Plus your climbing diagnosed, more on 64-bit in the iPhone 5s, Samsung's notebook cuts, and more
A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
WeChat's new monetization experiment: celebrity accounts >> Technode
Chen Kun, a famous Chinese actor, rolled out a premium service to his followers on WeChat. Paying to subscribe to his official account, fans will receive exclusive photos, or songs, e-books and even Good Night voice messages from him.
The monthly subscription is priced at RMB18 (no more than $3). Payments are powered by WeChat Payment that was made possible with WeChat 5.0. It is rumored that Chen's official account received RMB7 million ($1.14mn) the first day alone.
Wow. Just wow.
What the Google Street View decision means for researchers (and cops) >> Electronic Frontier Foundation
Hanni Fakhoury analyses for the EFF (Google was found guilty of breaking the Wiretapping Act):
First, the bad. If you're a security researcher in the Ninth Circuit (which covers most of the West Coast) who wants to capture unencrypted Wi-Fi packets as part of your research, you better call a lawyer first (and we can help you with that). The Wiretap Act imposes both civil and serious criminal penalties for violations and there is a real risk that researchers who intentionally capture payload data transmitted over unencrypted Wi-Fi—even if they don't read the actual communications —may be found in violation of the law. Given the concerns about over-criminalization and overcharging, prosecutors now have another felony charge in their arsenal.
On the other hand, the decision also provides a strong argument that the feds and other law enforcement agencies that want to spy on data transmitted over unencrypted Wi-Fi will need to get a wiretap order to do so.
Wristband monitors your rock-climbing prowess >> New Scientist
Are you an expert climber or a trembling novice? A sensor-equipped wristband will find out how well climbers negotiate rock faces by analysing the way they move.
Cassim Ladha and colleagues at the University of Newcastle have developed ClimbAx, a plastic wristband which contains 3D motion, orientation and altitude sensors to collect key data during climbs. Afterwards, climbers download the data via a USB port. A machine learning algorithm then identifies their individual moves and makes an assessment of their skill level.
The system automatically replicates some of the ways professional coaching, which is too expensive for most people, assesses the skills of elite climbers. Two factors that coaches look for are the climbers' overall control – their ability to make smooth transitions between holds – and their stability, which is a measure of their ability to maintain a hold and remain composed while doing so.
Wearable technology: it's getting everywhere.
Nokia Lumia 1520 unveil pushed back to 22 October >> Eye on Windows
We have some bad news for Windows Phone fans that were planning to get their hands on Nokia's first phablet. The launch of the large screen Lumia 1520 seems to have been delayed by almost a month.
Something like this was always on the cards, keeping the recent events in mind.
And even though these are still rumors, with Nokia yet to make any official statement, these two reports come from the most reliable of sources. The launch event that the Finnish smartphone maker had scheduled for 26 September in New York City may be pushed back.
Samsung halves September notebook component orders >> Digitimes
Samsung Electronics has cut its notebook component orders for September to about half of its original forecast and the company reportedly may also reduce its shipment forecast for 2013 to only 13m units, compared to 13.8m units in 2012, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
Samsung did not comment on the sources' claim.
Samsung originally expected its 2013 notebook shipments to grow 15-20% on year, but, like other first-tier vendors, is also facing the notebook market woes.
A 15-20% growth would have been 15.9m-16.6m units. If correct (it is Digitimes), this is a 20% dip from that forecast. Other notebook makers may be seeing the same.
How Apple's A7 64-bit chip gives iOS plenty of headroom for the future >> ZDNet
Simon Bisson:
With a virtualisation-ready processor in its new phone, Apple can now start to move iOS in the direction of a hypervisor-controlled sandbox environment, perhaps using a technology like Microsoft's research OS Drawbridge.
Here the operating system component of a VM is tailored to the application it is hosting – minimising the attack surface of each secure partition. Combined with a fingerprint sensor to identify users, Apple has the tools it needs to deliver biometric access control, allowing devices to support multiple users, with files and apps for one user hidden from another using hardware encryption.
While iOS doesn't support this approach currently, it's a logical extension of the current iOS security model, which uses selectively encrypted sections of the file system to secure application-specific data. It's also an approach that would allow apps written for an older version of iOS to continue to run, in their own dedicated partition, without the security features that newer apps, in their individual partitions, could use. That way there'd be backward compatibility, allowing Apple to deliver a more secure, enterprise-friendly, iOS without destroying its existing ecosystem.
With smartphones (and tablets - surelu a future iPad have the A7) Apple seems serious about the enterprise. This might be important.
Welcoming Nokia's "Mobile Phones" customers to the Microsoft family >> Nokia Conversations
The official Nokia blog, ahead of the change of ownership in January:
There are 1.3 billion people using a Nokia phone today. In some markets, the word 'Nokia' is synonymous with 'phone' – and we aspire to live up to that brand as we welcome customers of these products into our Microsoft family.
In many cases, these customers are new to Microsoft, and their first personal computer will be a phone. With Nokia's Mobile Phones starting at $20, more people will be introduced to Microsoft services earlier in their lives than ever before. In some geographies, Windows Phones are not available. Again, Nokia's Mobile Phones will introduce more people to Microsoft services in more places than ever before.
The four sentences in that second paragraph sit uncomfortably together, and don't seem to have a single strand of thinking behind them. It's more like two people arguing.
Sticking a knife in a toaster >> Boing Boing
If you've wondered what happens when you stick a knife in a toaster (and really, who hasn't?), here, in six seconds, is a Vine clip demonstrating the inadvisability of this course of action. Let this be a lesson to us all.
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