The AP is reporting this morning that the Netflix CEO will get a healthy pay raise in 2014. According to a regulatory filing, Reed Hastings’ annual salary will jump to $3 million, up from the $2 million he earned this year. His annual stock option allowance also improves to $3 million from the current level of $1 million.
It’s hard to argue against the pay increase. Netflix had a great 2013. The stock price is up 296% on the year. It’s trading around an all time high of $365. The stock was the top performer in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 this year.
The company isn’t raking in the profits, though. In its most recent quarterly report, Netflix only made $32 million. But Wall Street doesn’t seem to mind and so the company should stay the course raking in the subscribers and producing award-winning original content. Netflix just needs to remember to listen to their subscribers.
The figures are much as they have been all year, only more so. Nokia continues to control the lion’s share of Windows Phone hardware, ending the month up a few points at 92.1 percent (this is a calculation of usage share, tracked through AdDuplex’s network). And the Lumia 520 handset continues to dominate its brethren, with a new high of 39.3 percent share. And that Windows Phone 8 grew against the now-fading Windows 7.x system, with record relative market share of 78.3 percent.
Windows Phone’s 2013, if you had to put it into basic trends, would be that Nokia cleaned up, and its Lumia 520 was the weapon of choice.
Thurrott well describes the current low-ending of Windows Phone (bolding original):
Almost no high-end phones are popular. Worldwide, only the Lumia 920 makes the top 10 list for usage among all Windows Phone handsets, and if you look just at Windows Phone 8 handsets, only two high-end devices make the list: The Lumia 920 and the 925. In the US, there are three: The Lumia 920, 928, and 1020. All the rest are new low-end devices or old devices. The Lumia 1520 phablet doesn’t appear anywhere in this report.
What this means is that the sales momentum that Windows Phone has comes at the cost of per-unit revenue. Margin pressure increases at lower price points. The list of sacrifices that had to be made to produce the Lumia 520 is not small.
So, as we tally what could be the final month in which Nokia rules Windows Phone, it’s important to note that rising unit volume has come at a cost. The Lumia 1020 is a hit among a subset of the technology elite, but perhaps few else.
Can you build a mobile empire on predominantly low-end phones? Apple managed the opposite, so perhaps this, too, is possible.
Fitbit has just released a major update to its iOS app for iPhone 5s, allowing the smartphone itself to track steps, distance and burned calories.
These are basic features, and just a fraction of the metrics provided by one of Fitbit’s own hardware devices, such as the Fitbit handheld or the Fitbit Flex wristband. With a Fitbit Force, for example, you can track all the basic information as well as flights of stairs climbed and sleep. Plus, it acts as a watch feeding you the information on a digital screen.
Still, the accompanying app has always been an integral part of the Fitbit hardware experience, as it offers a dashboard for every metric as well as a log tracking nutritional intake.
In other words, the app gives a robust outlook of overall health over time, which has made Fitbit a big contender in the space against Nike and others.
With the launch of the M7 motion coprocessor in the iPhone 5s, Fitbit has decided to offer “basic” tracking from the phone itself, likely with the intention to entice an upgrade.
The update comes just in time for New Years, as the pudgy masses resolve to lose the holiday weight.
Archos just dropped a huge smattering of CES news in advance of the huge annual tech show, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Among the various announcements, tucked away near the bottom, is the revelation that it will be introducing a “selection of smartwatches” for 2014, which will start at under £50 (roughtly $82 U.S.).
Archos doesn’t go into much detail about its smartwatches, saying only that they’ll have a “pebble-like” design and will work with both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. The “pebble-like” seems like a blatant shot across the bow of Pebble, the Kickstarter-backed hardware startup that began building smartwatches under that name this past year, though it’s probably meant on the surface to indicate the things will look somewhat like rocks.
The Pebble is arguably the current leader in the smartwatch space, having sold somewhere around 300,000 units to date according to the latest official figures released by the company. Archos, the French company behind a line of moderately successful media players, and subsequently many Android-based tablets and gaming gadgets of questionable quality, looks to be trying to exploit the opportunity exposed by newcomer Pebble with cheaper devices in a range of options to suit the needs of various consumers.
Archos is targeting “simplicity and function” with its smartwatch designs, the company says, which could actually seem to be at cross-purposes. Maybe they’ll have some feature heavy designs, more like the Samsung Galaxy Gear, and some that are essentially just streamlined data delivery devices, more like the Pebble itself. Either way, I highly doubt Archos will find a red-hot seller in any smartwatch design – but that doesn’t mean it can’t meddle with the grand plans of Pebble and other startups.
Pebble is currently running a lot of sales and promotions, and giving away a good number of devices. This means that either A) it’s finding interest is dropping off after initial demand has been satisfied; or B) it’s gearing up to release second-generation hardware. Regardless, I still think we’ve yet to see any proof that watch-based computing is something that’s feasible as a mainstream device, and entrants from Archos are unlikely to provide said evidence.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has today taken up the battle cry of numerous legislators before her, calling for wireless carriers to enable new anti-theft technology on handsets.
