Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has decided to throw its hat into the wearables arena with their own smartwatch/fitness band called the Microsoft Band — no it isn’t a new music group made of Microsoft executives. Microsoft doesn’t specifically call the Microsoft Band a fitness band, but the repeated focus on fitness and health across this product’s features makes it clear that’s Microsoft’s focus and that productivity comes second.  This is most evident in Microsoft’s launching of Microsoft Health, which is a platform to help users of the Microsoft Band to track their fitness and health all in one app, which also happens to work on Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

The company has also already gotten themselves partnered up with Runkeeper, Gold’s Gym and MyFitnessPal in order to give you the best guided fitness experience possible.

In terms of hardware, the Microsoft Band appears to be right up there with their competitors featuring a 1.4″ LCD with a 320 x 106 resolution and 48 hours of battery life, without GPS enabled. It also comes jam packed with more sensors than virtually any other device out there. It features an optical heart rate sensor, a 3-axis accelerometer and gyro, a gyrometer, a GPS sensor, an ambient light sensor, a skin temperature sensor, a UV sensor, a capacitive sensor (display), a galvanic skin response sensor and a microphone. It also features Bluetooth 4.0 (LE) which is what allows for the 2-day battery life. This is all powered by dual 100 mAh batteries, which is why the band cannot be adjusted too much in terms of size. As a result, the watch will come in three sizes and you need to figure out which one fits the thickness of your wrist best.

The Microsoft Band also has a ton of other features which include the 24-hour heart rate monitor, run tracker, step tracker, calorie tracker and sleep tracker. It also has guided workouts and goal setting for the fitness conscious person that takes working out seriously.

There are also tons of alerts and notifications that are also available on the Microsoft Band, which include text messaging, calls, calendar, email and smart notifications for certain apps. There is also — shockingly — a watch mode where you can actually use it as a watch.

The Microsoft Band unsurprisingly also has Facebook and Twitter integration, allowing you to stay up to date on all your social media without needing to take out your phone. There’s also Cortana integration for Windows Phone 8.1 users, allowing you to take notes and set reminders using the Microsoft Band.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, the Microsoft Band also has weather, finance, and a timer/stopwatch functionality, which is admittedly expected of almost any wearable nowadays. The interesting tie-up that Microsoft did make, however, was with Starbucks to allow you to integrate your Starbucks card into the Microsoft Band, adding their own Seattle touch to this device and possibly pleasing a lot of caffeine addicted users.

The $199 Microsoft Band can already be purchased online via Microsoft Store or in person at any Microsoft Store. Be aware that there are three different sizes and that you should get yourself sized before buying one.

The post Say Hello to The Microsoft Band, a Fitness Band for All appeared first on VR World.

So, it seems like Karma has a way of sorting things out in this world and today’s news about MCX’s CurrentC  program already getting hacked pretty much sorts that out. MCX’s CurrentC is supposed to be the retailers’ own version of Apple Pay, a direct competitor in fact. But recently, MCX retailers that already have pre-installed NFC hardware have disabled it in order to prevent Apple Pay from working in their stores. This is because all of the MCX retailers are still wanting to push for their CurrentC solution rather than Apple Pay.

Within the last 36 hours, we learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of our CurrentC pilot program participants and individuals who had expressed interest in the app. Many of these email addresses are dummy accounts used for testing purposes only. The CurrentC app itself was not affected.

We have notified our merchant partners about this incident and directly communicated with each of the individuals whose email addresses were involved. We take the security of our users’ information extremely seriously. MCX is continuing to investigate this situation and will provide updates as necessary.

What’s amusing about all of this is that it is a replay of what happened with Google Wallet when Google launched it YEARS ago. In fact, talking to tellers about their Apple pay solution at Wholefoods and whether or not it supported Google Wallet, they simply had NO idea it existed or if they supported it. What’s funny is that they seemed shocked that Google Wallet had already existed for years before Apple pay but got virtually no support from retailers and carriers. Sure, there are places where you can regularly pay with Google Wallet, like 7/11, but the reality is that Google Wallet primarily struggled because the carriers didn’t want it to succeed.

The carriers simply didn’t want Google Wallet to succeed because they saw it as a challenger to their own potential NFC payment solutions, especially Verizon. Verizon actually disabled Google Wallet on their version of the Galaxy Nexus and as a result, Google Wallet didn’t work on Verizon’s network for a long time. Why did Verizon do that? Because they had their own Google Wallet competitor, formerly known as ISIS, now known as Softcard. So, in reality, Apple is running into the same opposition that Google did, except they are more loved by consumers and when their ideas are shot down or blocked by competitors it becomes a big deal and consumers get upset and start to organize boycotts.

