IOT Archives - Page 13 of 17 -

Ecobee joins home security race

Ecobee offers home security system

Ecobee, known for their well-designed and high featured Wi-Fi smart thermostats that include Alexa voice support, has launched new home security products and a cloud monitoring service. With the addition of the company’s entry sensors, Wi-Fi connected camera, and cloud service, it is now able to offer a complete, integrated home security system to rival other DIY offerings from Nest, Ring, Simplisafe and Honeywell. The home security system market is getting more crowded, and more interesting. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Ecobee products are well designed, so this system may turn out to be a better experience than similar DIY offerings. What’s most interesting is to watch device makers, such as the Ecobee of five years ago, add more and more products and features to their ecosystem. The question is, will these systems continue to grow in functionality to rival more complex and complete systems such as those provided by ADT/Alarm.com and Vivint? Do Ecobee’s and rivals’ DIY systems compete with professionally installed security systems, or are these buyers as different as buyers of SUVs and Priuses?

Verizon to buy video conference platform BlueJeans

In what could be one of the first post-pandemic restructurings, Verizon will pay $400 million to acquire the internet video conferencing platform BlueJeans. BlueJeans boasts 15,000 current customers. Verizon sees the platform as a logical add-on to its 5G offerings, as more workers are expected to work remotely after the pandemic. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: This may be one piece of evidence that the corporate landscape will change as a result of COVID-19. Verizon is counting on the increased popularity of video conferencing tools to be more than a temporary uptick, and to become a permanent and important part of the core telecommunications offerings. Expect to see a large brand reach out to acquire the superstar Zoom in the next six months as the pandemic dust settles.

Peacock streaming service launches

NBCU Comcast has launched its own answer to the video streaming wars. The Peacock streaming service has multiple forms: a limited, free, ad-supported version, a $4.99 ad-supported version for non-subscribers to Comcast/Cox pay TV, and a premium ad-free version for $7.99. The service is now part of the pay TV bundle from Comcast and Cox — included in their pay TV offerings. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: It feels as if NBCU is late to the streaming party, with Disney + having gained so many subscribers who may have decided to be three service households with Prime, Netflix and Disney +. To squeeze in a fourth service, or to prefer Peacock over other services seems unlikely at this point. NBCU was wise to use this service as a value-added sweetener for those who have not, and maybe will not, cut the cord. Investing in core customers is wise, and NBCU’s strategy seems to be to straddle the old and new worlds of TV services.

Fitbit adds features and no bulk in Charge 4

Fitbit has added a new, slim fitness tracker to its lineup. The Charge 4, for under $200, provides GPS and heart rate alerts. For core fitness fans who want a slim, attractive device and don’t want the bulk of a smartwatch, this is a new alternative. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Fitbit is doing a good job of finding niche markets within the niche of wearables. Just emulating the Apple watch is a tough strategy, so creating more specialized devices for micro-segments is a good way to expand the market into spaces that are likely not on Apple’s road map. Fitbit is building highly specialized fitness trackers for fitness enthusiasts who have very particular size, weight and feature requirements. Stay tuned to watch the divergent paths of the swiss-army-knife Apple approach, versus the specialist approach of Fitbit.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Quibi thrives in first week

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Quibi one week later…

Last week Quibi, the short form mobile-only streaming content provider, launched. The service provided 1.7 million downloads in week 1. The company stated that it has sold out all of its advertising slots for the remainder of the year, and will accelerate its plans to enable casting of programs to a TV. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: As stated last week, this company got Corona-lucky. Never before (or again) will the target audience of people with disposable income have so much time on their hands to experiment with a new, unique form of content. Let’s not forget that Quibi has offered a free 90 day trial, but trials that require a credit card number are quite sticky.

