Bitcoin depends on users' criteria

Bitcoin is a system designed for transferring money between individuals and businesses.

Amazon dominates internet retail from a to z

As Amazon readies to launch the new kindle Paperwhite in april next year, and while the process of consolidating its status as the biggest internet retailer in the world is firmly underway, the company is also facing an increasing amount of complaints particularly from European countries, including a strike in Germany, regarding harsh working conditions in its warehouses. 

In a recent US survey by Bizrate Insights done from october 24 to november 4, online shoppers confirmed they will be spending 34% of their holiday budget at Amazon, which is really close to the 35% they are planning to spend at all the other online shopping venues.

Amazon is proving to be, without a doubt, the number one retailer for the 2013 Christmas season. Black Friday aside, the company's labor dispute is so delicate that some media outlets are saying workers "face increased risk of mental and physical illness."

Nowadays, the business model for Amazon Web Services is being copied by many tech tech companies, and it is also widely recognized as a sort of standard for cloud services. Prices are so competitive that it is really hard for similar companies to come up with monetizing ideas anywhere nearly as effective and original. However, the one thing that

Google plans on selling endorsements

According to last week's announcement, besides the fact that Facebook is already doing it, Google will soon take the same route of selling users endorsements. In other words, people's private posts and other important stuff about themselves, or something they might have liked, will eventually become public, and it does not mean just airing their good or bad experiences at some hotel.

The timing is not particularly the most appropriate since these days there is a lot of talk on both sides of the Atlantic about information privacy concerns which are raising eyebrows at all levels, including high ranking government officials from some European countries.  

Although these are supposed to be "minor changes" to the company policy to take effect on

Education with an innovative attitude

Image Source: EdX

In the book Inside Real Innovation the authors claim that, at the present time, we are in the middle of an innovation crisis because real innovation is not happening, at least not the one that would make a sizable impact in the world. They even go as far as to affirm that behind all 
bubbles or crises that nearly collapsed the world's economy, like the one that took place in 2008, there is a real crisis of innovation. 

In terms of Education, perhaps, we should consider examples from people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others who have not finished their university education. They most likely abandoned their studies because it clearly did not fit their interests and vision of the future. Some of them might have thought it was a waist of their time dealing with a system that did not reward actual learning, but rather simply honored obtaining a particular grade. Or they might have just decided that it was time to face the real world ahead of time. 

Experts agree that nowadays most people who need to look up a word or the definition of something significant to their everyday lives commonly use Wikipedia substantially more than other sources. That is why this online encyclopedia is the largest and most popular in the world. Based on a recent announcement about security within Wikimedia, the idea that encrytped https browsing for all their projects will be a default option only if users are logged in, seems especially relevant to them when they realize it comes with a persistent feeling that someone seems to be particularly

Steve Ballmer retires as CEO of Microsoft

After thirty three years of service to the technology giant, CEO Steve Ballmer announced on August 23, 2013 that he is retiring within a year.

In an article titled "Defenestrated" and published today by The Economist it is claimed that Ballmer "is a casualty of the personal computer's rapid decline". Although it is true that sales of personal computers have been falling at double-digit rates, and people seem to prefer Google Android and Apple mobile products instead of PC's, that is simply not a real reason for someone to decide to end his career, and to possibly even risk going into obscurity after having achieved numerous wins with a company the size of Microsoft. A process like this one must certainly be more elaborate than that.

Thinking about the possible motivations for him to reach the point of making such a decision, it is arguably something that was going to happen sooner or later. Some indications point directly to the fact that under his leadership the loss of market share by the company in some important sectors has been critical, and equally noticeable have been the missed opportunities to do substantially better in technologies such as mobile or search. Microsoft, nonetheless, has other areas of software that substantially make up for those losses.

The mobile and search areas could very well be some of the most critical issues at discussion in this story since Microsoft was just not able to catch up with the competition in this aspect. However, it is also

Ubuntu Edge: smartphone with a Touch of Android

Officially announced by CEO Mark Shuttleworth on July 22, this year, Ubuntu Edge is a hybrid next-generation device designed as a high concept smartphone to be built by Canonical Ltd.

Ubuntu Touch is the operating system developed for Ununtu Edge, and unveiled at the 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where it was declared winner of CNET's Best of Show, finishing ahead of Firefox OS. 

The idea behind this particular design is producing a phone that will be ready to tackle the future of computing, as well as drive innovation to the mobile industry. Launching something like this has the idea of convergence written all over it, since it will be combining the mobility of a smartphone and the power of a desktop on a single device.

This will be the first time Canonical gets into the smartphone business, and although they claim no interest in competing with the giants, the moment could not be better for rising the level of smartphone capabilities an even higher echelon, and to start coming up with tremendous technology for everyone to benefit from.

Some of the features this device will be loaded with include, a scratchless saphire glass monitor cover, 4.5 inch 1280 x 720 display the fastest available multi-core processor, 4GB of RAM, 128 GB for storage, or a body made out of a single piece of textured metal. It will also have two LTE antennas for full speed 4G, which will work both in Europe and America. The thinner and lighter battery is expected to come with silicon anode technology. 