Either way, the backstory is important to understand why CurrentC, Apple Pay and Google Wallet are at odds with each other, but it doesn’t change the fact that Google Wallet and Apple Pay are clearly more secure solutions than MCX’s own CurrentC which appears to be insecure well before its launch. Nobody is going to want to use a technology like CurrentC if they can’t protect consumers, ESPECIALLY when CurrentC does not connect to a credit card but rather directly to a debit card meaning that if anyone were to ever hack your CurrentC account they would have immediate access to your own money and could clear out your bank account. This is one of the biggest complaints about CurrentC right now, and a lot of people are right to be uneasy about it.

If you want to learn more about CurrentC, we recommend you check out their FAQ where they answer a lot of questions, some poorly albeit.

Some good examples of their confusing FAQs are the fact that they mention that they support credit cards, but then they say that they will support credit cards in the future. They have no problems supporting debit cards and checking accounts though.

• Provide consumers with multiple ways to pay at their favorite merchants, including merchant gift cards, credit cards and debit accounts and personal checking accounts. MCX has plans to add additional forms of payment, including credit cards.

Then they talk about merchant exclusivity…

Does MCX Require its Merchants to Only Offer CurrentCTM?

MCX merchants make their own decisions about what solutions they want to bring to their customers; the choice is theirs. When merchants choose to work with MCX, they choose to do so exclusively and we’re proud of the long list of merchants who have partnered with us. Importantly, if a merchant decides to stop working with MCX, there are no fines.

They say that merchants can make their own decisions about what solutions they want to bring to consumers, but then they say that merchants that choose to work with MCX choose to do so exclusively. Meaning, they want you to believe that merchants can pick between solutions, but what they really mean is that you can pick to use MCX or not, and if you do, you can’t really use anything else because that’s how it works. CurrentC is really an awful solution for consumers and is purely designed for the retailers to maximize their profitability and control. MCX is a retailer platform while Apple Pay and Google Wallet are consumer platforms.

The post CurrentC, Apple Pay Competitor, Already Hacked appeared first on VR World.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)  has launched its latest mobile effort, Inbox, which promises to turn email into a better productivity tool. Being on a limited invitation-only scheme, Google is set to duplicate its earlier marketing scheme when Gmail originally launched, creating much demand for a supposedly scarce product. With some of Inbox’s features already present in certain mobile apps like Dropbox’s Mailbox, however, will Inbox live up to the hype and change email communication for the better?

When Google launched its Gmail service to the public in 2004, the company promised to reinvent how Internet users emailed. Instead of the usual one-message view that email users have grown accustomed to, Gmail defaulted to a threaded/conversation view. This resulted in a learning curve for some, although with its invitation-only beta scheme, artificial demand had been created, and users sought Gmail as an object of geek pride and accomplishment.

Gmail has since grown to be the top web mail provider, and Google has also extended its use as an enterprise communications and collaboration tool through Google Apps. Going beyond the refresh in email interfaces, Gmail was actually a work-in-progress for several years, retaining the “beta” badge that meant its owner was still actively doing development. Features that started out as opt-in Google Labs options were later on added as basic functionalities. These included integrated instant messaging, text messaging, scheduling and the like. Gmail has now grown to become a full-fledged productivity platform, incorporating Calendar, Contacts, and even spinning out some features into refreshed mobile services like Google Voice and Hangouts.

Email – refreshed

With Inbox, Google aims to improve on the mobile experience. The refresh came about with the idea that with the rise of social media and connected-everything, email and mobile users are bombarded with a lot of messages and may have difficulty filtering out the good ones from the useless ones. “With this evolution comes new challenges: we get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks—especially when we’re working on our phones,” writes Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President for Android, Chrome and Apps. “For many of us, dealing with email has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do—rather than helping us get those things done.”

“We decided, ‘What if we cleared our minds, started fresh, and built something new to help people get back to what mattered to them?’” said Gmail product director Alex Gawley, in an interview with the New York Times. “What if we did more of the work for them?”

The result is a two-year development period for what is intended as a long-term replacement for Gmail. The developers have built Inbox’s interface to resemble a social network news feed, in which relevant content from messages like pictures, quotes and other dynamic information. Google Inbox also features cards reminiscent of Google Now, which display flight information, reminders, package tracking, photos, and the like.

