Five great Mother's Day tech gifts under $100
ChicBudsMost earbuds are basic black or Apple white -- either way, boring. ChicBuds are colorful earbuds designed to match Mom's sense of style (or give her one). Available in Blue Graffiti (shown), Pink Leopard, and Zebra Stripes, they're covered in fashionable patterns from one end of their flat, tangle-free cords to the other.These are canal-type earbuds, meaning they're designed to create a noise-isolating seal in the ear canal. They come with three gel-tip sizes to assure the best possible fit. ChicBuds are priced at $29.99 apiece.Apple TV or Roku LTWhat Mom really wants for Mother's Day is to watch "Downton Abbey." That's a snap with the Apple TV or Roku LT; these diminutive boxes plug into nearly any TV and stream video from various services (most notably Netflix, which offers "Abbey" as one of its Watch Instantly selections).OK, but which box is best? They're both excellent, but if Mom has an iPhone, I recommend the Apple TV solely for its AirPlay capabilities: Mom can beam snapshots and videos from her phone to the TV.On the flipside, the Roku boxes support Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus, which together offer more viewing options than iTunes alone.The Apple TV costs $99, while the Roku LT runs $49.99. However, the latter tops out at 720p video, so it's not quite a fair comparison. If you want 1080p, which is the Apple TV's top resolution, the Roku 2 HD has it -- and it's still cheaper at $79.99. Still can't decide? Check out CNET's Apple-TV-versus-Roku rundown.Barnes & NobleAmazon Kindle Touch or Barnes & Noble Nook Simple TouchThe time has come for Mom to see what all the e-reader fuss is about. The only tough part: deciding which model to get her.Amazon's $99 Kindle Touch received four stars and an Editors' Choice from CNET. Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch also received four stars and an Editors' Choice. However, the latter was just reduced to $79 (from $99) in honor of -- you guessed it -- Mother's Day.There's no bad choice here; it's just a matter of which e-book ecosystem you want to lock Mom into, Amazon's or B&N's. I tend to prefer the former, if only because I've found it a bit easier to stock my Kindle with free e-books checked out from the library.Fitbit UltraMost moms I know are always trying to get in shape. The Fitbit Ultra is one of the first gadgets that can actually help. This clip-on activity tracker measures just about everything: steps taken, stairs climbed, distance traveled, and calories burned. It can even monitor your sleep patterns (though the actual benefits of that are a bit more vague).The real fun comes in checking all your stats online or in the companion Android/iOS apps. It even syncs with popular apps like Lose It and RunKeeper. Want to learn more? Check out CNET's review of the Fitbit Ultra.Creative D100 Bluetooth SpeakerIf your mom has a smartphone or tablet, chances are good she enjoys listening to playlists, podcasts, Pandora -- maybe all that and more. That's the beauty of a Bluetooth speaker: it can go just about anywhere Mom goes, and it can play any audio she wants to hear. (Just make sure her device supports A2DP Bluetooth. Most modern gadgets do, but a few tablets -- most notably the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire -- don't.)There are countless Bluetooth speakers to choose from, many of them priced under $100. (Indeed, check out CNET's recent roundup of the best portable Bluetooth speakers for less than $100.) I picked the Creative D100 largely because CNET called it "the best bargain in Bluetooth speakers today," and because you can find it selling as low as $60. And it comes in your choice of colors.Looking for more Mother's Day goodies? Check out Molly Wood's Top 5 tech gifts for Mother's Day (that aren't an iPad). She wisely chose a couple of the same product categories as me, if not the same products.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Friday, May 8, 2015
Square producing 10,000 card readers a day
Square producing 10,000 card readers a day
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's latest project, Square, which plugs into mobile devices and allows users to process payments, is getting bigger. During an interview with VentureBeat's founder Matt Marshall as part of this year's Demo Fall conference here, Dorsey explained that the company was now producing some 10,000 scanner units a day, which allow Square users with a smartphone and the Square software (which is free) to run credit card payments from just about anywhere.Dorsey compared the speed of Square's rollout, which was put on hold in late-June while the company re-evaluated its risks, to that of Google's Gmail. "The reason we're pacing this out is because Square lets you get into credit cards right away. Normally it takes three to four weeks. We have to sponsor all these people right away, so we have all that risk and fraud right away."Despite the risk, Dorsey said that those involved in the private beta have been playing by the rules. "We've only had five chargebacks, and they've all been dismissed," he said. The problem, Dorsey explained, would be with wider use, which the company has delayed in favor of spending time to make the system as secure as possible. As a result, the company has spent the last several months building tools to track activity and spot trends. The tracking tools have highlighted data trends that Dorsey said helped create parts of the business he and the rest of the team had not originally imagined. For instance, Square's analytics tools monitor when, where, and what items users are buying--and for how much. "We're getting this rich data