The monitor is supposed to have the best combination of 

Richard Stallman on the 2013 Internet Hall of Fame

Software freedom activist and developer Richard Stallman was inducted into the 2013 Internet Hall of Fame on june 26.

The Internet Hall of Fame is an annual awards program organized by the Internet Society. Its goal is to publicly recognize "a distinguished and selected group of visionaries, leaders and luminaries who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet."

Mr. Stallman was chosen for creating the GNU Project, authoring the GNU General Public License, and for founding the free software movement. He was inducted in the Innovation category which recognizes people who have made contributions that have "broken new ground with original thinking / creativity that has established new paradigms, eliminated obstacles or accelerated Internet advancements."

Besides Innovation, other criteria for evaluating the nominees include Impact, Influence and

EdX offering interesting new tech courses

EdX is a nonprofit project founded by MIT and Harvard universities that was created with the purpose of offering a free university-level online educational platform. Most of the new courses will start this upcoming fall of 2013 as the project is expanding into more interesting courses than the seven initial ones offered in the fall of 2012. That's why enrollment has continued to increase and is expected to stay that way based on the quality and relevance of the materials and courses being developed. 

After taking a glance at the new courses, and for someone having a special interest in tech education, it is clear that the new subjects are appealing to a somewhat more tech oriented audience. For instance, they are starting to offer courses like Software as a Service, Solar Energy, Innovation and Commercialization, Fundamentals of Neuroscience, among others.  In addition, they also have less techie oriented themes like Fundamentals of Clinical Trials, Health and Society, A Global History of Architecture or Copyright.

According to EdX president Anant Agarwal, their mission is to dramatically increase access to education for students around the world, and to offer them top level educational materials in the form of structured massive open online courses, or MOOC's. Even if no credit is being offered towards an MIT degree at the moment, Mr. Agarwal argues that students can get other forms of credit, like using the certificates they receive after completion to help them get admission to MIT or other universities since these courses are being licensed to higher-ed institutions. 

In a may 1st 2013 interview with the online learning publication Degree of Freedom, he stated:

The First Satellite Made in Ecuador

NEE-01 PEGASO has been totally designed and executed by ecuadorian engineers without any foreign assistance. That is precisely what EXA, the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency, and the Ecuadorian government wanted, and that is also the way it needed to be done in order for the satellite to be officially referred to as Made in Ecuador. In other words, they designed and developed the whole product cycle in the south american country. 

It is a nanosatellite that is classified within the Single-Unit CubeSat class. The satellite was certified to be launched into orbit on board Chinese and Russian rocket propelled vehicles. On April 26, 2013 Pegaso was launched on a Chinese rocket from Pad 2 of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre.

In a televised interview with CNN, Ecuador's president Rafael Correa indicated that the cost of the project is around one million US dollars, which represents a substantially low cost approach in terms of budgeting for this kind of projects.

The leader of this project is Commander Ronnie Nader who is

The new Myspace

The efforts made by this social network are substantial, and by launching the new.myspace.com web site version the company seems to be sincerely trying to get in touch with users' needs. Hopefully this strategy will do the job for them; otherwise, the chances of being successful at yet another future version will most likely prove futile if they want to come even close to competing with a giant like Facebook. It is also important to mention that the new Myspace gets high marks in areas such as usability, interactivity, audio visual player experience, user interface and image. 

The new version, compared to the classic one, provides the user with a somewhat limited license to operate the profile of choice which can be retrieved from the classic myspace version, or the user can create a new profile. If the choice is the latter, and creating such a new profile is more appealing, then new terms must be accepted, which will make some authors of original copyrighted music, or any other kind of content, a lot more relaxed.

The not-so-great aspects about the new version could have more to do with the new terms and conditions for users and content creators, and although there might be some understood things in those terms, in this space, on the other hand, I decided to 

Global Mobile Awards at MWC 2013

Source : GSMA MWC

This year's Global Mobile Awards brought us some surprises. The following list shows the winners. Click on www.globalmobileawards.com/nominees-2013/ for further details.

• Best Mobile Health Product or Service: MIPsoft for BlindSquare
• Best Mobile Education or Learning Product or Service: Mobilink for SMS Based Literacy program
• Best Mobile Product or Service for Automotive: BMW i, MINI, Sixt and Vodafone Group for DriveNow Premium Car Sharing
• Best NFC /Mobile Money Product or Service: Etisalat for Flous – The Etisalat Commerce Programme
• Best Mobile Publishing Product or Service: Ver Se Innovation for NewsHunt
• Best Mobile Innovation for ‘Smart Cities’: Streetline for Parker
• Best Mobile Enabled Consumer Electronics Device: Samsung Electronics for Samsung GALAXY Camera
• Best Enterprise Mobile Service: Mobilelron for Version 5 Complete Enterprise Persona
• Best Consumer Mobile Service: Comviva for Mahindra Comviva’s