Uber Negotiates With Authorities To Launch In Birmingham

After negotiating with the authorities, Uber introduces its service in Birmingham.

Uber was introduced in the Birmingham metro area on Tuesday afternoon after it negotiated with officials of the city for more than a year. Users could now hire a cab in the region on New Year Eve and Birmingham Bowl, stated Uber GM in Alabama.

Birmingham city spokesperson told that 41 driving partners were able to receive Uber licenses from the authorities of the city. "Residents of Birmingham have been eager to get expanded access to safe, reliable transportation options and the economic opportunities that Uber brings to the community," Maguire elaborated in a release. "We are thrilled to finally be able to start operating here, and I want to personally thank city officials for all their hard work and support to make this happen." 

On Monday, Birmingham city granted business license to Uber. As negotiated, the city has set an individual authorizing requirement, which permitted that everyone who is interested in becoming the transporter’s driving partner should also file an application for a license with Birmingham. The cost of which is $30 yearly, and the yearly fee for drivers who are providing their services to existing cab companies, would be cut down from $60 to $30.

In a meeting on Wednesday morning, the City Council of Birmingham ratified amendments made to the business license code of city permitting transportation networking corporations, such as Uber technologies, to operate.

"My colleagues and I have worked tirelessly to make this a reality, as we look to provide enhanced transportation options for both residents and visitors alike," Council President Johnathan Austin stated last week.

Many weeks ago, the City Council passed an ordinance that provided an opportunity to transportation network corporations to enter in Birmingham. The move allows for a 180-day period of ride hailing, and then, the operations and ordinance would be reevaluated.

Deliberations regarding the ridesharing’s viability in the city began about 18 months ago but have been hit by many obstacles since. In July last year, deliberations regarding ride hailing in the city delayed despite of the council’s endorsement of revisions to the transportation code to include mobile applications.

During a committee meeting on August 26, 2015, Uber’s officials met with the members of the city council and described the company’s business model, including the means employed to choose and screen drivers. The company was ambitious to see its service in the city before Christmas but some issues delayed the launch. 

Netflix Helps Comcast Customers To Deal With Data Caps

Netflix's new encoding process will reduce the data needed to stream shows.

Cable internet service clients with data limits and subscription of Netflix service would soon be getting some relief. The streaming company is taking steps to re-encode its whole library to carry out the optimization of the bitrate at which it is able to send video stream to users’ homes based on per title.

In other words, the streaming service would not use as much of a user’s valuable Comcast data. The measure also indicates that clients with limited speed of Internet – for instance, those in markets of different countries – would be able to enjoy the internet media service in a better manner compared with rest of the streaming services. They would witness better quality of pictures and less buffering.

The per-title encoding approach is able to offer other means for the online streaming media company to ensure that it differs from the growing rivalry. For an internet subscriber without a pay-TV subscription, video streaming service is the main type of their entertainment in most cases.

Chief executive of Comcast Corporation, Brian Roberts, said only 5% of its clients are bothered by data limits. Whereas about one-fifth of its internet subscribers are not availing its video facility, they might be availing a video facility from a satellite or telecom rival. Estimating the Internet subscribers’ percentage without any kind of pay-TV subscription at about 5% is a logical assumption, which is more in line with national figures for broadband-only houses.

According to Fool, the proportion of clients troubled by data limits is proportional to the percentage of clients who depend on Netflix and the rest of streaming facilities for video entertainment. This indicates that cord-cutters are more adversely challenged by data limits compared to pay-TV subscribers.

The company on the other hand is blamed for utilizing up all of the data allocated by a client. This could cause subscribers to view less on the streaming facility and devalue it, reducing the ability of Netflix to raise rates and retain subscribers.

However, this is not the first time the internet media giant has felt the need to fight against Comcast as far as the amount of data sent to its network is concerned. Despite of its buying up transit on all the offered routes into Comcast network that did not require any kind of fee two years ago, it continued to keep all lanes congested for traffic of Netflix and restrain it from moving ahead.  

Apple Intends To Introduce Apple Pay In Overseas Markets

Apple has planned to launch Apple Pay for its customers outside United States.

