Monthly Archives: October 2017

DAA – a new path to cyber security

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Today the modern world has entered a completely other level of threats, where the security should be catching up as fast as possible. As we got the access of the boundless abilities of cyber world, we have endangered ourselves to the attacks that are coming from the virtual. In fact, today, the physical security is not enough and it is a crucial moment to think thoroughly about cyber security.

The number of newly registered cyberattacks is growing yearly. Moreover, the cyber hackers become very inventive to overcome the security of the user of the device. The breaches become more difficult to identify and to solve. More and more global companies become the victims of unsolicited breaks into the system. Therefore, usually, the breaches occur, because of the ill-considered and irresponsible actions of the user.

In result, this issue has become very important even to the ordinary person, due to transmission of everyday processes (like paying in store, opening a car, checking the mail) to internet.

“As we see in the news every day, cybersecurity breaches continue to grow in size and frequency, and the world is in desperate need of the next generation of online identity authentication,” said Wendell Brown, CEO and chairman of Averon for eSecurityPlanet.

In order to secure the everyday life of the human, the San Francisco based startup Averon has entered a new realm of security, where the protection is built on already existing data, stored in the smartphone.

The Averon security is based upon the DAA concept, which is the Direct Autonomous Authentication – a new mobile identity verification standard. The startup provides its customers with a turnkey API, which does not need the installation and user’s involvement, as it is automatic and functions on the background. Moreover, it allows a seamless and frictionless functioning, which is the most secure way to the instant authentication of the user.

Why it is so unique?

The Direct Autonomous Authentication, used at Averon services, is created by the mobile network signal and SIM/eSIM chips, which are an integral part of every mobile phone functioning.  “Averon offers a uniquely superior solution that authenticates users while relying on zero personally identifiable data”

Averon service receives a real-time signaling from carrier data pockets (already stored at the device by network provider) to authenticate users. In fact, then, there is created a one-time cryptokey to enter any service a user wants.

The Averon, provides the ability to secure not only the mobile device, but also other functions, the mobile phone is somehow connected to – online banking, smart vehicles, e-commerce, smart locks and IoT (a secure access to digital locks on any devices), online accounts, sensitive data.

The interesting fact is that, Averon’s DAA goes beyond the 2-factor verification, where the user needs to enter a password or a received from SMS one-time code, but, in fact, the DAA constantly secures the device and authenticates the user, and works on beyond the device – at the carrier level.

In result, the Averon has created a fully automated security platform, where exists zero effort from the user, which might decrease the possibility of being hack, as it uses non-personal data (stored at the carrier data pockets) to identify the user.

From today Google brings you around the galaxy! The new features of Google Maps.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

You’ve probably used Google Maps to preview vacation destinations on this planet, but the newest locales added take you on an out-of-this-world escape.

Maybe you’d rather visit frozen Enceladus than stay at a ski resort. The methane waters beneath Titan’s thick clouds are certainly a change from your typical beach weekend. If you prefer to venture into the eldritch darkness, go on a virtual expedition to Pluto’s Chtulhu region, a shadow land whose icy wastes and menacing craters make it appropriately intriguing.

For those looking for something a little less exotic, there’s always the moon.

A few years ago, Google gave people the ability to freely explore objects in space — but that experience was mostly locked up in “Google Earth”, the company’s 3D-mapping software.

Just in the last few days, however, the company announced that users will be able to benefit from a new Google Maps feature, called “planets”, and this will refines their knowledge of the solar system.

Infact, Google announced  it partnered with NASA and the European Space Agency to be able to generate the new detailed maps of Venus, Pluto, and many of Saturn’s moons. To be exact There are now 17 different planetary maps to look through.

It’s finally possible  to across the galaxy in a few seconds and directly from your pc to discover planets, moons, dwarf planets and on top of that  virtually visit the international space station from which you can admire the space just as as a real astronaut could see it.

Just to give an idea and to increase readers’ curiosity, some of the planetary bodies that you could “visit” are: ·

  • Earth’s moon                         

Up to this point is the most visited, since it is the one that has the highest number of high quality images.

If you know where to look you can even track down moon landing sites, like this one of Apollo 15.

  • Mars                                          

Peppered with volcanoes, deep canyons, and robotic probes, the red planet is easily the most fun to explore in Google Maps.

The canyons are the deepest in the solar system. And if Elon Musk and SpaceX have their way, we may someday be able to explore them for real.

  • Enceladus                                 

This ice ball that orbits Saturn looks unassuming, but it is one of the most exciting destinations in the solar system right now.