Inbox works on mobile devices (Android and iOS included), as well as Chrome for desktop use. To reflect the latest UI focus of Google in the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop, Inbox subscribes to Material Design, which means aggressive navigation bar colors, smooth animations and crisp copy. What makes Inbox stand out, however, is that it is essentially a Google Now version of one’s email inbox, complete with context-based recommendations and card metaphors.

It’s still Gmail

One might ask whether this is not just a duplication of efforts that third-party app developers like Mailbox (acquired by Dropbox) have done over the years. After all, Mailbox already treats emails as “tasks” and actionable items that users can snooze, reschedule and mark as “done”. The main difference, however, is that Inbox is an effort done in-house, so it has direct access to users’ Gmail data, instead of having to rely on IMAP, with all its synchronization and speed issues.

This means that Inbox is essentially a client meant to replace Gmail, incorporating features from other Google applications. However, users can still use the original Gmail interface if so needed. Still, Inbox goes beyond simply acting as an email client. Using Gmail’s data mining capabilities and meta web content, it will pull relevant information based on email content. For example, emails regarding your flight reservation will come complete with a card with flight information and updates. The same goes for emails with hotel bookings and other reservations.

Inbox also adds to the categorization feature that Gmail uses to group priority email, social media updates, forum alerts and other updates. With the “bundles” feature, Inbox can automatically organize content like receipts, depending on how the user trains it.

And when the situation calls for a user to simply delay action on a message, there’s the “snooze” function, which will alert the user for action later on — useful while on-the-go.

How to get it

Google wants Inbox to be a mobile-first experience, so users will need to download the Android or iOS apps in order to activate their Gmail account for Inbox use. However, the service is currently by-invite only. Google will be sending out invitations to users, and requests can be sent via inbox@google.com. Users who have Inbox can then invite friends to activate their own — exactly how Gmail started out.

With the promise of a fresh new interface and with a marketing plan with viral focus, it’s 2004 all over again.

The post Google's Inbox Promises to Reinvent Email With Dynamic, Actionable Content appeared first on VR World.

A security researcher has discovered that Yahoo has become a victim of the newly discovered Shellshock vulnerability (also known as bash bug) via Romanian hackers gaining access to Yahoo’s systems. There is already confirmation of the fact that Yahoo has been hacked via an email from Yahoo’s security team. This was originally submitted to Yahoo, but isn’t eligible for their bug bounty program, which for some reason doesn’t reward people for finding chinks in Yahoo’s armor for them before hackers do. This appears to be a significant flaw in Yahoo’s security policies and must be addressed by Marissa Mayer herself.

He states:
Disclosure and disclaimer: This document is being released due to several high profile companies being infiltrated using the recent Shellshock vulnerability, and what I have deemed as an improper response, or lack thereof, to resolving the issue from certain key companies contacted, as well as the FBI. Amongst the affected companies are Yahoo! and Lycos, major players and names in the technology world. This breach affects ALL of us in one way or another, and it’s crucial that this problem be resolved with haste. The FBI took the information down and went on their way. Yahoo! has not responded at all. I’ve attempted to email them, call them, and resorted to contacting Marissa Mayer directly via both email and Twitter, neither to which I have received a response as of yet. The ignoring of this issue is grossly negligent and even almost criminal. As such, I felt that for the safety of anyone using these services, it would be best to publicly disclose as much information as needed to get them moving and working towards resolving the issue before things get worse. All research and testing discussed in this paper was performed by Jonathan D. Hall of Future South Technologies.

Yahoo has been struggling to gain back trust from users after their email data breaches and the overall meltdown of the company as an internet destination for most users. Under Marissa Mayer’s rule, the company has tried to become more of a content provider rather than a search or news destination. Their most popular applications like Flickr have struggled to really retain their audiences and regain the losses to other services like 500px due to simply being too unwilling to listen to the community and simply give them what they want. Flickr was once the default destination for professional and amateur photographers and since the service’s decline tons of viable competitors have cropped up to give people what they want.

The problem here for Yahoo is that they simply are not taking security risks seriously and continually find themselves the targets of hackers. Why? Because they appear not to take security as seriously as they say they do. And Yahoo still has a fairly large user base, especially Yahoo mail, which means that they become a big juicy target for hackers that know that Yahoo is slow to adapt and secure. The security game is an ever evolving one and if your security team is not constantly working to address new threats and actively working to prevent them, then you are going to end up like Yahoo, a sitting duck and popular target.

Yahoo has said to Bloomberg that three of their servers were compromised but that no data was taken, which may still need to be evaluated if only three servers were accessed.

The post Yahoo Hacked via Shellshock Vulnerability appeared first on VR World.