Create a looping video to stand in for you during video calls

New tools make for new creativity, and it is easy to create a video of yourself sitting and listening attentively in a video call — unless, of course, you are called on to contribute your comments. By using Zoom to record a video of yourself sitting and listening, with an occasional gesture or nod, then editing to create a seamless loop, you can create a video virtual background. Lifehacker.com

dis-rup-shun: Having some fun and letting your personality show through is more important that ever. and this hack has been used to amuse. One of my colleagues uses this feature to create a background of himself walking by and waving into the camera — quite a shock while speaking to him, live. Another colleague replaced himself with a puppet, which sat in his chair as he manipulated its mouth and arms through a one hour company-wide status call. Humor is helpful.

Amazon hires yet more workers

Amazon is hiring another 75,000 workers, on the heels of the 100,000 it hired last month. Most workers are in logistics — helping to fulfill orders in warehouses and packing delivery trucks for daily runs. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Talk about a windfall! Amazon cannot keep up with the inundation of orders from people sheltering in place. Fortunately, the company is making a dent in the massive joblessness caused by the pandemic. The interesting question again is how will Amazon benefit long-term from the massive, likely temporary, uptick in business? Can it retain many of the at least 175,000 new employees it has hired, and will it keep a much larger share of the market for regular household supplies than it enjoyed pre-COVID-19?

Pandemic brings cities an opportunity to reconfigure

Among the many impacts of the pandemic is less crowded streets, but overcrowding of sidewalks and public parks in large cities such as New York, Bogota, Calgary, and Denver. Many cities have closed off streets, creating pedestrian-only centers. Low levels of air and noise pollution, combined with more pedestrian friendly atmospheres promise to create a better experience for urban dwellers. Wired

dis-rup-shun: The world will be a better place after it (we) recovers from the current crisis, and making cities more livable will help us restore our need for community and connected-ness. City planners should make the changes permanent. Expect large cities to be less car friendly as they transform dense areas to favor walkers and large gatherings.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Nintendo: case study in resilience

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Nintendo: a top player for 130 years

Filmmaker Adam Isaac has produced a 20 minute online documentary of Nintendo – the company that entered and dominated the game console market in the 1980s and has survived fierce competition from Sony, Microsoft, Google and a plethora of smartphones. Its latest offering, the Switch, is sold out across the U.S. CNBC offers a look at what has kept the former game card, ramen noodle and taxi company at the top through so many successes and failures. Donkey Kong was the first big hit in the days of video arcades, a $27 billion industry in 1982. A string of hits included NES in 1985, GameBoy in 1989, N64, DS2, GameCube, Wii and Switch, when released in 2017 caused caused company revenue to jump by 116%.

dis-rup-shun: A great example of company reinvention, the head of the company saw the playing card business drop and applied the company’s gaming DNA to electronics. Like Steve Jobs, Nintendo leader Miyamoto has kept the company focused on two key elements: making games fun (over realism) and keeping game content and hardware tightly coupled. Facing the new world of gaming on smartphones and inexpensive cloud services, most notably Apple’s casual game service, Arcade, Nintendo must either compete on the cloud or remain entrenched in specialized devices. This crossroads is just one of many make-or-break decision points that the company has faced over its 130 year history.

Broadband speeds fall in major cities during COVID-19

Speeds have decreased in many large cities as a result of increased Internet traffic, according to network monitoring company, Thousand Eyes. Despite the reduction, the speeds have remained adequate for entertainment, video calls, and most online activities. Speeds in New York City dropped by 20%, whereas the decrease in Austin, Winston-Salem, and Oxnard was up to 40%. ArsTechnica

dis-rup-shun: Our global economy, as damaged as it is, is in large part intact thanks to the Internet. As one looks at all prior recessions, depressions and setbacks, none has occurred during a time when so much of life and business are online. Even the Great Recession of 2008 occurred in the early days of streaming video entertainment and before video conferencing was as easy and as accepted as “business as usual.” When the dust settles and we survey the damage of the coronavirus pandemic, we will find that many industries remained intact and even benefited as a result of the crisis. The facts don’t lessen the damage to many, but will certainly prove that an online economy is a far more resilient economy.

