Daniel Kaufman, Pres. & CEO, Reagan Wireless Corp.
www.reaganwireless.com
Reagan Wireless Daniel kaufman
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Can't get enough of smartwatches? Well, a whole new batch is on its way.
New wave of Android Wear watches aims to make up for lost time
Asus, Huawei, LG and Motorola will introduce their newest smartwatches next week at the IFA electronics trade show in Berlin, according to people familiar with the companies' launch plans. The devices will all run Google's Android Wear software, which was created to power wearable products like smartwatches.
You might be forgiven if you don't remember Android Wear, which Google introduced last year with much fanfare, but which hasn't resulted in any blockbuster products. Next week's releases will mark the second big wave of Android Wear devices, following on from that dismal showing in 2014. Android powers the vast majority of the world's smartphones, and Google and its partners are hoping for similar success in the burgeoning market for wearables.
The goal is that the new Android Wear devices will have enough features and alternative designs to lure buyers away from the Apple Watch, which -- despite criticism -- became the world's most popular smartwatch within its first few months on the market earlier this year.
"Apple Watch has clearly raised the bar for the global smartwatch industry," Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said. "The ball is now in the court of rivals, like Samsung, to respond."
Some early wearables, including Samsung's Galaxy Gear from late 2013, used Android, but the initial version of the software -- which wasn't tailored for wearables -- caused devices to run slowly and batteries to drain quickly. Samsung quickly switched to its homegrown Tizen software in its smartwatches as an alternative.
Android Wear emerged in early 2014 as a modified version of Android created specifically for smartwatches and other Internet-connected wearables. Google and its partners -- Samsung, LG and Motorola -- unveiled the first devices that used Android Wear at Google's developer conference that June. The software promised a simple user interface, instant notifications and the ability to perform simple tasks, like texting friends, using voice commands. Other companies such as Sony and Asus introduced smartwatches of their own.
But consumers largely disregarded those initial devices. Smartwatch makers collectively shipped only 720,000 Android Wear units in 2014 out of a total 4.6 million wearables, according to market research firm Canalys. Samsung, the world's biggest smartwatch vendor last year, chose to push devices running Tizen instead of Android Wear, and nearly three out of every four smartwatches shipped in 2014 came from the Korean company.
Of the Android Wear watches, Motorola's Moto 360 stood out with its round face and the company's decision to use premium materials such as a metal case and leather strap. But others quickly followed with the same strategy. Motorola is slated to unveil the follow-up at the show.
LG, meanwhile, is expected to release a smartwatch similar to its LG Watch Urbane LTE, which the company showed off in March. The Urbane LTE ran on software called WebOS, which LG purchased from Hewlett-Packard to use on its own products; the new version will run on Android Wear.
Huawei debuted its first smartwatch -- a device designed to look as much as possible like a classical round-face timepiece -- at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona earlier this year. And Asus is expected to give more details about the ZenWatch 2, which made its debut in June at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The company hasn't shared many details about the device.
Every smartwatch player has taken a backseat in the wake of the Apple Watch's introduction in April. With only three months in the wearables market, Apple surpassed Samsung to become the leader in smartwatches. In the second quarter of this year, 76 percent of smartwatches came from Apple, while Samsung's control of the market tumbled to 7.5 percent, according to Strategy Analytics.
Read more: http://www.cnet.com/news/next-wave-of-android-wear-smartwatches-set-to-make-their-debut/
You might be forgiven if you don't remember Android Wear, which Google introduced last year with much fanfare, but which hasn't resulted in any blockbuster products. Next week's releases will mark the second big wave of Android Wear devices, following on from that dismal showing in 2014. Android powers the vast majority of the world's smartphones, and Google and its partners are hoping for similar success in the burgeoning market for wearables.
The goal is that the new Android Wear devices will have enough features and alternative designs to lure buyers away from the Apple Watch, which -- despite criticism -- became the world's most popular smartwatch within its first few months on the market earlier this year.
"Apple Watch has clearly raised the bar for the global smartwatch industry," Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said. "The ball is now in the court of rivals, like Samsung, to respond."