According to the Senator, one-third of robberies involve cell phone theft, resulting in an estimated $30 billion in lost or stolen phones.
That said, Klobuchar has written a letter to the heads of the major wireless carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular.
In the letter, she requests an explanation as to why “the most advanced security features” haven’t been provided to consumers.
This comes on the heels of Apple’s iOS 7 launch, which included an Activation Lock feature inside Find My iPhone. This essentially worked as a kill switch, requiring the owners passcode to reactive an account, wipe the device, turn off Find My iPhone, or sign out of iCloud.
The NYT reported last month that Samsung was trying to bring a similar technology to handsets but that it was rejected by carriers.
After all, the carriers make a pretty penny from insurance policies protecting against lost or stolen phones, which has become a huge issue in major cities. Cops have even lovingly given iPhone theft a name: Apple picking.
Here’s the full text of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s letter:
Dear Messrs. McAdam, Stephenson, Hesse, Legere, and Meyers:
I am writing to express my concern regarding the increase in crimes involving the theft of mobile devices across the country. As a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, I understand that consumers are utilizing more mobile technology and this is spurring growth in our economy. Unfortunately, more and more consumers are also at risk of being targeted by criminals looking to steal cell phones and other devices for illegal resale. I appreciate the work the industry has done in creating a database to keep stolen phones from being reactivated, but more action is needed.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, almost one-in-three robberies involve phone theft and the cost to consumers of lost or stolen phones is more than $30 billion each year. I’ve heard from local law enforcement officials about the continued call for the wireless industry to engage with them further and to adopt “kill switch” technologies on devices. Additionally, state Attorneys General have suggested that wireless carriers have not taken adequate steps to fight cell phone theft.
As Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, I expect wireless carriers to compete against one another to ensure consumers are offered the most advanced security features and offerings. Your five companies are the nation’s leading wireless carriers, collectively serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s wireless subscribers. With that market share comes an obligation to do all you can to utilize technologies available to protect consumers.
While I understand your companies are continuing to work with law enforcement on the stolen cell phone database, it is clear that consumers want and deserve a comprehensive strategy to prevent mobile device thefts. That is why I respectfully request that each of your companies provides my Judiciary Subcommittee detailed information on the following issues by January 9, 2014:
· Information explaining whether you have had offers by handset manufacturers to install “kill switch” technology, and, if so, why your company has or has not adopted such technology.
· Information about whether you have considered including this solution on handsets made by manufacturers now competing with Apple’s activation lock technology that operates as a “kill switch” on iPhones. If not, please describe your reasoning behind the decision made by your company.
· How your company will include such technology options at no cost to consumers in the future and how your phone security offerings differ from your competitors.
Identifying ways to curb mobile device theft is a top priority of mine and I will continue to advocate for the American wireless consumer. I also believe additional action to protect wireless consumers is necessary and that’s why I am asking you for this information. The status quo is not acceptable.
Keeping cats interested in any one toy for any length of time can be difficult, at least in my experience. Plus, most of them require a lot of manual input on the owner’s part. The Egg is a Kickstarter project that aims to keep things interesting for the cat, and save energy for the owner, with a smart toy that moves on its own and can be programmed via a laptop.
The Egg looks like its namesake, but contained within its plastic enclosure, it holds an offset weight and gearmotor, along with a printed circuit board. The Egg can detect floor type and even obstacles, like a cat’s paw or person’s foot, and rotate its weight using the gearmotor to change direction. The result is a ball that can continuously roll and keep a cat’s interest without any human intervention.
Or, with limited human intervention, I should say. The Egg still needs to be charged up, using a microUSB port on its side, and it can be plugged into a computer to switch it to various interaction modes using a desktop software interface.
Speaking from experience using an iPhone-controlled Sphero robot, this seems like a design that will indeed appeal to furry friends. Egg’s creator Jason O’Mara says that it isn’t designed to withstand the rougher brand of abuse that can come from dogs, however, so limit the Egg to feline pals only. O’Mara is an electrical engineer based in Portland, Oregon who previously worked for electronics industry vet TDK, among others.
Egg has managed to get within spitting distance of its $15,000 Kickstarter funding goal, so it’s highly likely it’ll reach it before long. O’Mara anticipates shipping the first production run by June, 2014, and backers can secure a pre-order for $31. That’s a small price to pay for what could potentially provide eternal enjoyment for your bored domestic animal.
Microsoft’s Xbox One is off to a great start, launching with cable TV control, bumped up graphics, and an all-new Kinect.
But is upgrading worth it?
Our own Greg Kumparak has said in his review that it’s a tough upgrade from the Xbox 360, after customers have grown accustomed to taking such huge technological leaps during earlier generational transitions. And John Biggs isn’t thrilled with the early titles available at launch.
Still, it’s hard not to be excited about the live TV control, and the speed with which you can switch between gameplay and television. If only the voice-control feature were a bit more reliable.
In the end, we recommend waiting a year or so for the $499 price to come down a bit, but eventually most gamers will want to make the transition.