SpaceX rapidly builds another Starship prototype

Multiple corporations are vying for NASA’s renewed budget for space travel, and SpaceX and Boeing will begin trips to the International Space Station this year. SpaceX’s heavier craft, the Starship, will not be used for the scheduled ISS trips, but is critical to the company’s delivery of heavy cargo into space. The new prototype replaces two others that imploded during pressure testing. CNET

dis-rup-shun: The space race is just that, with a dizzying pace of launches, experiments and new prototypes built. Competition is good for the industry, but some of the space racers are extremely competitive, pushing hard on the limits of technology and engineering for companies that theoretically will earn a profit. Expect to see more fiery crashes as competitors race for big contracts, and hope that safety measures will more than adequately protect human lives from aggressive new space travel projects.

Professional lighting for video calls is a career booster

A $50 investment in a desktop ring shaped lamp from UBeesize placed behind your laptop provides lighting on your face that transforms your image on web conferences. CNET

dis-rup-shun: The new “dress for success” involves looking healthy and confident on numerous daily video conferences. Even though you have your gym shorts and flip flops on down under, having a healthy and attractive glow proves that sheltering-in-place has not dulled your edge.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

The best video conferencing software is…

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The best videoconferencing software

The world is abuzz about videoconferencing which, along with Internet connectivity, has essentially saved the world from self destruction in the time of sheltering. By now everyone has experimented with a number of video conferencing apps. Wired provides a summary of the top contenders. It reviews Apple FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Houseparty and Google Hangouts.

dis-rup-shun: Funny how different each of these apps, which all bring people together virtually, really are. Houseparty brings people together to waste time together. Teams brings people together to manage many computer-based tasks, FaceTime is perfect for showing people what you are doing in the moment (action), and Skype is really not good for anything. Zoom remains one of the easiest and best tools. Hopefully all of these providers will enjoy great success in return for the incredible utility they have provided, mostly free, to the world in quarantine.

How to influence millennials

Success of flattening the coronavirus curve, it has been said many times, depends on the millennials. This cohort of young and mostly healthy people can make or break global efforts to slow the virus. A marketing company called Xomad, with the help of the government of Bangladesh, created a Social Leader Council, consisting of 200 social media influencers. The company successfully persuaded the influencers to user their platforms (many on Instragram) to encourage people to stay home. The company has also worked with influencers in Los Angeles, paying them a fee to join the campaign, which, in terms of delivering the message, is proving effective. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: The new rules of marketing are far less decentralized, requiring brands, or causes, to work through dozens of fragmented channels in addition to traditional channels of TV, radio, and even search. The power of influencers is significant, with people viewing dozens of different posts depending on tastes, making the task of messaging more challenging than ever. Xomad will have many important lessons to teach as a result of their public service work.

Palantir a coronavirus winner

Another company making lemonade in this time of lemons is data analytics software company Palantir, a privately held company backed by the controversial billionaire, Peter Thiel. The company’s contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enables the CDC to amass large amounts of data on COVID-19 cases, uses of ventilators, locations of infections, and much more. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Data analytics is the new plastics (Google The Graduate if you are too young to understand this phrase). The Internet of Things and the future of computing is about connecting end devices such as sensors, smart phones, cars, thermostats to the cloud, where vast amounts of data are collected every second. That’s impressive, but more impressive are the companies that can figure out how to make actionable insights from vast oceans of data.

Happy Easter and Passover

Blessings to you and your family as we celebrate that which is greater than us during the Global Reboot. Let’s take this time to be in touch with what is most important and what we wish to retain on the other side.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Last Russian rocket ride

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The last ride on a Russian rocket

The U.S. ended the Space Shuttle program in 2011 and since then has depended on Russia to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. The price of a seat on a Soyuz rocket is $86 million. Today’s launch of Chris Cassidy is the last scheduled trip with the Russians, as the U.S. will turn to both SpaceX and Boeing to launch U.S. astronauts from U.S. soil later this year. Wired

dis-rup-shun: What would JFK say if we asked him how he felt about his space dream being outsourced to Russia? In the age of Trump and renewed nationalism, NASA is relying on the free market to renew the space program and again compete in the space race. While both Boeing and SpaceX have had their share of challenged test flights, the plan to send an astronaut to the ISS this year remains intact, with the Russians on standby to sell a seat “as needed.”