Social media is increasingly supplanting more traditional avenues of marketing and advertising, as evident with targeted campaigns run on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Businesses are likewise increasingly adopting a mobile-first approach to content, marketing and scale. VR World sat down with Hanna Andrzejewska, Marketing Manager at email marketing firm GetResponse, which is gearing up for expansion into the ASEAN region, kicking off the GetResponse Asia Tour in Singapore on September 23rd, with two other cities in the region to follow.

Self-service marketing and advertising are not exactly new, with both enterprises and small businesses starting to eschew the old-world approach to running campaigns via PR and advertising firms at the turn of the century. When Google AdSense first popularized contextual advertising, for example, companies could run campaigns for as cheap as a few dozen dollars, compared to the millions one would have to spend for a TV spot or sponsorship.

Today, social media allows for targeted campaigns, and messages are being pushed based on interest, connections and context. With the ubiquity of mobile devices, businesses can even reach consumers based on proximity, thereby highlighting the power of the incidental sale, impulse buy and on-site promotions. In terms of marketing, it pays to be responsive and even adaptive in reaching out to one’s audience.

Design that adapts to users’ needs

“With the increase in use of mobile devices to access the web for research, entertainment and commerce, responsive design ensures that the user experience across thousands of varied devices is predictable, intuitive and native as possible to the user’s expectations and needs,” Andrzejewska tells VR World. “Adaptive design particularly has a few advantages over general responsive design for the end user’s experience. It allows businesses to accomplish differentiated experiences for users based on the specific intent of the mobile user, therefore, focusing more on the user’s behavior and specific needs rather than delivering a standard fluid layout designed solely to ‘fit’ in the user’s screen.”

“Adaptive design takes into account usage patterns and user behavior to deliver content specially design to convert and fill the need of the user and device,” Andrzejewska adds. “Whereas responsive design will tend to always present similar content and experiences across all devices ignoring the fact that intent and needs are inherently different based on the user’s medium. Adaptive design clearly has the advantage here for businesses will the goal of high conversion via intuitive user experience.”

An increasingly mobile audience

“Marketing has always been about being active where viewers spend most of their time, and this attention is diminishing in traditional media, and is moving towards new media,” Andrzejewska says. In this regard, she stressed the need to refocus marketing efforts in addressing an increasingly mobile audience. “Mobile web adoption is growing eight times faster than web adoption did in the 1990s and early 2000s, which means it’s becoming a more integral part of our daily lives.”

Andrzejewska advises that the mobile-first approach that many startups take today should not be taken lightly. Citing a study by Smart Insights that finds users spending 89% of their time on mobile apps vis-a-vis 11% on mobile web pages, she says businesses should have a presence where customers are. “Mobile-first means that businesses are meeting their customers and prospects via a medium with which they’re most intimate. Failure to do this ignores the user’s expectation and demand for enjoyable experiences tailored for them, and in return the customer ignores the brand. Which translates into less opportunities for sales and growth.”

Opportunities for growth

With the diversity of potential audiences, however, a cookie-cutter approach may not exactly be appropriate. Andrzejewska cites the case of Android rising fast in emerging economies, and Google actually addressing the demand for inexpensive but decently-powered devices meant for these markets. “One powerful example of the nature of business in many parts of the Asia Pacific market is the recent entrance of Google’s Android One in India,” she says.

“With only 10% of India’s 1.2 billion population owning a smartphone, Google has realized that India and other Asian countries are less likely to spend $600+ dollars to purchase phones due to less spending power,” adds Andrzejewska. “In response, they have reengineered the Android operating system to take greater advantage of lower-end hardware, thus creating quality smartphone products that could potentially sell for less than $100 per unit. This strategy will tap into a market that other premium companies like Apple, whose growth and market share is plateauing, cannot enter due to a high price point and lack of understanding of the market.”

Here’s where the ASEAN market comes in. GetResponse’s founders consider the region to be a potentially high-growth market. While the Delaware-headquartered company has been availably in global markets, including Asia, its regional offices are located in Canada and Europe. The company has “recently noticed increased demand in the localized version of the platform” from clients in Asia, particularly in the user interface, mobile application and communication templates.

Building up in Asia

“We decided to officially launch and emphasize our presence in the ASEAN markets because growing customer demand and comparatively few native email marketing alternatives, for one,” says Andrzejewska. In addition, the company wants to capitalize on the “fast-growing Asian technology markets, especially with a focus on online marketing.”

She notes that the rise of technology startups in the region has “generated a huge demand for complex, complete solutions that meet expectations of marketers,” and that a platform like GetResponse will “help enable regional businesses to tap into global solutions in reaching out to their audience both locally and globally.”

