Liked the clean UI. Very useful stuff.
But it stopped after playing few (-5) songs everytime, the youtube player keeps showing that the song is still buffering.
I've been waiting for some really useful apps to come out of linkedin platform - unlike the reading list kinda apps which are not at all making use of the real potential of the platform. I think the linkedin API is very very limited at the moment.
He also says >>> housing is a great investment right now. I think housing prices have gone down far enough and I can list the reasons why housing as an abstract investment concept is going to go higher from here.
Sure, the CC data can easily be stolen even now but assuming square gets popular, consumers then will have to "trust one more device" in addition to the card-readers used by merchants, any other place where you swipe the card, the waiter, etc etc.
And more so because its much easier to write rouge apps or malware-apps for smartphones than to hack the dedicated card readers. In case of a malware-app, the danger is not just limited to one merchant.
It seems to me that the real question raised by verifone is not being given enough concern.
Why can't the square card encrypt the CC data ?? with a private key that only square-app can make sense of?
In the UK the merchant is not permitted to touch the customers card; all the card readers face the customer and are used by the customer (restaurants all have mobile PIN entry devices).
Now each credit card in the UK is has a chip (which uses end-to-end crypto), they're looking to phase out magstripes completely.
Currently if the merchant has to fallback to using the magstripe then he'll have considerably less protection against customer fraud, and he'll pay a much higher transaction fee.
Square would not be permitted to operate in the UK.
A few years ago there was someone at a kiosk in a mall in NYC (I think), who got busted skimming. She was double-swiping, once through their POS system, and then a second time on a Palm Pilot with a magnetic stripe reader attached. She got busted because someone saw her doing it and got suspicious. Now, think about the number of times you hand over your card and it leaves your line of sight to be swiped. Other than retail stores, it happens to me all the time.
Presumably, encryption would add hardware costs to a device that they're giving away tens of thousands off for free, and only provide the illusion of additional security on top of there existing security measures once it hits the iOS client (pure speculation on my behalf).
If they baked the server's public key into the device and encrypted data with that, then only the server would be able to access the raw card data. This would prevent the device from being useful for anyone but Square. It may not be worthwhile to do so, but it certainly isn't the illusion of security if your concern is accessing the raw data.
totally agree - making the self-learning part offline and creating more and better (teachers would know exactly where a particular student is having problems understanding) interactions is the best part of his model.
Yeah, the data from the students' interaction with the video could be sent back to the teachers and end up creating a comprehensive profile of each of the student's understanding on that particular topic. Then, in the classroom, the teacher would be able to walk from student to student (or form groups of students with similar strengths/weaknesses) and provide the help they needed based on their profiles. This help would be the help that relies on direct interaction between the teacher and student.
With new superior models coming every year, time for Apple to do some innovation in the business-model (well, in addition to the app-ecosystem they created) and move to a subscription-based model :)
One pays few grands (say $2k) every year to upgrade i/pod/phone/pad to the latest version.
(well, they have recycling program with 90% depreciation!!)
You may remember that Microsoft wanted to move to an annual subscription model for Windows. I distinctly remember Balmer rubbing his hands together and cackling with glee about how they were going to make much more money that way (as he pushed another couple of nosy kids into the oven of his gingerbread house).
As it turned out, this made an enormous amount of people unhappy. I think they abandoned it.
Apple does have an annual subscription service, MobileMe (or whatever they are calling it this week). As far as I can tell it has had a very low rate of adoption, despite coming free (for a limited time) with new Macs. Heck, I have a hard enough time convincing random (Mac using) strangers to buy a damn external drive and turn on Time Machine. Don't underestimate user inertia.
Best Buy is kind of doing this with their "buy back" program. If Apple continues becoming more and more predictable in terms of product release dates and pricing, I could almost see a startup doing this on their own. You buy Apple upgrade insurance, and they guarantee that you can trade in your current product for a new one as soon as the new product is released.
The only problem is that there's way to much risk to do this unless you are Apple or have a direct relationship with Apple. Then again, maybe the float would cover the risk.
I don't think that would work, because it would be too expensive. People would balk. However what might kill, would be a subscription discount program a la Amazon Prime. Pay $99 a year for 10% off all purchases + other bonuses.
I'd call it
"Apple Fan Appreciation Program." Maybe they could introduce it via MobileMe.
I found it very interesting how he applied data-analysis techniques [at time 12:33 in the video] to provide teachers with a better and correct understanding of each student's shortcomings (probably from his insights from his earlier profession on the Wall St.) that will take the student/tutor interaction to a new level!
What I found more interesting was that lack of those tools in current teaching. I can't believe no one's made those kind of analysis tools available to teachers before.
Can't agree with this enough. Every time we make a new chart I think to myself, "Well that wasn't rocket science," and then when we show teachers they go absolutely nuts.
In a traditional class room its not possible to collect that data in a practical sense. Teachers are already over worked and technology is in short supply. Which is why tools like these are not available, its only possible here because all students are interacting with the khanacademy.org system.