The Animal Crossing phenomena

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a new version of a beloved Nintendo Switch game, was released on Friday, March 20. It sold an amazing 1.88 million physical copies in Japan in its first weekend, setting a record for Nintendo Switch content. In the rest of the world, the game has created so much social media buzz that many celebrities are joining in the discussion, fueling the excitement for the life sim game. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Now is clearly an exceptional time to immerse oneself in a game. What makes this game so intriguing? Perhaps it is because it gives players a new opportunity to live a sim life as they expect that real life should be — providing new opportunities to build skills, trade, interact and even recreate with others with outcomes following expectations. Life is difficult when it doesn’t follow expectations, and retreating into a fantasy world where things are the way they should be is comforting — until you stop playing.

How to help your car shelter in place

Your car was built to drive. It was not designed to sit in the garage or driveway for weeks. Keeping the battery charged is the primary concern, and running the car for 20 minutes per week keeps up the charge and keeps lubricants circulating throughout engine, steering and brake systems. Cleaning all interior surfaces with a mixture of water and rubbing alcohol will make the vehicle ready for post pandemic use. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Sheltering in place has temporarily decreased air pollution in major cities, and given Mother Earth a little reprieve. It has also decreased the time spent and stress created by commuting in heavy traffic. Will our societies have a different outlook on daily routines post-pandemic, encouraging more work from home and less resource wasted on getting knowledge workers to an office location where they may sit, isolated in cubicles, working on a computer?

Drop a line to Asia

How do you keep the Internet infrastructure across the globe working, especially with a spike in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic? Answer, you run a new cable connecting the U.S. mainland to Taiwan. Google has gained approval by the U.S. Department of Justice to run a sub-sea fiber optic cable to Taiwan, citing increased demand. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: We are all extremely dependent on the Internet for work, for shopping, for entertainment and for communication. But just who owns the Internet, builds and maintains it? There are a number of articles that answer the question, but many companies own, operate and charge tolls for its use, and one of the big players, of course, is Google. While Google bashing has become en vogue due to aggressive use of personal information, it is important to remember that Google’s sale of your personal shopping and political preferences generates the revenue that pays for the cables on the sea floor that enable you to WeChat or Facebook across the globe for “free.”

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Nintendo Switch nearly unobtainable

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Nintendo Switch hotter than toilet paper

And that is a compliment. The wildly popular game Animal Crossing has added to the frenzy to find the hand held game device which is in short supply. Buyers have gone online to Craigslist and eBay to find devices. “I found someone selling a Switch with a roll of toilet paper and a mini bottle of hand sanitizer for like 720 dollars,” Jennifer Baik, 24, said. “I was like what’s more valuable here, the Switch or the toilet paper?” Charlotte Observer

dis-rup-shun: Online games and gaming devices are COVID winners. While game research Interpret doesn’t have the data, one can expect that many old XBoxes, Nintendos and PlayStations have been dusted off and once again have become part of the daily experience. One could track pricing of second hand games to see if their prices have increased in the past two weeks.

Solve TP shortage — don’t use it

Bidet manufacturer Tushy is facing a 10x increase in demand for its product , a simple, DIY bidet attachment to the toilet. The attachments are about $100 and eliminate the need for toilet paper. The CEO says that given Americans’ reluctance to embrace, like other parts of the world, the bidet, our society flushed 15 million trees down the toilet each year.

dis-rup-shun: Another COVID winner — the bidet. From an environmental perspective, adding a bidet seems like the responsible thing to do, even without a global pandemic, unless, of course, you are in a region where the value of water is greater than the value of paper. Again the question is, how well will these COVID winners due when this is over? Expect long-term gains from higher awareness of companies such as Tushy.