NASA has repeatedly photographed and flown through water jets shooting out of these “tiger stripe” features on Enceladus’ south pole.

That warm, salty water indicates the moon has an ocean that might be habitable to alien life. 

  • Pluto                                              

Until July 2015, no one knew what Pluto actually looked like. But the New Horizons mission changed all of that with a high-speed flyby — and discovered the distant, icy world even has an ocean hiding below its surface.

Visuals of the terrain are available along with labeled craters, mountains or plains. Pluto is the one with the smallest amount of information, with about a third of yhe surface missing of any identifier or display.

In this way, while you obsess over how unearthly things like this actually exist, you might also geek out about how many distant moons and planets take their names from mythical entities. Just click on any name to see its origin as you explore space from your laptop. The Rusalka region of Titan is named for the undead water nymphs of Slavic folklore that was have believed to drown people in despair who got too close to a river or lake. Mimas is a crater-covered storybook of names from Arthurian legend, and Europa’s Annwn region is named for the Otherworld in Welsh mythology. No one can guarantee eternal youth if you stare at Annwn long enough, but it definitely is otherworldly.

Though the project hasn’t yet evolved into something like Google Earth, which lets you see any location in the world in exact detail (and is admittedly sort of creepy), the project is evolving very quickly thanks to the hard work of the google staff. To be precise, all this was possible thanks to half a million images taken by spacecrafts including the Cassini probe, as well as those provided by astronomical artist Björn Jónsson, along with photographs from NASA and the European Space Agency and this this is why the announcement by the company came on the occasion of the twenty-year of Cassini mission to Saturn.If we want to find the weak point of the project, which is still in the process of being perfected, we can say that the mechanism is not very clear and simple to use, infact There’s no search box within “Planets,” so it’s difficult to, say, find the Apollo mission landing site on Earth’s moon. The maps also restrict the degree to which you can both rotate and zoom in on a world, especially at the poles.Furthermore this new feature can be difficult to find if you do not have a direct connection. You have to go to Google Maps and use the zoom (clicking the less sign) until you can see the entire Earth planet in space. Switch to “satellite view” in the left corner. A list of planets and moons that you can explore at this point should automatically appear on the left side of the screen.The feeling is that the company has placed a lot of ambition in this project and will continue to perfect it over time, serving users a sensational instrument and, until a few months ago, unimaginable.

References:

The revolution in recognition: a new approach in our choises

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Cameras will be the big battlefield of the coming years in the mobile market. It is not only to shoot better selfies or capture breathtaking views but it will enters in many different field: building, furniture, web and urban browsing, exploration. This is an extremely large market, Apple and Google are the most important players and no one intend to lose points. The main innovation is the ability to unlock the phone using an infrared sensor that recognizes the face of the user.

The iris scanner is integrated into the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and Samsung Galaxy S8, Apple has also came in the scene with the new iPhone X and has introduced this new login system in the iPhone X. Phone’s all-glass front leaves no room for a home button, Apple is giving up Touch ID in favor of a facial recognition system.

Apple says its version of this technology uses more sensors to map your face in 3-D, an infrared light illuminates your face and then a projector projects infrared dots on the screen. The iris scanner will soon be the new biometric sensor to unlock and protect the contents of the phone: only your face is the obstacle to overcome and extremely difficult to replicate. Its Face ID feature should be very secure. There’s a one in a million chance that someone could spoof you. Generally the accuracy of it depends on factors such as the quality of the image of your face at authentication time, light conditions, time between the enrollment image and verification, and visibility of occluding objects like a scarf or sunglasses.  Let’s see how it works:

Everything will go through a smartphone, an item that everyone has in their pockets. This is the reason why the potential of this technology is of great interest to companies and developers. An example is IKEA Place, an application made by the renowned Swedish chain of home and furnishing stores. The décor becomes virtual and real at the same time. Just choose a product (an armchair, bed, bedside table) and using the smartphone camera this is placed anywhere we want. But the applications, as said, can be many. Another example is the exploration of urban environments: pointing the camera to a restaurant, a hotel or a museum will be enough to have immediate opening and closing times, ticket price and possibly user reviews.

