TT-Snippets, Volume 1, No. 1

This is the first edition of Techno-travels Snippets (TTSnippets). Wikipedia defines “snippet” as a small piece of something; it may in more specific contexts refer to a small piece or brief extract.
And so that’s what I am trying to do here.  I look at several resources such as Boing-boing, Bloomberg Business Weekly, Inc. Magazine and MIT’s Technology Review, and I am creating a "Kiplinger-esque" report about future or current technology breakthroughs. 

Let me know what you think. My main reason for choosing these is for investments purposes, or what I think might be good future stock buys, and of course this is not a guaranteed pick so buyers beware; it’s just a guess.
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1. UPDATE: Amazon Kindle now has 1.4 million ebooks on their Whispernet Network.
2. Microsoft’s new Surface commercial for their new tablet device of the same name is creating a stir that Microsoft wants to compete with Apple and Google in the tablet wars.
3. The Apple iPad Mini tablet now makes it more difficult to choose a mobile tablet device: Surface (Mircrosoft), iPad (Apple), Galaxy (android), Kindle Fire (Amazon).
4. Be on the lookout for the names Dalton Caldwell and Mixed Media Labs to be a replacement contender for the names Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
5. Japan is trying to seize a bit of the ebook world with a new version of “Kobo.” Kobo is a Toronto-based e-reader that is being bought by Rakuten, who has created a Japanese language version of this device.
6. At the same time, Google unveiled a Japanese version of its online bookstore, Google Play Books.
7. While Amazon announced in October a new version of its iBooks that will support Japanese language.
8. American Express is partnering with Walmart in select stores. The new product is called, Bluebird, which is a self-funding debit card that can be used anywhere AmEx is accepted and, of course, Walmart stores.
9. London private equity firm Permira Advisers will be buying Ancestry.com for 1.6 billion dollars — the purchase is in hopes of increasing the popular websites European customer base.
10. Carelinx is an online service that matches families with seniors or seniors who need non-medical caretakers.  This matchmaking site is for people who will be able to take care of mom and dad in their home.
11. If you own a DROID phone there’s an amazing app out there (in Beta) for your busy life particularly if you travel alot.  It’s called Bounce, and uses your GPS, your calendar, and traffic data, to automatically notify you precisely when it’s time to leave for your next meeting!  As you put your appointments into the app and you also include the address, it will let you know how long it will take you to get to the meeting from wherever you are.  After a while the program begins to “learn” your schedule and makes suggestions.
12. “Flame” is a new virus that is out there, and it has kept the antivirus community on the edge of their seats. And Flame created the reason “Crowdstrike” was founded.  Dmitri Alperovitch, Crowdstrike’s CTO and cofounder, says that the company plans to offer a kind of intelligent warning system that can spot even completely novel attacks AND trace their origins.  As far as viruses are concerned Alperovitch says, “We need to focus on the shooter, not the gun.”
13. The Entrepreneur of the Year is Ren Ng, the creator of a new camera,  the Lytro. For $399, you can own a monumentally different camera — this new camera captures light in a very different way.  The Lytro captures light through a plastic sheet that has thousands of tiny lenses directly in front of its sensor.  These lenses take rays that come into the camera at different angles and directs them at different points on the sensor; almost like a real eyeball.
14. Pinterest became a household name overnight this year. Founder, Ben Silberman, looked at social networking  in a different way. Ultimately, he wanted to offer social networking in a more visually rewarding way.  In just a short time, Pinterest went from onset to 60 employees, a spacious San Francisco office and $138 million in venture capital, with a valuation of $1.5 billion.
15. John Hering, owner of Lookout Mobile Security (LMS), is securing our smart phones from spyware and rogue apps with a little help from the crowds. In 2005, John infamously invented a hacking “rifle” called BlueSniper, which enabled him to take control of a Nokia handset from a record setting distance of 1.2 miles. Last year LMS has blocked millions of mobile threats. Twenty-million users have downloaded this app at $3.00 a pop. This is for a premium service that secures mobile devices’ web browsers to make it possible to “lock” or erase stolen mobile phones.
16. In 1999, Daniel Ek was a 16-year-old Swedish programmer when he started to ask himself a dumb question. “How do you get users to pay for music that can legally be downloaded free without charging them per song title? Ek’s eventual solution: “Spotify” — a jukebox in the cloud that provides on-demand (legal) access to millions of songs. This subscriber-based offering delivers the music radio-style. It has an estimated value of $4 billion, and he is trying to make it as easy to use as YouTube.
17. One day in 2009, Drew Houston and his business partner, Arash Ferdowsi, went to meet Steve Jobs. Jobs was interested in their business called “DropBox.” DropBox is an online, remote memory storage company. I have been using it for at least three years, and it is a free, wonderfully simple interface. If there are security issues with your data, you obviously don’t want to use this type of service, but for me it is excellent.  I back up all of my data weekly on it — and like I said, it’s free.  Not only that, but you can increase the amount of storage capacity that you have by suggesting the service to others and have them use your name (hint, hint).  When someone does this you get 500 MB of storage. I currently have 23 gigabytes of storage.
18. This past year Amazon bought Kiva Systems, for $775 million. Kiva had created a robotic shelving systems that zip across warehouse floors to bring their purchased contents to human counterparts. These workers will “pick, pack and stow” items in an order. Among other reasons, Amazon said that it reduced labor requirements at it’s dozens of warehouses. 
19. Heads Up! The relatively manageable top level domain list (.com, .net, .org...) is going through a major expansion in 2013. And it’s not because they need to, but as it was said by ICANN (the governing body — Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers), they think it would be “fun and profitable!” I say, don’t screw with a “good thing.”
20. And a final political note and comment. “An electronic voting machine in Pennsylvania was briefly taken offline on Tuesday -- and apparently reconfigured and placed back in service -- after a YouTube video showed evidence of voting irregularities. The video, which received a flurry of attention after being posted at Reddit.com, appeared to show an attempted vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama being reflected as a vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.” ~ Declan McCullagh

The Last Comment: This is what I want to say about voting, voting machines and technical snafus.  This is 2012 — there is no excuse for the shoddy state of affairs that our voting systems represent to our country.  It is shocking how bad the state of affairs is for this issue.  We need to cry out to the government to standardize voting.  Even our neighbors to the North (Canada) have one voting system for the entire country. Start here (http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/Martin.html) for a beginner’s understanding what Congress is trying to do (or not do) about this.