Sex toy and condom sales skyrocket

Sex toy manufacturer Lelo is reporting a 40% increase in sales and online pharmacies are reporting a doubling of condom sales. Experts are mixed on if the pandemic will lead to a large number of conceptions as past crises have. WiredUK

dis-rup-shun: Let’s just hope that the increase in sexual activity does not get mixed up with the spike in use of Internet video conferencing, or a new online amateur industry will be born.

Best work at home laptop games

For people who are living on their laptops and looking for a little diversion between conference calls, CNET offers a lineup of the best games that can be “snacked” — that is, enjoyed in short sessions without requiring hours of indulgence. Top suggestions are: Deep Sky Derelicts, Disco Elysium, Fortnite, Blade Runner, Thimbleweed Park.

dis-rup-shun: Games that help us interact with people are probably the best diversion, especially for those sitting alone in their own home or apartment — isolated from coworkers and loved ones. On the other hand, perhaps games that connect us with other people are even more important for those trapped at home with loved ones!

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

T-Mobile CEO: industry game changer

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How John Legere changed the mobile phone industry

John Legere took over the unimpressive carrier T-Mobile in 2012 and transformed not only T-Mobile, but the U.S. wireless industry in a few short years. Here are the biggest innovations to his credit:

He created the “un-carrier” by eliminating contracts for post-paid accounts (no contract pre-paid offerings were already in market).
He eliminated handset subsidies, shifting the industry to pay the full price of the phone over installments.
He enabled rapid upgrade options, giving people the option of switching to the latest equipment and valuing trade-ins higher.
He made international data cheap or free, in some cases, making international traveler much friendlier from a communications perspective.
He is a self-made social media star.
He made bashing the competition a standard practice within wireless marketing
He opened up earnings calls to everyone

Leger has stepped down as CEO of T-Mobile upon the completion of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Legere is yet another example of David vs. Goliath. Legere decided to rewrite the rules of an established industry that put T-Mobile in a distant fourth place. He shunned the corporate image and appeared always in Magenta T-shirt and long hair. Last week, by completing the merger with Sprint, he took the irrelevant T-Mobile and turned it into a very solid third-place contender that will challenge AT&T and Verizon in deployment of 5G services.

Meal kit roundup — Blue Apron wins

Wired has assessed fourteen on-line meal-in-a-box delivery services, and has evaluated them on price, food quality, variety and recycle-ability. A complaint across all services is that they generate a lot of waste, so packaging was a consideration. The winner, Blue Apron, was lauded for reasonable price ($7 per meal per person per day), its efficient packaging, and its Mediterranean-style food offerings.

dis-rup-shun: With at least fourteen offerings, it is likely that a competitive shake out will eliminate some of the variety of this segment, but that could lead to the winners offering more variety of choices. Meals-in-a-box could eventually improve the poor eating habits of low income households and middle income food-lazy households, but still require the patience to follow some simple directions and do some prep. For those who don’t feel empowered in the kitchen or don’t live with a master cook (I’m sorry for you), there are no more excuses for eating less then great food all of the time.

U.K. phone towers attacked by those linking coronavirus to 5G

Attacks on four of Vodaphone’s cell phone towers followed social media posts linking coronavirus to 5G technology. British ministers are taking to social media to clear the record on 5G and dismiss any linkage to the pandemic. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Where there are people, there are conspiracy theories. If you find it shocking that so many ordinary people could have such wild ideas, then you haven’t yet watched Netflix’ Tiger King — a reminder that ordinary people are, well, not very ordinary.

Smart home technology predicted to be in one-half of homes

ProBuilder features an article by smart home platform company Ezlo’s Roger Gregory. Gregory cites research firm Berg Insight’s prediction that 63 million U.S. households will be “smart” in the next three years. Gregory addresses builders by reminding them that smart home technology is no longer a luxury, but a standard offering that actually increases the sale-ability of new homes and increases revenue.

dis-rup-shun: Smart home adoption will follow behind awareness, which is growing, but still low. Gregory does not address one problem of smart home technology, and that is the concerns of a substantial share of the population that smart home are not secure or are offering a big brother the opportunity to eaves drop. Better provisions and better education by the smart home technology industry is needed to minimize conspiracy theories and maximize privacy.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

