, Quercia and co recruited 30 people who live in London and are familiar with the area, to assess the recommended paths. And indeed, they agreed that the routes chosen by the algorithm were more beautiful than the shortest routes.

But that’s just the start. Crowdsourcing opinion for every possible location in a city is clearly a time-consuming and potentially expensive business. So Quercia and co have automated this process using photos from Flickr and the data and tags attached to them.

They chose some five million pictures taken in the same places as their original photos and then mined the data associated with them to see what parameters correlated with beauty.

Factors that turn out to be a good indicator of beauty are things like the number of pictures taken of a particular scene and comments associated with positive emotions. So looking for locations on Flickr that fulfill this requirement ought to produce a list of beautiful places in any city.

Quercia and co tested this idea in Boston to find beautiful locations on Flickr and then used their algorithm to find the most beautiful path between two locations. They then asked 54 people to evaluate these paths. Sure enough, the participants generally felt that the routes chosen by the algorithm were more beautiful than the shortest parts.

If you know Boston or London yourself, you can evaluate the routes chosen by the algorithms yourself by examining the maps in the paper.

Of course, there are potential problems. Some locations are less attractive at certain times of the day, for example during rush hour when traffic is heavier or at night when the character of some parts the city can change dramatically. The algorithm cannot account for these differences

Nevertheless, this is an interesting approach that has the potential to change the experience people have in interacting with the city. It’s not hard to imagine that tourist authorities might use an application like this to help visitors experience the best parts of a city on foot.

Quercia and co have a plan like that. Their next goal is to build a mobile app and test it in the wild across different cities in Europe and the U.S. Keep an eye out for it.

Friday, July 18, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: A Smart Home Knows When to Blast the AC


The newest idea in home automation is letting your thermostat track your smartphone, and only blast the air conditioner when you're at home. WSJ Personal Tech Columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler put Honeywell's new Lyric thermostat to the test.

When it's hotter than Hades outside, wouldn't it be nice if your air conditioner knew you were coming home and cooled things down inside?

That's the idea behind two new "smart" climate-control systems, the $279 Honeywell Lyric thermostat and the $279 Aros window air conditioner made by Quirky and General Electric. GE -0.56%  They blast the AC when you're at home, and not when you're out.

Welcome to the era where your AC keeps tabs on you. These Internet-connected appliances take commands from apps and work by tracking the location of every smartphone in your household—yours, your spouse's, and Grandma's too. (In a pinch, you can still control them manually.)

I installed Lyric and Aros in my San Francisco home, and in two friends' homes in warmer Bay Area climes. We found both devices can go a long way toward liberating you from fiddling with thermostat dials, and possibly saving energy. But neither are quite smart or simple enough to just set and forget.

These appliances are attempts at reinvention by Honeywell and GE, two of the biggest brands in climate control, now under attack from Silicon Valley. Nest Labs raised the bar in two ways when it launched its first consumer-installed "smart" thermostat in 2011: First, we now expect our home heating and AC to be smartphone-controllable and have some intelligence to supposedly help save us money. Second, many of us no longer balk at paying $250 for a dial that used to cost less than $50.

To make their systems more competitive, Honeywell and GE (working with partners at product development firm Quirky) added Wi-Fi and remote-control apps and simplified their interfaces with big, clear displays. But their biggest innovation is tracking location.

The app knows when your family is or isn't home by drawing a virtual circle around your house, visible only to your smartphone, called a "geofence." In my tests, this worked as promised: Every time I moved past the perimeter, my phone would quietly alert the app, which then sent commands to the appliances via the Internet. Both were also smart enough to understand my family—it conserved energy only when everyone had left the house and kicked back on for the first person to return.



Monday, July 14, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: GE Device Measures the Calories on Your Plate



Self-tracking devices like the Fitbit do a fair, if imperfect, job at measuring how much you move and then inferring how many calories you’ve burned in a day. But they don’t measure how many calories you consume. You can enter calorie estimates into an app, but doing so is a tedious and often inaccurate process.

GE researchers have a prototype device that directly measures the calories in your food. So far it only works on blended foods—the prototype requires a homogenous mixture to get an accurate reading. But they’re developing a version of the device that will determine the calories in a plate of food—say, a burrito, some chips, and guacamole—and send the information to your smartphone.

Matt Webster, the senior scientist in diagnostic imaging and biomedical technologies at GE Research who invented the calorie counter, says eventually the device might be incorporated into a microwave oven or some other kitchen appliance. Heat your food, and at the same time get a readout of the precise calorie count, without measuring out portions and consulting nutritional charts.