Some early wearables, including Samsung's Galaxy Gear from late 2013, used Android, but the initial version of the software -- which wasn't tailored for wearables -- caused devices to run slowly and batteries to drain quickly. Samsung quickly switched to its homegrown Tizen software in its smartwatches as an alternative.
Android Wear emerged in early 2014 as a modified version of Android created specifically for smartwatches and other Internet-connected wearables. Google and its partners -- Samsung, LG and Motorola -- unveiled the first devices that used Android Wear at Google's developer conference that June. The software promised a simple user interface, instant notifications and the ability to perform simple tasks, like texting friends, using voice commands. Other companies such as Sony and Asus introduced smartwatches of their own.
But consumers largely disregarded those initial devices. Smartwatch makers collectively shipped only 720,000 Android Wear units in 2014 out of a total 4.6 million wearables, according to market research firm Canalys. Samsung, the world's biggest smartwatch vendor last year, chose to push devices running Tizen instead of Android Wear, and nearly three out of every four smartwatches shipped in 2014 came from the Korean company.
Of the Android Wear watches, Motorola's Moto 360 stood out with its round face and the company's decision to use premium materials such as a metal case and leather strap. But others quickly followed with the same strategy. Motorola is slated to unveil the follow-up at the show.
LG, meanwhile, is expected to release a smartwatch similar to its LG Watch Urbane LTE, which the company showed off in March. The Urbane LTE ran on software called WebOS, which LG purchased from Hewlett-Packard to use on its own products; the new version will run on Android Wear.
Huawei debuted its first smartwatch -- a device designed to look as much as possible like a classical round-face timepiece -- at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona earlier this year. And Asus is expected to give more details about the ZenWatch 2, which made its debut in June at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The company hasn't shared many details about the device.
Every smartwatch player has taken a backseat in the wake of the Apple Watch's introduction in April. With only three months in the wearables market, Apple surpassed Samsung to become the leader in smartwatches. In the second quarter of this year, 76 percent of smartwatches came from Apple, while Samsung's control of the market tumbled to 7.5 percent, according to Strategy Analytics.
Read more: http://www.cnet.com/news/next-wave-of-android-wear-smartwatches-set-to-make-their-debut/
Daniel Kaufman, Pres. & CEO, Reagan Wireless Corp.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Microsoft is turning the iPhone's camera into a 3D scanner
Microsoft wants the camera on the back of your phone to do more than take 2D photos. A new project from Microsoft's research lab is turning the average smartphone's rear camera into a 3D scanner — one that can automatically create 3D models that are supposed to be good enough for printing. In a demo video, researchers use an iPhone 5S to scan objects just by moving the phone around them. The phone tracks the object that's being captured and then builds up a model as the camera captures it from different angles.
Most smartphones should be able to do this
Some of the models created in the demo video look rough, but they're pretty impressive when you consider that the iPhone wasn't designed to make them. Microsoft says that no additional hardware is needed to turn the iPhone — or other modern smartphones — into a 3D scanner; computation is all done on the phone, too. That's a bit different from what Google is doing with projects like Tango, which use additional hardware, including a motion-tracking camera and a depth sensor, when mapping the world. Those additional sensors are likely to give Tango better results, but Microsoft says that just a single camera should be enough to make models for printing or use in augmented reality gaming.
Microsoft's project is called MobileFusion, and researchers are currently trying to get it running on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. There are no release plans yet, but the intention is to make it available to the general public eventually.
Daniel Kaufman, Pres. & CEO, Reagan Wireless Corp.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Now in stock Samsung Galaxy S5.
Simply inspired, the Samsung Galaxy S5 makes every day better in ways big and small. HD movies and games roar to life. Make split-second moments yours with the fast camera. Track fitness levels down to your heartbeat. Secure the phone with your fingerprint. The Galaxy S5 now in stock is available in Charcoal Black or Shimmery White.
Call us for info 1-877-724-3266
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Sundar Pichai: Google's new boss from humble roots
With Google creating its own parent company, Alphabet, there's a bit of moving about in the Google boardroom.