IKEA to use AI to remodel your home

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IKEA nabs augmented reality provider

Ikea’s store division, Ingka Group, has purchased U.S. startup GeoMagical Labs — a company that enables AI-based renderings through a smart phone. The technology will enable users to take a smartphone photo of rooms they wish to decorate, and then fill an image with virtual IKEA furniture, becoming their own interior decorators. Reuters

dis-rup-shun: One can assume that this will become the new standard for furniture, paint, floor covering and clothing shopping… take a snap of that which you wish to change, try out virtual samples, then press a button and Amazon, UPS or FedEx will deliver within the same or (godforbid) three days.

Exactly how much have our online habits changed?

App Annie is a research firm that captures actual app usage for IoS and Android. In short, due to the pandemic, app usage has increased between 10% and 30% during the most intense times of shelter-in-place. Gaming usage has soared, and non-games app usage is also substantially higher. Time on apps is up as is spending through apps, as people buy more games, books, music and supplies.

dis-rup-shun: Mapping our pandemic behavior will provide great data for anthropologists, policy makers, doctors and marketers for years to come. Suffice it to say that consumer technology, in general, has been a big winner of the Coronapocalypse. The real question now is how much of the surge in digital services usage will remain when we find a new normal? It is safe to guess that most all of the services that we are using heavily will experience a significant fall back when the crisis is over, but will level off higher then pre-pandemic levels.

Apple accidentally unveils new tracker product

It seems that there are so many Apple watchers, that whenever the company posts something out of the ordinary, people notice. Such a posting was caught by a blogger who reveals that Apple appears to be about to release an object tracking service — similar to Tile. AirTags, as the product is called, will feature some sort of battery operated tracking device that one can affix to wallets, keys, bicycles and other objects that could get misplaced. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: For Tile, the news is not so good, though the company may benefit from Apple’s advertising and marketing power, generating more awareness and demand for the product category. Tile may have to price below Apple to find its niche within the object tracker market, and there are plenty of similar case studies of Apple absorbing a technology that is already in market. A few to study are smart watches, sleep monitors, and even ear buds.

New product from Ring — Doorbox

In another inadvertent product leak, it appears that Ring is about to release the Doorbox. A picture is captured by CNET fuels guessing on what the device will do. It could be a mailbox that detects motion and affixes to a door or gate. The picture suggests that the device does not have a camera.

dis-rup-shun: Ring is working quickly to move from provider of niche connected smart home products, to provider of do-it-yourself integrated systems. The fact that the company is owned by Amazon makes for an interesting future, with tighter integration between the devices and Echo-powered devices. Other than SimpliSafe, there aren’t many complete DIY smart home system offerings in market. Nest comes and goes leaving Ring an opening to be the most complete provider of low-priced smart home products at retail.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Toilet paper, monitors and laptops: in high demand

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Monitors, laptops and toilet paper

Sales of monitors and laptops have surged since we sheltered in place. NPD, the market research firm that counts sales receipts, shows computer monitor sales doubled in the first week of March while laptop sales were up 10% CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Setting up home offices and getting screens just right for all of those Zoom calls has been critical to WFH. As stated before, many sectors of the tech market will thrive as the result of the pandemic: video conferencing, Internet infrastructure, cloud services, computing devices, streaming gaming and entertainment.

Apple purchases weather app Dark Sky

The popular weather app, Dark Sky, has won multiple awards for its IOS version. Apple confirmed that it has purchased the company and will shut down the Android version. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Why does Apple want another weather app? The company has, in the past, purchased technologies that it views as best-in-class. But what’s more is that a number of apps, and weather apps in particular, feed data to a number of other apps and get paid per transaction. It is likely that Dark Sky offers a strong data source to multiple apps and can feed data to a number of Apple products and services. Owler.com lists Dark Sky’s revenues at only $2.5 million. We know Apple is working hard to build out its services business and maybe Dark Sky will be the foundation for a premium weather service.