Apple’s digital wallet and mobile payment service ‘Apple Pay’ is targeting the overseas markets next year. After a slow inception in the United States, since its entrance that took place more than 12 months ago, the financial service has ramped up in market places where people prefer so-called contactless payments.

The facility, which allows customers to make payments in an application or by using  their iPhones on store terminals, would be launched in the coming year in Spain,  People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Apple counts on the recognition of its brand as it makes entrance into marketplaces that are further along when compared with the U.S. in all things mobile payments. Still, it would not be easy. The smartphone maker would battle with Internet corporations and local banking institutions that are already offering the facility – not to name smartphone market leader, Samsung Electronics.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for Apple because their brand has a significant cache,” said Aite Group’s senior analyst, Thad Peterson. Apple’s task will be “to see if there’s going to be an adoption curve significant enough to justify the investment.”

Apple Pay, which could be only availed through the company’s devices, is a method for it to make devices more attractive for clients and encourage customer loyalty. After CEO Tim Cook named this year the “year of Apple Pay” in January, the facility has been sluggish to perform well locally, because of an absence of proper market and availability of limited number of store terminals that are equipped with the capacity to accept it.

Adoption is quicker in the United Kingdom, where the service was launched over the summer. This is partly due to contracts with vendors such as sandwich chain Pret A Manger and Twickenham Stadium, which is known for letting its customers employ Apple Pay for unlimited amounts of transactions.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech has disclosed that Apple iOS captures a strong share of the market, with 39.5% of the sales of smartphones in the United Kingdom in the three months ending October. The company has said in China that its service would be launched out by the earliest in 2016.

McKinsey & Co. has revealed that more than 235 million people above age 15 in the most populated country do not have bank accounts, making payments through mobile devices an essential means to receive and send money.

In December 2015, Apple collaborated with Chinese bankcard organization, Union Pay, which would make Apple’s entrance in the market “a lot easier,” as told by researcher IDC’s analyst, James Wester. 

Woolworths Sells Products On Alibaba Tmall Global

Woolworths sets out wares on Alibaba-owned Tmall website to meet demand from Chinese population.

Alibaba has taken a measure to increase its market share. Woolworths would expand its reach into the growing middle class of China and its insatiable demand for Australian groceries and food items, including baby formula, after establishing an online shop on the Hangzhou based company’s Tmall, which is known as the largest business-to-business platform of the most populated country.

The Chinese enterprise eCargo Holdings, which got itself listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2014 following a $40 million IPO, announced yesterday that the Bella Vista grocery chain had engaged it to offer facilities to support the operations of the retailer in the Chinese consumer market.

The agreement has boosted the stock price of eCargo, boosting it by more than 300% to 41c before it closed at 23.5c, or 223.8% at 34 cents. Their price in the initial public offering was 40 cents each. The directors of the ecommerce solution provider include former director of Myer Rupert Myer, who took a stake in the recently floated enterprise.

eCargo would manage and establish the store of Woolworths on Tmall, the biggest business-to-consumer online market in the second largest economy and coordinate the Australian supermarket ‘s packing, distribution needs and inventory, advise on brand strategy plan and perform a variety of social and digital marketing activities for the seller.

It represents the maiden push of eCargo into the groceries and food sector – the most rapidly expanding sector in the digital trading industry. The developed Tmall Global webpage lets international corporations to sell through the internet without the need to have a physical organization in China, and grants access to these companies to more than 260 million listed buyers.

An online shopping boom in China has been driven by webpages like Alibaba’s Tmall Global and eBay-like Taobao that enables shoppers to purchase goods from abroad.

Woolworths would use the Tmall webpage to sell a small range of baby formula, with extensive demand for the product, considered secure and of high quality, contributing to shortages in Australian shops as organizations and people grab tins to deliver in China.

A spokesperson of Woolworths stated, “We found a number of Woolworths products are being sold through other retailers on Tmall. As a consequence, Woolworths has established a store on the site to sell a small, selected range directly to Chinese consumers. While we have no significant plans for Tmall at this stage, we will no doubt benefit from the experience it brings.”

Chief executive of eCargo, Christopher Lau, said the partnership with the grocery chain has marked a milestone for the growth of the company into groceries and food sector. The management is content about the deal and plans to move ahead in the sector.