Webster analyzed nutritional data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—which contains detailed information on thousands of foods—and determined that it’s possible to get an accurate calorie estimate using just three pieces of data—fat content, water content, and weight. The calories from all the other constituents of food—such as sugar, fiber, and protein—can be approximated by subtracting the water and fat weight from the total weight.

In tests using the prototype to measure mixtures of oil, sugar, and water, results were within 5 to 10 percent of the results from standard, destructive means of measuring calorie content, such as the bomb calorimeter that measures food calorie content by burning it.

The device works by passing low-energy microwaves through a weighed portion of food and measuring how the microwaves are changed by the food—fat and water affect the microwaves in characteristic ways. Getting a reading is easy using existing equipment if the food is liquid or blended. Getting a good reading for a sandwich and chips will require “virtual blending” Webster says. That could be done by developing microwave antennas that form a more uniform distribution of microwaves than the current equipment and using algorithms to get an average, or by progressively scanning the food. In either case, the complete measurement could be taken in a second or two.

Others are developing devices that are being marketed as being able to count calories. For example, a pair of devices have emerged recently on crowd-funding sites. But those devices are limited to analyzing the surface of most foods (they work by measuring reflected light). This approach might work to recognize a piece of food as an apple, for example, whose caloric content can be looked up in a database. It wouldn’t easily work with a burrito, where most of the calories are wrapped up inside.

“We’re looking at waves that pass all the way through the food. So you’re getting a complete measurement of the entire food,” Webster says.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: UK Businesses Ignoring Consumer Demand for Mobile Payment Tech


Mastercard warns: invest or face economic consequences.

Many UK businesses are struggling to expand and develop to their full potential due to a lack of proper investment into new technologies such as alternative payment methods, a senior Mastercard executive has told CBR.

Marcia Clay, the groups' UK and Ireland head of strategy and commercial development, explained that UK consumers are increasingly calling for innovative technologies such as mobile payments as they look to simplify their everyday lives.

"I believe we need to prioritise support for innovative start-ups, businesses in the eCommerce and mobile payments sector for example, which are in a unique position to propel the UK economy forward in 2014 and beyond," she said.

Clay detailed how Mastercard is working with London-based Startupbootcamp FinTech, providing the expertise, mentoring and access to a network of industry professionals that most early-stage FinTech start-ups would not be able to access otherwise.

Mastercard has found that many small businesses still do not use electronic payments, despite almost 80% of UK businesses having a website or some sort of online presence. A much smaller percentage can currently accept card payments, and the company believes that businesses of all sizes should be encouraged to invest in new technology and services that give consumers more choice.

The company also found that UK consumers are using mobile and contactless payment methods and wide-spread adoption is reaching a critical mass; with around 5.7m transactions taking place on UK smartphones every day. This has been spurred on by a major growth in contactless payments, which grew by 383% from 2012 to 2013 across the country as more UK banks began rolling out the technology.

Figures released today by the British Bankers Association show that more than 15,000 people are downloading banking apps every day, with transactions using the internet or mobile banking methods are now worth £6.4bn a week up from £5.8bn last year.

"It is important to always understand what really matters to consumers," Clay says. "Through our research we have identified what really matters is feeling safe and secure from fraud, whether it be physical point of sale or online, experiencing a simple and speedy process, and confidence that wherever they are, whatever they are doing their payment method will be excepted.

"The UK is leading, but the world is catching up with us and if UK businesses don't embrace the fast evolution of commerce, we will be left behind."

Monday, June 23, 2014

The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: When Technology Helps Consumers Challenge the Status Quo

Adapting to change is hard, especially when your family’s livelihood is on the line. That’s why, when companies face competition, their tendency is to reach out to the government to ask for protection and demand that competition be squashed using the regulatory and coercive power of the state.

The best example is the fight between taxicabs and companies such as Uber and Lyft, two innovative up-and-coming alternatives to cabs. It’s been going on for months, but it culminated a few weeks ago in Virginia when the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles sent cease-and-desist letters to Uber Technologies and Lyft ordering them to stop operating.

Over at the Washington Post last week, Emily Bagger had a piece explaining what is really at stake for cab companies: cab medallions. As the piece explains “a medallion in Chicago fetched around $350,000. . . . In New York, taxi medallions have topped $1 million. In Boston, $700,000. In Philadelphia, $400,000. In Miami, $300,000.”

One way to think about medallions is that they are the reward for companies subjecting themselves to the insane and punishing licensing laws imposed by the government.

CHICAGO — A taxicab is a car remade by government, modified dozens of ways by edicts within subsections of articles of the city’s taxi code.

“Everywhere on this car has been regulated,” John Henry Assabill says. “Look at it!”

