It’s Shark Week and, while there were plenty of fins in the water, there was surprisingly not much for those of us looking for the cousins of those deadly ocean predators when it comes to the technology world. But there was a bit. In tech news this week, Samsung invests in smart homes by snapping up a home automation company, eBay eyes the bitcoin economy, and the creator of pop-up ads offers a mea culpa.
Mega electronics/smartphones/tablets/TVs/appliance/you-name-it vendor Samsung has thrown its hat in the smart home arena with its acquisition of SmartThings. The simple explanation is that Samsung is looking for its own home automation play to pit against Apple’s HomeKit offerings. Which is probably somewhat true. But the interesting part is in how open and interoperable SmartThings products are. If Samsung can leave well-enough alone with SmartThings, they’ll have a clear story to tell versus Apple’s inevitable vendor-locked in smart home offerings.
News has come out that eBay, through their PayPal Braintree unit, is looking into the possibility of accepting bitcoins for payments. Add this move to some other recent vendors’ acceptance of bitcoin and it looks like the Internet currency may be starting to move away from its shadowy reputation. If this move happens, people could be paying for Uber rides and other mobile payments using bitcoins. But can you thrown one in a fountain for good luck? Didn’t think so.
If you’ve been using the web for more than a few years, chances are you remember the frustration and anger that pop-up ads caused. There was really nothing quite like firing up your browser, reading two or three stories on different news sites, and realizing that all of a sudden you had twenty windows open with a variety of annoying advertisements in them. Well this week, Ethan Zuckerman, one of the inventors of pop-ups, offered an apology for unleashing them on the Internet. Apology accepted (grudgingly). He also put forth some interesting ideas on how the Web can move from its advertising centric model.
That’s it for this week in Tech News. Have a great weekend, maybe get out on the water. Just remember, you might need a bigger boat.
For research on these topics, read Aberdeen’s Information Technology practice