IBM Facilitates Financial Sector To Develop Open Source Blockchain

IBM and financial service providers would be jointly developing an open source Blockchain to change the financial world for good.

The corporate computation giant, IBM, has collaborated with financial organizations, such as Wells Fargo, London Stock Exchange, JP Morgan, and some technology companies, such as Intel and Cisco, to develop an open source Blockchain. The venture is named ‘Open Ledger Venture’ and its management would be done by the same non-profit foundation that is known for Linux Operating system, the Linux Foundation.

While speaking to Fortune regarding the Open Ledger Venture, an official of IBM commented, “I think bitcoin is an interesting application for blockchain, but there are thousands of applications and wider use cases beyond that. I don’t have a strong opinion on cryptocurrencies, but I have a strong opinion on the blockchain as a solution for contracts and supply chains and the Internet of Things.

Since the Open Ledger would be open-source, everyone could use it to make any kind of software utilizing this development library. It is still unclear that the Open Ledger would be focusing on work other than the utilization of Blockchain for non-financial matters, but the involvement of some very well-known financial organizations shows that the venture would emphasize on business matters.

Reports of Wired indicated, “this open source project aims to build blockchain-like technology that can bring a new level of automation and transparency to a wide range of services in the business world, including stock exchanges and other financial markets.”

The block chain is basically an international database that is equipped with the capacity to work autonomously outside a central information storing facility. Cyptocurrencies, such as Bitcon, are known for using this technology for the tracking of a currency, but Blockchain could be employed to keep a track of any other asset, including bonds and stock as well. The Open Ledger venture’s software is capable of changing the means employed by today’s financial sector to work.

The New York based organization is collaborating with the financial service providers at a time when it is collaborating with Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank to establish a new digital studio. ADIB states the studio would be the first of its kind in the Middle Eastern region and it would be employed to work on different digital innovation projects across the banking institution, including mobile banking iOS applications built on IBM MobileFirst and Bluemix cloud platform.

These developments are taking place at a time when IBM and AT&T have announced an extension of their long-term strategic relations to bring a full suite of software, hosting and networking facilities to enterprises. 

Apple, Inc. Enters 'Bear Territory' - Loses $160 billion

The tech giant loses $160 billion and has now officially entered the Bear territory.

The Silicon Valley Giant, Apple Inc. lost more than $160 billion since July, 2015 due to the weakening demand for smartphones. The latest drop that the tech giant witnessed was of 2.7% on Friday and was being traded at a share price of $106.03 which, according to USA Today, indicates that the stock of the tech corporation is entering the bear territory.

On Friday, the corporation approximately lost $160 billion which indicated a drop of 21% from its all-time recent high of $134.54. The amount that the tech corporation lost is more than the market value of over 477 companies listed on the S&P 500. Furthermore, USA Today stated that the market value that the multinational technology corporation lost is equivalent to the total market value of companies such as Nike, Inc. PepsiCo and IBM.

Apple stock is widely popular amongst individual investors. Being the most important stock in terms of market value, it is a huge deal that the company has lost so much. Despite of the fact that it has lost billions, it is still considered worth more than many other United States companies. The sole reason for this decline resides in the fact that the demand for smartphones has declined drastically in the last few months. Analysts at this point are sure that the demand is expect decline furthermore in the fourth as well as the first quarter of the following fiscal year.

Even though the tech corporation works on many other gadgets, the most revenue and profit that the company earns came from its smartphone division. According to S&P Capital IQ, many analysts are not estimating the adjusted earnings of the company to come down to $3.24 per share in the 4^th quarter. They have also cut price targets and earnings estimates and the profit has also been cut by 2.4% in comparison to a month earlier.

63% of the corporation’s revenue was generated from the iPhones in the previous quarter which indicated an increase of 7% from its earnings a year ago. According to Katy Hudson, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, the iPhone sales are likely to fall by 6% this year, making the sales of the smartphone go down to 218 million devices from initial sales of 231 million in the current year.

It’s evident that the tech giant is running out of ways to increase the sales of its new iPhone. The corporation has already tried to do so by releasing phones with even bigger screens, better leasing programs and also signing a deal with China’s largest carrier – just so it could attract more customers towards iPhones every year.

Google Establishes New Data Center In Clarksville To Fulfill Increasing Demand

Google invests more than $500 million to develop a data center in Clarksville.