Not in a long time, millions of people will soon depend on face recognition to check their e-mail, send a text or make a call, it will be fast and easy to use. Nowadays face recognition is already used around the world to examine, investigate, and monitor. In China is used to identify and publicly shame people for the crime of jaywalking. In Russia, face recognition has been used to identify anti-corruption protesters. In the United States, more than half of all American adults are in a face recognition database. It can be used for criminal investigations. Governments are not the only users of face recognition. In daily life we can have examples of face recognition. Retailers use the technology in their stores to identify suspected shoplifters. Social media applications increasingly integrate face recognition into their user experience.

Risultati immagini per face recognition

All smartphones will probably include sensors for face, iris, and fingerprint recognition which were a rarity shortly time before. A lot of people in the coming months will use a face recognition scan every time they want to check the weather, draft a tweet, or make a rare actual phone call.  But even as we embrace its conveniences, we should remain suspicious of the many ways face recognition is used today. Infact as we choose to explore the conveniences face recognition can offer, we must be vigilant to its risks.

It can change the way we see things around us and make more actions quicker in our daily lives. However has the facial recognition systems been easily fooled by photos or masks? Also if even though Apple and other developers have reassured us about this, there may be risks related to the privacy and security of the collected data, which is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to handle, even because of the lack of common standards. It may be a major privacy concern, and one many users don’t think about it until it’s too late. Philip W. Schiller, vice president of Apple for marketing claimed the system required the user’s attention to properly function, saying, “If your eyes are closed, if it’s not lined up, it’s not going to work.” The iPhone X refuses to unlock as long as the subject’s eyes are closed. Moreover if you are kidnapped by criminals, they won’t be able to guess your password, but they would be able to hold the phone up to your face until you pass a Face ID scan. However we can say that what does not interest in Apple is instead the interest in gathering data and mass targeting infact this feeds most of the web companies.

 

 

Sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/facial-recognition-iphone-x-phone-biometrics-whats-next-2017-9

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/13/facial-recognition-iphone-x-privacy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/09/14/should-worried-iphone-xs-facial-recognition/

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16298156/apple-iphone-x-face-id-security-privacy-police-unlock

Social Media Influencers – Why they matter

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Thanks to the connected world and social media Influencers (SMI); introducing the worldwide and new word-of-mouth type, being today, one of the most effective digital marketing strategy ever created for both small business and larger ones.


Being once unknown to the world, social media influencers are now “icons” in the social media sphere and beyond. Whether they are present on YouTube, blogs, Instagram or other, Social Media Influencers are now everywhere on the internet; creating contains where they communicate and share their personal life, ideas, passion, products experience and many other. Many social media Influencers have gained over time a large and significant number of viewers and followers as well as love towards them from their audience, creating communities that groups members with similar interests. The word “influencer” directly insinuates the power of these individuals towards their viewers which with their advice on products on their channels can result to persuade their audience thanks to their authenticity and built strong truest over the years. Now investing on influencers as a marketing strategy is one of the clever way to market a product and/or brand, from small business to worldwide ones, which on average, the return on $1 dollar invested on it marketing approach is counted at $6.50, resulting to place as well first of the most cost-effective marketing strategy regarding costumer acquisition and which more than half of all 125 marketers answered to believe gaining the best quality kind of customers through their social influencers in comparison to other marketing form. Study found by Twitter and Annalect that 40% of responded claimed to have purchase at least one product thanks to a social media influencer, and which nearly 50% claimed that they believe and rely on product recommendations from influencers before purchasing. No wonder why, among all marketing channel it is the fastest growing market channels online which somewhat 60% of all marketers had for plans to increase their budget on it strategy during 2015/2016 according to Tomoson marketing study. The reason of it digital success is because people truest individuals more than brands themselves and sometimes recruiting a celebrity to represent a brand can be highly costly and out of reach for most businesses, inversely to SMI which result to a great win-win situation for all parties (businesses, potential new customers and social media influencers).
Choosing the right influencer for the right business is as well important. A large and wide audience have both positive and negative aspect where it is good to reach as much people as possible but an analyse of what kind of audience a particular influencer has is crucial. Businesses have to think about the influencer like a real ambassador, where, not only it is important to take in consideration influencer’ popularity level but also analyse if most of it followers match the company’ target consumers. Also, it is important to keep in mind that the influencer chosen, will later on represent the brand, it is therefore important to take into consideration the story of the influencer, how they behave (regularly posts, use hashtags, posts appropriate contains), how they followers respond to their contains etc. Any SMI is not right for a particular business, but, businesses not taking this digital marketing strategy trend seriously should watch out and envisage twice to it decision.