He throws up his arms in the direction of his gold-colored 2012 Ford Transit Connect. The car’s medallion number — 813 — is painted in black plain gothic figures (must be black plain gothic figures) on the driver’s-side hood, on both passenger doors and, for good measure, on the rear. Inside, there is a camera mounted over the rear-view mirror, a dispatch radio bolted to the console, a credit-card reader snapped to the passenger headrest.

From the back of Assabill’s seat hangs a sign — lamination required — spelling out the city’s fare structure: $3.25 for the base rate, $2 for the airport departure/arrival tax, $50 vomit cleanup fee. Everywhere, there are mandatory stickers. “That one costs a dollar,” Assabill says of a window decal reminding passengers to LOOK! before opening the door into the possible path of cyclists and pedestrians. “The fine for not having it is $100.”

Then there are the holes. Several have been drilled into the roof to mount the top light that distinguishes cabs from other cars at a distance. Another has been punched right into the hood, bolting down the palm-size metal plate — the “medallion” itself — that gives Assabill the right to operate this cab, one of 6,904 in Chicago.

The losers of this ban are low-income Americans looking to make a living. These ride-sharing companies allow anyone who has a car to become a businessman: Drivers can provide travel services directly to customers using apps.

And this is where Uber and similar companies come in: They are alternatives to traditional anti-competitive, highly regulated taxis. Taxi medallions, fare price-fixing, and other regulatory barriers to entry have all but drained the last competitive juices from the legacy taxi system. Without these limitations, Uber and Lyft are able to offer their customers better services at more reasonable prices. In addition, being new companies in a competitive market, they understand that they had better make sure their customers are satisfied so they will come back often. And this is a key point that seems lost in the current debate: Consumers are the ones at the core of the existence of Uber and Lyft.

Unfortunately for consumers and low-income workers who were making a living from these new ventures, lawmakers are only too happy to get captured by incumbents in the cab industry. As I wrote in the Examiner on Friday:

Of course, politicians and regulators are the ones to blame. It is because lawmakers allow themselves to be captured by special interests who want to fence off competition that innovators and new comers have to ask for permission to give customers what they want. Without over-the-top economic regulation over rates, entry, and new technologies, incumbent cab drivers would have to compete for customers over the quality of the services they provide. And in fact, it is the decades of protection from competition that has left taxi companies complacent and largely unequipped to nimbly improve their businesses.

There is a reason consumers like companies such as Uber and Lyft. They provide them with the service they want at a price that suits them. I understand that after having been forced to comply with onerous licensing laws and fees, cabbies are invested in the current system. But I think that a better course of action going forward is to minimize barriers to entry and regulations; that is the way innovation occurs and consumers are better served. There is no stopping this new era of consumer-driven transportation companies. The State of Virginia may crush Uber this time around, but other companies will appear now that consumers have gotten a taste for freedom.

As a matter of principle, conservatives should be against licensing laws. They hinder employment, especially for lower-income workers, and create artificial barriers to entry in order to protect incumbents against often very needed competition. AEI’s Michael Strain made that case in a book chapter called “Employment: Policies To Get Americans Working Again,” and then in piece in the Washington Post last week. As he explains, conservatives should strive to address long-term unemployment, which means making it easier to find work. Getting rid of occupational-licensing laws would really help, he argues.

Here is my Reason piece on the issue.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Facebook acquisition of Oculus could end up boosting crowd funding



The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review – The concept of crowd funding new technology companies took a hit earlier this year when Oculus was bought by Facebook FB  for about $2 billion.

Participants in a $2.4 million Kickstarter campaign that helped fund Oculus and its development of a virtual reality headset, wound up with nothing to show for their support, while the founders and early investors scored astronomical gains.

In the wake of the bitterness over the deal, there are movements to change laws that limit the sale of equity stakes to small investors.

Slava Rubin, CEO and founder of crowd-funding platform Indiegogo, says that eventually those laws, including the so-called JOBS Act, will evolve in a positive way.

“It’s about access to capital. It will democratize investing,” he told MarketWatch at the Nantucket Conference in Massachusetts, a gathering for tech entrepreneurs and others recently.

Current laws, including the JOBS Act, prevent private companies from selling shares to unqualified investors, those with less than $1 million in assets and $200,000 income.

While changes in the laws would open access to capital for startups, regulators argue that unsophisticated investors in such companies could easily lose their shirts. After all, such equity tends to be highly illiquid, and many  startups fail.  In addition there are concerns over fraud. 

Rubin said that people should differentiate between fraud and failure. “Since its launch, Indiegogo has not had a single case of fraud. But failure is not a fraud, and that happens,” he said.

Anticipating such changes in laws that limit small investor equity stakes, Wayne Mulligan founded Crowdability.com, a company with the purpose of educating retail investors.