The search engine developer, Google, aims to establish a datacenter at the former TVA megasite, which was earlier home to polysilicon producer, Hemlock Semiconductor Corporation in Clarksville, stated by persons aware of the development agreement.

The California based technology giant is holding talks to purchase the property for the venture, which will be able to grow its footprint in the greater Nashville region. The company intends to make an investment worth more than $500 million in the datacenter and provide around 70 full-time job opportunities.

Today, the Clarksville-Montgomery County Industrial Development Board and Montgomery County Commission are about to vote regarding the land agreement. With that endorsement, the company will then sign an official procurement contract tomorrow with the industrial development board, which is known for owning the property.

"Part of the positive economic impact is attracting other industries, creating more job potential," Once Goggle sets one up, they will probably never shut it down." stated Austin Peay State University’s economics professor in Clarksville, Jerry D. Plummer.

Google’s datacenter will lower down the levels of bitterness in the region from the closing of its $1.2 billion worth polysilicion facility before its opening took place. County leaders touted that plant, which had to initially hire 500 employees, as a possible economic driving factor similar to the military base in Fort Campbell.

In closing that facility almost a year ago, the Midland-based subsidiary of Down Corning cited an excessive supply of polysilicon, which is known for being the basic material needed for the development of solar panels, and potential tariffs, which threatened its devices delivered to the People’s Republic of China.

Google’s plans for the region have been disclosed at a time when its Google Fiber unit is introducing its television and gigabit-speed web facility to Nashville. The new facility would prove to be the fifteenth datacenter of the enterprise. It will be similar to the one which the company announced in the summer for part of a former TVA coal facility site around Bridgeport, Ala. Construction would probably start in 2015 on that Northeast Alabama venture worth $600m that will probably create 100 job opportunities initially.

Datacenters are known for powering the web and they are located where details are accessed and stored by users of Google. As a larger number of people use the web across the globe and more details are stored in the cloud, Google needs to carry out an expansion of its capacity. 

Tesla Motors Responds To iPhone Hacker Who Claims That Everyone Can Make Driverless Car

Tesla Motors believes that George "geohot" Hotz's driverless car could not prove to be effective.

Tesla Motors is well known for conflicting with publications that have claimed that its technologies are not very efficient. Now, the Californian enterprise has responded to George “geohot” Hotz and Bloomberg Business.

George “geohot” Hotz is the engineering expert who became the first individual to hack Playstation 3 and iPhone. Yesterday, Bloomberg posted an interview that demonstrated George’s latest venture, a driverless vehicle kit that could be retrofitted into current automobiles. During the course of the news article, the inventor challenged Tesla’s own autopilot hardware, which was able to raise the ire of the automotive organization’s CEO Elon Musk.

George criticized Mobileye, the enterprise that is known for supplying the South African born entrepreneur’s enterprise and other vehicle manufacturers with essential gear for driverless vehicles. As far as Hotz was concerned, Tesla’s technology was old-fashioned compared to what he has pioneered in his garage with off-the-shelf parts. He demonstrated some remarkable success, and the included chip demonstrates his Honda Acura driving itself along a highway in San Francisco.

In times to come, George is planning to make his alternative perform better than Tesla’s vehicle along Interstate 405, but there is no word on when would that be done. The company has responded by posting a rebuttal to the news article on its blog, stating that the descriptions of its own driverless system and Mobileye are wrong.

In the necessary legalese, the post states Bloomberg "did not correctly represent Tesla or Mobileye." The corporation also acknowledged that the perspective that it just packs the Mobileye’s technology and installs it to Tesla Model S is not true. Instead, a driverless technology is a product of many components and tons of researches that have resulted in a “groundbreaking experience."

Apart from this, Tesla doubts that a “single person or even a small company" would pioneer an autonomous setup ready for production. Its response continued with the advice that George’s system would effectively perform on a "known stretch of road -- Tesla had such a system two years ago," but that will not be able to deal with all the hardships of driving.

The organization has signed off by indicating that George’s technology will not be secure enough to be installed into an automobile, since succeeding 99% of the time is not excellent if the mistake is done at 70mph.