For Andrzejewska, the plan is for the company’s Asian operation to “go beyond serving our current customers.” In this regard, the company plans to expand marketing activities, “including event marketing, affiliate relations, and dedicated partnership programs for re-sellers.” The plan is to eventually open a general office in the region as part of its strategic roadmap.

The post GetResponse Talks Adaptive Design, Mobile-First Approach, and Expansion to Asia appeared first on VR World.

5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were recently leaked through several Russian cybercrime web forums earlier this week. Google had already confirmed the issue yesterday, though it claims that no compromisation of its data systems was done that led to leakage of these user accounts.

The leaked Gmail accounts were first published on a Bitcoin forum, and were submitted in the form of a standard listed text. The forum user who posted the account credentials claims that most of the data in the text are still usable. However, the administrators of the forum have already deleted the passwords, and only left the usernames for verification. Most of the account access data on the list are written in English, Spanish and Russian.

Though a substantial number of the listed usernames are legit, Google says there is no reason to panic. Reports highly suggest that the source of that data did not come from Google at all, but rather accumulated from hundreds of other websites and online sources (which are unrelated to Google’s own services) that might have used the same username and password.

Google’s own security blog even claims that only less than 2% of the username and password combinations on the leaked list actually worked. Furthermore, the time span of the accumulated passwords stretches as far as three to five years ago, which may mean that even if your account is on the list, the password may already be completely different to the one you have now.

Nevertheless, Google still advises Gmail users to at least check their accounts for possible security holes, and stay vigilant against phishing, malware and spam websites. Taking the necessary steps to prevent accounts from being accessed illegally goes a long way. Google’s 2-Step Authentication is also a plus, and can prevent unauthorized access even if your username and password becomes exposed.

This post originally appeared on Bright Side of News*, VR World’s sister site.

The post 5 million Gmail Passwords Leaked, Google Says Don’t Panic appeared first on VR World.

5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were recently leaked through several Russian cybercrime web forums earlier this week. Google had already confirmed the issue yesterday, though it claims that no compromisation of its data systems was done that led to leakage of these user accounts.

The leaked Gmail accounts were first published on a Bitcoin forum, and were submitted in the form of a standard listed text. The forum user who posted the account credentials claims that most of the data in the text are still usable. However, the administrators of the forum have already deleted the passwords, and only left the usernames for verification. Most of the account access data on the list are written in English, Spanish and Russian.

Though a substantial number of the listed usernames are legit, Google says there is no reason to panic. Reports highly suggest that the source of that data did not come from Google at all, but rather accumulated from hundreds of other websites and online sources (which are unrelated to Google’s own services) that might have used the same username and password.

Google’s own security blog even claims that only less than 2% of the username and password combinations on the leaked list actually worked. Furthermore, the time span of the accumulated passwords stretches as far as three to five years ago, which may mean that even if your account is on the list, the password may already be completely different to the one you have now.

Nevertheless, Google still advises Gmail users to at least check their accounts for possible security holes, and stay vigilant against phishing, malware and spam websites. Taking the necessary steps to prevent accounts from being accessed illegally goes a long way. Google’s 2-Step Authentication is also a plus, and can prevent unauthorized access even if your username and password becomes exposed.

The post Don't Panic: 5 Million Gmail Passwords Leaked appeared first on VR World.

Google, the company behind the popular email app Gmail has released a new feature as part of the popular email program that allows images taken from your smartphone to be easily available in your email. This is Google’s way of easily resolving the problem that some users might have with trying to share their images from their smartphones with friends and family over email. Do keep in mind that this feature is designed to be used in Gmail’s web app and is designed to keep people’s phones in their pockets so that they don’t have to connect their phone to their computer to share images over email.

Sure, you could always share the images directly from your smartphone, but if you’re going to write a lengthy email, chances are you’ll do it from your laptop or desktop rather than your smartphone.

The main feature that enables this functionality in Gmail is the Auto Backup feature of Android/Google+ that allows your photos to be auto backed up to Google+ into a private album for backup or sharing purposes. Some people are weary of such an Auto Backup feature because of what kinds of images could be auto backed up into their Google+ accounts, but the truth is that these photos are backed up into a private album that can only be accessed when logged into the user’s account. Sure, for some this feature may not be worth the potential privacy sacrifices that it makes, but if your phone gets broken, lost or stolen, you know that your images are not all lost.

The post Gmail Adds Seamless Photo Attachments from Smartphones appeared first on VR World.