 

 

Sources:

https://blog.tomoson.com/influencer-marketing-study/

http://www.adweek.com/digital/twitter-says-users-now-trust-influencers-nearly-much-their-friends-171367/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/02/how-to-choose-the-right-micro-influencer-for-your-brand/#776bc9667885

https://blog.hootsuite.com/influencer-marketing/#whatis

 

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Hybrid, is the future in the sky?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Hybrid, Electric, these are terms that we are going to hear more and more. For a few years now, companies in charge of transportation are working on this trend with the aim of fighting against pollution and global warming.  More often used in the car industry with brands like Toyota, Tesla, what if those words were also used for planes?
Zunum Aero, a Seattle based start-up, has every reason to think that it is possible. Thanks to  financial support from Boeing, this little company is preparing a Hybrid plane that will be delivered for the first customers in 2022.

It is based on the same technology as some hybrid cars, in other words, there is a small fuel generator that charges  2 batteries that allow the plane to flight up to 700 miles (1130km) at the speed of 340mph (544km/h). The latter is planned to transport up to 12 people and will be able to fly from smaller regional airports that cannot be used by most bigger planes because of noise issues and pollution. Moreover, the company is promising that tickets will be less expensive than the price we know to date.
This model takes all its sense in the US where there are more than 13500 little airports from which this plane could fly and transport people effectively from one point to another without any controls. Zanum Aero doesn’t want to stop here, it is planning a bigger plane in the future that will be able to transport 50 people up to 1000 miles (1600km).
However, other companies are thinking about other means of transportation. The Hyperloop is the perfect example, it consists on a capsule that moves in a tube at the speed of 760mph (1200km/h) between cities. A safe and fast way to travel between cities.

 

Nevertheless, the advantage that Zanum Aero has on others, is the existence of all the infrastructure. Creating the same infrastructure for another mean of transportation would be a cost of trillions of dollars and this is why the future of transportation might be in Hybrid or Electric planes.

 

sources :

Zunum Aero

https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/high-tech/transports/la-start-up-zunum-aero-veut-lancer-des-avions-de-ligne-hybrides-electriques-des-2022_117168

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

Add a member to your family!

Reading Time: 2 minutes

As for the 18th of November 2017, you will be able to purchase a new family member. At least if you can spare 1300$ and lives in Japan. The product is a robotic assistant called Xperia Hello and is one of Sony’s latest releases. Watching the video below, one can tell that it kind of reminds of something you have seen in a Star Wars movie.

The Xperia Hello is intended to give the perception of a real family member. It recognizes the whole family and is designed to move, talk and even show expressions such as happiness, loneliness and excitement. This due to some lights at the top of the “body” that are supposed to work function as eyes. And yes – of course it can dance.

What goes for the features, the robot will respond to voice, gestures and facial expressions. It also takes photos, makes Skype video calls, provides reminders, news and information regarding weather and traffic. The feature that seems most interesting is the fact that it can provide status of other family members, both inside and outside the house. For instance, when parents are away from home, the assistant can give them live updates of what the kids are up to. Kind of surrealistic, according to me.

Thinking a little bit out of the box, this product can be seen as both good and bad. As for the positive aspects, it will provide you with information about your home and family even though you are far away. This indeed might lead to the perception of being calm to some people. In addition, through a negative perspective, this little fellow will most certainly have the potential to interfere with the personal integrity. Being home alone, having time of your own, is nowadays history. This, of course, goes both good and bad, since it for example would be able to detect and perhaps prevent any cheating husband or wife from having affairs in the family home.

Another interesting thing is that most of the features that it offers is already available in your smartphones, which makes me wonder if this product really satisfies a customer needs enough. According to me, the main difference is in fact that it has it’s own torso and never leaves the home. However it is seen as a cool product, but I wonder if it is cool for longer than the first week of usage. I think that it has to include some additional feature for being attractive enough, especially since 1300$ is an amount that not every family can afford for something that somehow still can be defined as a toy. I mean, the least you could expect from a robotic assistant is that it could cook your dinner.

With this in mind, one can draw the conclusion that the success of this product might absent. The potential market for such a product is probably not big enough. The advantages it brings to the normal daily life is just too similar to what is already offered via smartphones. Nevertheless I can’t deny it – I for sure want to have it dancing on my kitchen table when (or if?) it enters the European market.

Bildresultat för xperia hello

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/24/16533086/sonys-xperia-hello-home-robot-assistant

https://blogs.sonymobile.com/2017/10/23/xperia-hello-launches-japan/

Coda – a new serious competitor to Microsoft Office and Google Docs?