Of course, there is a larger story going beyond the conflict between two names of the Silicon Valley. This is because Elon Musk has failed to maintain good relations with Bloomberg story’s author Ashley Vance and George Hotz. George was previously holding talks to join the corporation to help in manufacturing its driverless technology and in recent times, Ashlee authored SpaceX CEO’s biography that failed to paint him in pleasant light.

The European Union Considering To Ban Under-16 Age Group To Use Facebook and Other Social Platforms

European Commission might not let 16 years olds utilize Facebook's platform without parental permission

Facebook might receive a bad news from Europe. European Commission might make it prohibited for social platform operators to let any 16 years old use their platform without the permission of their parents. The need has been forwarded on the eve of one of the ultimate deliberations on the Draft Data Protection regulation regarding which voting will take place on December 17.

At its center, the amendment states that any website that is able to process personal information should make sure that parents have given their consent for kids who fall in the under 16 age group  to utilize the platform.  The amendment states: "The processing of personal data of a child below the age of 16 years shall only be lawful if, and to the extent that, such consent is given or authorized by the holder of parental responsibility over the child,”

The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs will discuss the amendment on Thursday. If approved the European Parliament’s members might vote on it before the year end. The legislation would be endorsed by 2017, if not earlier and will apply fairly to all the European states.

The decision concerned with increase the legitimate age at which kids could employ social websites to 16 would doubtlessly frustrate organizations like Facebook and Twitter by eliminating a new users’ source for a time span of 3 years and carry out the creation of legal headaches regarding the means to carry out the policy of such a requirement.

The ICT Coalition for Children, a team that is known for counting, Google, Twitter and Facebook amongst its members, condemned the changes for being done without any discussion and at such a later stage in the procedure 

"Negotiators have rushed this amendment without soliciting any meaningful input from stakeholders; including child safety organizations. Negotiators should also explain the rationale for raising the age to 16; to date no explanation has been given."

The step has also played a role in raising concerns from groups of children. An open letter endorsed by many individuals and well-known charitable organizations like the Family Online Safety Institute and Anti- Bullying Pro, made a claim that the decision to make  social platforms inaccessible would probably prove to be more destructive than beneficial.

“Children aged 13 and above shouldn’t be restricted from accessing critical online support services. Sadly, we know that some parents do not always act in their child’s best interests”

The letter also states that the amendment will doubtlessly prompt kids to lie about their age, meaning that webpages would not be able to easily share age-appropriate information or content with youngsters. The Draft Data Protection law has been discussed for many years now and a large number of new stricter provisions have become a part of the draft rule.

Facebook Feature Lets Users Know In Real-Time When A Friend Is Commenting On Posts

Facebook has launched an update to help users know in real-time when their friend types comments on their posts.

Facebook is known for experimenting with different tools from time to time but does not necessarily tell that those tools would be actually offered. People are often told that the organization is testing some new updates. Some users have noted lately that a new update is introduced, which informs users when one of their friends is commenting on one of their posts.

It does not look like much but it can possibly alter the means used by users to interact with the content posted by people on the platforms. This is not actually a new update since instant messaging applications have sent notification to users when the user on the other end is sending in a message like always, but it is interesting to currently find an analogous feature. One cannot say that whether the feature would be launched for more than 1 billion users or not.

As per reports of Facebook news, it continued despite consideration that whether this tool would increase engagement on posted content or would deter users from really writing comments regarding posts, since the other user could view commenting in real-time. Social media responses to this new feature test has been fascinating to state the least, some have stated that this is actually a creepy update that must not be launched, others hold the belief that posts would improve to a great extent once this feature is live.

Facebook Breaking news reported that the social platform has confirmed the feature testing to ‘The Next Web’ and explained by stating, "News Feed is a place to stay up to date with your friends and family. We've heard from people that they want their experience on Facebook to reflect the real-time conversations they have. So we are testing adding a line above the comment box of a post that indicates when a friend is typing. This is to help people have real-time conversations with friends and family.”

It is too early to answer the question that whether the new beta addition would probably alter their behavior. It is worthy for users that the company has brought an anonymous notification rather than instantly mentioning a friend’s name. This would prove to be a significant turn off for a large number of users as one could hope that everybody would not be glad if a significant number of users – depending upon one’s friend count – could possibly view his or her activity on the platform.