Larry Page is now chief executive of Alphabet. Sergey Brin is its president.
And moving up to be in charge of Google is 43-year-old Sundar Pichai.
Great news for Pichai, and good news too for India - his appointment makes him the latest Indian to earn a massively high-profile job in the US technology industry. Microsoft's Satya Nadella is the other notable example.
Pichai's life story is remarkable, and his rise to the top of Google is a glowing endorsement of India's standing in the global technology industry, and equally, a reassuring reminder of the so-called "American Dream".
Pichai was born and schooled in Chennai, India. He captained his school's cricket team, leading it to win regional competitions.
He studied Metallurgical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur). According to one of his tutors, quoted in the Times of India, Pichai was the "brightest of his batch".
He has evidently used his talent to great effect at Google, a company he joined in 2004. Products under his watch include Google's web browser, Chrome, as well as the Android mobile operating system.
Android is by far the world's most popular mobile OS - a fact made perhaps more startling by the fact Pichai's family did not possess a telephone until he was 12 years old.
Challenges
According to a profile in Bloomberg magazine, Pichai's upbringing was humble. His family lived in a two room apartment. Pichai didn't have a room - he slept on the living room floor, as did his younger brother.
The family didn't own a television, or a car.
But Pichai's father planted the seeds of technology into his boy's mind, partly thanks to his job at British conglomerate General Electric Company (not to be confused with the American General Electric).
"I used to come home and talk to him a lot about my work day and the challenges I faced," Regunatha Pichai told Bloomberg, adding that Sundar had a remarkable talent for remembering telephone numbers.
After graduating from IIT Kharagpur, Pichai was offered a scholarship at the ultimate breeding ground of tech geniuses - Stanford. The plane ticket to America cost more than his Dad's annual salary.
At Google, Pichai is described as soft-spoken, and well liked. He is also very popular among developers - he runs Google's annual developer event, I/O.
"Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I've been tremendously enjoying our work together," wrote Larry Page in his blogpost announcing all the big changes.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been hands-off with Google's day-to-day running for sometime, and so, in Pichai's life, today's announcement is simply making it official: he's in charge.
His remit is best summed up as Google's core products - the bits that make the real money. That includes things like search, advertising, maps and YouTube.
He has challenges to navigate, like YouTube's increasingly intense battle with Facebook in the video space. The social network has dramatically increased the amount of video being watched on its site - but YouTube still holds the title of most popular, for now at least.
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33858436
Daniel Kaufman, Pres. & CEO, Reagan Wireless Corp.
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Reagan Wireless in Comprar Magazine August 2015 edition.
Daniel Kaufman, Pres. & CEO, Reagan Wireless Corp.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Amazon Prime's new policy says that customers can add just one other adult to an account
Amazon Now Only Lets You Share Prime With One Other Adult Instead of Four
Amazon recently made some changes to the ways customers can share their Amazon Prime membership. It used to be that you could share the subscription’s free two-day shipping with four other people. But as of last week, Amazon put a stop to that.
Its new policy says that Prime customers can add just one other adult to an account — and you’ve got to be cool with that person having access to your credit or debit card for purchases. They can add their own cards, of course, but payment methods will be visible to both people sharing a Prime account. This is a mandatory requirement if you want to share Prime moving forward.
In order to share content, Prime benefits, and Amazon Mom benefits, both adult account holders need to authorize each other to use credit and debit cards associated with their Amazon accounts for purchases on Amazon. This will not affect either of their current payment settings, but each adult will be able to copy the credit and debit cards of the other account to his or her Amazon account and use them for purchases with Amazon.
With the change, Amazon is clearly positioning Prime sharing as a household convenience meant for two partners or a family. (The company always “required” everyone to have the same shipping address, but rarely enforced this policy.) Note that both people in an Amazon Household get access to Prime Instant Video and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library — but that was already the case before.
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/amazon-now-only-lets-you-share-prime-with-one-125765875399.html
Daniel Kaufman, Pres. & CEO, Reagan Wireless Corp.
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