Microsoft purchases Affirmed Networks

Affirmed is a company that provides software that enables wireless carriers to expand their networks by using cloud services. While terms of the transaction were not disclosed, it is speculated that the transaction is valued at over $1 billion. Affirmed Networks is in a strong position to capitalize on the 5G network build out, currently underway. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Another victory lap for a tech company despite the pandemic. Microsoft Azure is working hard to catch up to Amazon Web Service, which is way ahead. But Microsoft has shown several times that there are advantages to being a tech company with a cloud service. Cloud services can be leveraged into existing tech tools and infrastructure, creating a seamless platform. Amazon, on the other hand, has done a good job building new tech tools that extend the cloud into the premise, but the online retailer has to convince companies that it know tech down deep. Everyone has their strengths and has to work twice as hard to build strengths where they don’t already exist.

Beta Technologies builds recharging platform for electric flying taxis

Beta Technologies is building a flying taxi and, fittingly, needs a place for the craft to land and quickly recharge. The facility also offers comfortable quarters for pilots (or are they called taxi flyers?) to recharge while their craft is getting juiced up. The test facility is located in Burlington, Vermont. Wired

dis-rup-shun: If taxis will become electric and will fly, then they have to go somewhere to recharge. Some very forward looking business people at Beta Technologies want to be ready when the time comes. This combination of a futuristic service station, helipad and sky diner is certainly way ahead of its time, but when the time comes, Beta will have a well-researched offering.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Quibi arrives next week

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Are you ready for Quibi?

What’s a Quibi? It is a new streaming video service for $5 per month (or $7 for no ads). But it’s not just another streaming service. This one is available only for your smartphone, enables you to choose the camera angle you wish to watch, and is owned and produced by celebrities, and offers programming that is no longer than 10 minutes, and packed with screen stars. The service has already produced a healthy number of episodes and will have 175 original shows in year one. Despite the pandemic, the service will launch next week. CNET

dis-rup-shun: I was on the fence about Quibi, but given the current appetite for entertainment, I think that Quibi is the luckiest company on the planet. There is no better time or circumstance than now to launch a very specialized video service that will give people a lot to talk about. Those that don’t understand the talk will be forced to subscribe to be a part of the new normal. Just look at the impact on our online lives that Netflix’ Tiger King is having, then imagine all the talk is about something that only costs another $5 per month. Quibi will be thanking the coronavirus.

Air pollution is down – way down

The European Space Agency satellites have noted a significant decrease in air pollution. Significant visual changes are seen over Wuhan, a factory city, and Italy’s Po Valley, where the Alps block smog from industrial centers around Milan. The pandemic shutdown is providing scientists with a glimpse of what a reduced pollution future will look like and where it will change the atmosphere most. Wired

dis-rup-shun: If we are tallying up wins from coronavirus, we can credit the atmosphere as a winner.

Microsoft is a coronavirus winner

Use of Microsoft’s cloud services, including Teams and Skype video conferencing applications has skyrocketed. Teams use in Italy for a one month period was up 775%. On the news of the company’s strong performance, the stock was up 7%. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Let’s face it, the Internet is what is keeping our economy open during the pandemic. If our internet infrastructure collapsed, then we would devolve into a 1980s-like experience, with a bunch of smart devices that are computing islands. The companies that are keeping our lives together are the companies that make the devices, software, services and telecom infrastructure. Unless the company is involved in point of sale computing, the IT sector should be thriving in this time, and thank goodness for companies that make great, reliable products.

Free Zoom backgrounds

Need a less messy home office for your constant Zoom calls? A number of graphics providers have made backgrounds available for free — some animated. Sites are Unsplash, Canva, Modsy, and choices include PeeWee’s Playhouse, a confused John Travolta, and many others. The Verge

dis-rup-shun: It is nice to see that ingenuity is alive and well, jumping on the meteoric rise of Zoom and providing razors to go along with the free blade of Zoom conferences. Expect to see a list of video conferencing accessories, including software, devices, stands and microphones. We are an adaptive people.