Our devices have a never-ending hunger for power – it’s their single greatest failing, in a time when they can do incredible things but still only last around a day of solid use in the best-case scenario. But Mophie has made a name for itself providing extra juice for your devices, and now they’ve got a new Powerstation XL model that packs a crazy 12,000 mAh, which can charge some smartphones up to eight times over.
Pros:
Battery lasts and lasts
Intelligent amperage for less power wastage
Two ports for charging
Cons:
Price
A bit on the bulky side
Mophie’s Powerstation XL isn’t reinventing the wheel, it’s just making the wheel a lot bigger. Even design-wise, it resembles previous Mophie power pack devices, with a rubberized black top and bottom ‘sandwiching’ a silver wraparound rim. A button on the side will light up an LED indicator to tell you how much juice is remaining (to the nearest quarter), and two USB 2.0 ports on the top can charge up to two devices simultaneously, while a micro USB input is used to fill it back up once it’s empty.
The sandwich look is simple, good and a nice fit with Apple products, with which I’m generally using the Mophie Powerstation XL. Plus, the whole thing feels terrifically well-built, and you can imagine that if you pop the lid, it’ll be tightly packed edge to edge with battery cell units. Mophie’s backup batteries feel like they can survive a fall, which is more than you can say for a lot of the lower-priced models it competes with.
And the Mophie Powerstation XL also works as advertised. I used the partial charge it came with to fully reenergize a Nexus 5, HTC One and Nvidia Shield before it exhausted itself, and subsequent charges have managed to serve up multiple charges to my iPhone 5 while also topping up an iPad Air on the run. Plus, in terms of charge retention, you can easily have the XL in a bag for days without it losing a single dot of its energy meter to dissipation.
Mophie does good retention, and good overall life of the bank itself, which is why they can get away with asking for $130 for a backup battery and someone like IOgear charges a lot less. The XL is brand new, so I haven’t had the opportunity to test its longevity yet, but the Powerstation Pro I’ve had now for a couple of years still seems not to be noticeably diminished vs. when I first bought it.
The bottom line is that if you need serious backup juice in a relatively small package that’s bound to be reliable, Mophie’s latest delivers. It’d be great if someone made a smartphone that eliminated the need for such a thing, but until then, at least there’s the Powerstation XL.
The hardware hacker Bunnie Huang gave a talk at the Chaos Compute Club Congress where he offered some good news and some bad news. The good news? SD cards contain powerful, handy micro controllers that are useful to hackers and hobbyists. The bad news? SD cards are woefully insecure.
In a detailed and readable post, Huang describes the exact problems with Flash memory. In order to reduce the price and increase the storage space, engineers have to fight a never-ending form of internal entropy that slowly but surely scrambles the data on every Flash drive.
Huang writes:
Flash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it’s too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrink, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature’s propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale.
To take up arms against these errors, SD cards are essentially over-engineered to ensure an acceptable level of data retention. They also contain firmware that can, for example, change the visible available space on the card without changing the actual available space. This means you could sell a 2GB card as a 4GB card – your computer wouldn’t notice a difference until it started filling up that fake space. You can, incidentally, check your cards with this tool.
Here’s the worse news: because these cards contain firmware, this firmware can be updated. Huang reports that most manufacturers leave this update feature unsecured. In other words, don’t ever assume a Flash device is empty after you wipe its contents. For example, the card could make a copy of the contents in a hidden memory area or it could run malicious software while idle.
And the good news: Huang also notes that these cards could be reprogrammed to become Arduino-esque open source microcontroller and memory systems. “An Arduino, with its 8-bit 16 MHz microcontroller, will set you back around $20. A microSD card with several gigabytes of memory and a microcontroller with several times the performance could be purchased for a fraction of the price,” he writes.
So, in short, destroy your SD cards if you have any dirty info on them and keep your eyes peeled for ultra-small, ultra-fast Arduino hacks.
Bathys, a boutique watchmaker based on Kauai, Hawaii and run by one determined man, first announced their wild Cesium 133 atomic watch in October. Now, a few months later, the company is nearly ready to hit the shoals of crowdfunding.
The company made a name for itself by building sturdy dive watches for the surfer set. We haven’t heard much from them, however, until recently when they announced plans to make a watch that will remain accurate until your children’s children jet off in their moon cars to Juno. It uses a Symmetricom SA.45s CSAC atomic clock on a chip to power a standard quartz face salvaged from an older Bathys model.
Created by John Patterson, the watch is still a work in progress but there is some talk of crowdfunding the product once it is ready for prime time. At this point ABlogToWatch estimates that the piece will cost $8,000 or so when complete with discounts offered to early adopters.
Obviously this thing is comically large and obviously battery life is an issue but this is the first standalone device that will be more accurate than some GPS units. Because it doesn’t depend on a satellite sync it will be accurate all the time and even far into the future. While you’re not going to wear this on your next surfing safari I don’t see why you couldn’t wear it stargazing or, barring that, while manning the tubes at the Large Hadron Collider.
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