about cappuccinos sold and how much they cost. That's fascinating to have that kind of data, and to build that into a tool for our users...no small business really has that sense of analytics," Dorsey said. Along with Square, Dorsey reflected on some of the stumbles made in creating Twitter, where Dorsey continues to reside as chairman. "One of the things we did fairly poorly in the early days was that we were building this transparent company, but we weren't bringing users into that," he said. That resulted in the creation of the company blog, as well as a blog to let users know when the service was undergoing maintenance. Dorsey also pointed at the difficulties in creating a service that would go from light to heavy use in an instant. "Imagine during halftime at a sports game everyone uses the plumbing system, and you get that big surge all at once," he said. "Twitter has a lot of similar issues with activity, and engineering for that is very difficult." Dorsey said big traffic spikes continue to be a challenge, but that these days Twitter has the tools to find out what happens when things go wrong. "When the real mistakes were made, we had no instrumentation at all. We had no analytics, no data about about what was actually happening to the system. So we were pretty much flying blind," he said. "We didn't take the time to build the systems to watch what was happening with the network and how our users were interacting, and those traffic patterns. And once we did, we discovered holes, which we'd fix. And that's something we did immediately with Square."Square faces a number of emerging and existing competitors, including Apple, which is rumored to be working on a payments system that makes use of its iTunes account system and potentially upcoming phone hardware. Casemaker Mophie and Intuit have also teamed up to create the Marketplace case, which competes directly with Square by letting users scan credit cards with their phone. For more on that, see: Is your phone the wallet of the future?
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's latest project, Square, which plugs into mobile devices and allows users to process payments, is getting bigger. During an interview with VentureBeat's founder Matt Marshall as part of this year's Demo Fall conference here, Dorsey explained that the company was now producing some 10,000 scanner units a day, which allow Square users with a smartphone and the Square software (which is free) to run credit card payments from just about anywhere.Dorsey compared the speed of Square's rollout, which was put on hold in late-June while the company re-evaluated its risks, to that of Google's Gmail. "The reason we're pacing this out is because Square lets you get into credit cards right away. Normally it takes three to four weeks. We have to sponsor all these people right away, so we have all that risk and fraud right away."Despite the risk, Dorsey said that those involved in the private beta have been playing by the rules. "We've only had five chargebacks, and they've all been dismissed," he said. The problem, Dorsey explained, would be with wider use, which the company has delayed in favor of spending time to make the system as secure as possible. As a result, the company has spent the last several months building tools to track activity and spot trends. The tracking tools have highlighted data trends that Dorsey said helped create parts of the business he and the rest of the team had not originally imagined. For instance, Square's analytics tools monitor when, where, and what items users are buying--and for how much. "We're getting this rich data about cappuccinos sold and how much they cost. That's fascinating to have that kind of data, and to build that into a tool for our users...no small business really has that sense of analytics," Dorsey said. Along with Square, Dorsey reflected on some of the stumbles made in creating Twitter, where Dorsey continues to reside as chairman. "One of the things we did fairly poorly in the early days was that we were building this transparent company, but we weren't bringing users into that," he said. That resulted in the creation of the company blog, as well as a blog to let users know when the service was undergoing maintenance. Dorsey also pointed at the difficulties in creating a service that would go from light to heavy use in an instant. "Imagine during halftime at a sports game everyone uses the plumbing system, and you get that big surge all at once," he said. "Twitter has a lot of similar issues with activity, and engineering for that is very difficult." Dorsey said big traffic spikes continue to be a challenge, but that these days Twitter has the tools to find out what happens when things go wrong. "When the real mistakes were made, we had no instrumentation at all. We had no analytics, no data about about what was actually happening to the system. So we were pretty much flying blind," he said. "We didn't take the time to build the systems to watch what was happening with the network and how our users were interacting, and those traffic patterns. And once we did, we discovered holes, which we'd fix. And that's something we did immediately with Square."Square faces a number of emerging and existing competitors, including Apple, which is rumored to be working on a payments system that makes use of its iTunes account system and potentially upcoming phone hardware. Casemaker Mophie and Intuit have also teamed up to create the Marketplace case, which competes directly with Square by letting users scan credit cards with their phone. For more on that, see: Is your phone the wallet of the future?
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