“We aim to be the place an investor visits before making an investment decision,” Mulligan wrote on the company’s blog post. “Morningstar has done a great job building a place like this for mutual-fund investors. Our goal is to build the most trusted place for equity crowdfund investors”


Friday, June 13, 2014

How Can Space Tech Help Detect Bank Fraud On Earth?


The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review – Drawing on their experience building complex software for simulating spaceflight, Portuguese scientists have created a 21st-century way of detecting banking fraud here on Earth.

Today, every electronic purchase in Portugal runs through their software. Around the globe, Feedzai products screen some US$229 billion-worth of payments every year.

But what do space missions and software designed to find thieves have in common? More than you might think – in addition to high-tech hardware, space missions require a great deal of sophisticated software.

“When you launch a spacecraft, you need software to guide it,” explained Feedzai’s Paulo Marques, who was an ESA consultant before founding Feedzai in 2009. “You also need software for communications from the ground.”

Long before a spacecraft is launched, the software must be thoroughly tested for flaws. There’s just one problem, explained Paulo: “You don’t have an actual spacecraft yet.”

So, scientists build a software universe to simulate the mission.

“What you need to have is something that represents the spacecraft, mission control and ground stations, along with many other components, in order to check it all.”

At ESA, Paulo and Feedzai’s Nuno Sebastiao called on high-performance computing techniques to create virtual satellites: “Clusters of computers pretend to be everything involved. A computer acts like a spacecraft.”

The software must be very robust in order to mimic each element of the mission and spacecraft perfectly.

And it must be able to do this quickly – in far less time than it would take to complete an actual mission.

“The software has to be able to process all the information it gets in a very, very effective way,” said Paulo, “as if it were the real spacecraft.”

Spacecraft operators also train using this software. “You are not going to put a spacecraft in the hands of someone who hasn’t trained before.”

Space experience for stopping fraud

Fraud detection and space mission software face similar challenges. For one thing, both need to process huge amounts of information in real time. “If we talk about a bank, you need to process thousands of transactions every single second.”

In bank fraud detection, as in space, software must recognize anything that is out of the ordinary.

In space, an unexpected change in temperature could indicate a crack in the wall. In banking, anomalies often point to fraud: if a petrol station suddenly starts generating sales figures like those of a luxury car dealership, it is a sign of trouble.

However, there are differences. While hard-and-fast rules are set to detect an anomaly in space, fraud requires decisions on a case-by-case basis. A sudden temperature change in a spacecraft is always a problem, but each bank customer has his own, individual habits.

As a result, the software must recognize what is normal for a business-owner and what is normal for a teacher, based on the past practices of each, before it can identify any odd behavior.

To make this possible, Feedzai came up with an artificial intelligence software system.

“We developed software that can process a huge number of transactions,” said Paulo. This software can look at every transaction a customer has made for the last four years.

By applying both ‘machine learning’ and ‘big-data techniques’ to look at all the data, the software learns to distinguish fraudulent-looking from non-fraudulent-looking transactions.

“The software creates the rules.”

Feedzai’s software is certainly robust. Tracking over 300 variables per person, it creates very detailed, individualized spending profiles for as many as 20 million credit cardholders per system. “In total we are tracking over five billion variables continuously.”

“It’s like having 500 very intelligent people looking at every single transaction and making a call based on their experience if it’s fraud or not. It’s a huge amount of computing power.”

Carlos Cerqueira from Instituto Pedro Nunes, the Portuguese broker in ESA’s Technology Transfer Network part of ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme, believes Feedzai’s technology will mean savings for banks, as well as improved customer loyalty: “Feedzai’s machine learning models and big data science are able to detect fraud up to 30% earlier than traditional methods, and illustrate how the competencies developed at ESA research centres can be useful to other sectors.”

Space knowledge generates growth

This year, Feedzai moved its headquarters from Portugal to California as they expand further into the world market.

”It is great to see that the expertise and knowledge generated on European space programs also can lead to innovative techniques in fighting credit card fraud,” said Frank M. Salzgeber, Head of ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme Office.

“It illustrates very well the spin-off potential from our space programmes. Dealing with space calls for leading-edge technological solutions, which explains why the space industry is often far ahead of others.”

Portugal’s delegate to ESA, Luís Serina, emphasised that, “This success case shows us that the investment in ESA also contributes to the creation of jobs and growth through technological innovation, which is even more important nowadays.”

Certainly, there is plenty of fraud to go around: each year, $11.4 billion is lost to credit card fraud. As cybercriminals grow more sophisticated, that number is likely to grow.

“We’re part of the defence mechanism,” said Feedzai spokesperson Loc Nguyen. “The invisible layer you as a consumer never think about. If you don’t know about us, it means that we’re working.”