Reading Time: 4 minutes

After 3 years of secret developing, the next document editor has been launched. Coda is a start-up which was co-founded by Shishir Mehrotra, a former YouTube head of product, and Alex DeNeui, who is also a Google alumni. The initial idea is to provide a flexible tool for cooperative work which can help groups of people to edit documents. In fact, Mehrotra’s idea came from his experience with his team at YouTube: they used several tools like Google Docs and Sheets for their sharing work but these tools were built, in his opinion, for a previous age. Moreover, it wasn’t easy to combine all these softwares in a single document. That’s why he wondered “What would documents and spreadsheets look if they were invented today?”

What does this software consist of? How does it work?

Coda, whose codename during the 3-year development time was “Krypton”, is a collaborative document editor that combines a word processor and a spreadsheet. The start-up’s ambition is to create “documents as powerful as an app”. Like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, Coda consists of a blank canvas but it allows the users to build, for instance, spreadsheets or surveys, on top of it. It is really easy to drop in a table and use the power of the tool’s engine. The founders’ hope is that Coda can be flexible enough to put together the problems that overlap collaborative tools – sheets, docs, or other kinds of places where people collaborate or store information – into a single flow.

Although, in contrast with Microsoft Excel, Coda has developed his own programming language design to integrate other services into your spreadsheets. In Coda, rows and columns are called “objects” instead of describing a table of several rows and columns “A1:G6” for example. Now you just have to type the name of the column or of the cell to have your formula. Besides, the formulas in Excel needed to be placed inside of tables. In Coda, just write the “=” sign in the object formula and you can bring in data from anywhere else in your document.

Furthermore, a really good novelty is that you can, for instance, enter “GoogleDirections” into a formula and this will insert a Google Map window in your document to give you directions from an origin location to a destination. Coda’s engine is so well developed that it is more powerful than Excel – which is already considered as the one of the most powerful tech engines in the world.

This software is so flexible with the needs of groups work that some beta testers have described this tool “Minecraft for docs”. And these documents are really good-looking!

 

How much does it cost to develop such a collaborative document editor?

Considering the financing, the co-founders have raised for now $60 million for the start-up to develop the software. Investing companies like Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, NEA or Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers have taken part to the funding while Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn cofounder, has integrated the board. However, according to previous reports, the project “Krypton” was valued at $400 million. Nevertheless, the total project cost hasn’t been revealed yet.

Coda is entering a crowded market and will compete with tech giants. This fact will probably increase the future costs because of marketing costs – entering a “Red Ocean” market needs a lot of funds for brand awareness. However, the collaborative office work has created an opportunity for Coda to create a niche market. And this tool caters the collaborative work.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "red ocean blue ocean"
Résultat de recherche d'images pour "red ocean blue ocean"

Coda is currently only available on desktops and for a few business thanks to a private beta version. And the company doesn’t know when it will be available to the larger public.

In my opinion, this tool will revolutionize the spreadsheets tools. Today, worldwide spreadsheets uses are multiple that they are currently running the world. This is why this new breakout tool would be a success. “The more flexible the system, the more uses people find for it” says the CEO Shishir Mehrotra. This is absolutely true, because nowadays, people needs are, in most of the cases, finding new ways of working and fitting to everybody’s business. And people are always looking for these kind of new flexible tools.

References:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16497444/coda-spreadsheet-krypton-shishir-mehrotra

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/19/two-google-alums-just-raised-60m-to-rethink-documents/

http://mashable.com/2017/10/19/coda-startup-launch-google-docs/#JVRbMZQ_isq3

https://coda.io/welcome

https://news.greylock.com/our-investment-in-coda-449e0ab944d5

Stop following me! Or targeted ads

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Have you been in such a situation when you visited a web site and after this quick 5 minutes check you are haunted by this brand’s ads everywhere you go on the web? Annoying, right? That is actually called targeted advertising.

Targeted advertising is a form of advertising where online advertisers can use sophisticated methods to target the most receptive audiences with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic which are focused on race, economic status, sex, age, the level of education, income level and employment or they can be psychographically focused which is based on the consumer’s values, personality, attitudes, opinions, lifestyles, and interests.

According to Toubiana et al. (2010), online behavioral advertising (OBA), also called online behavioral ad targeting, has began in the late 1990s. DoubleClick used 3rd party cookies to track users across sites and presented ads based on the user’s browsing patterns. Nowadays OBA is a large and complex industry where entire exchanges trade user information specifically for the purpose of better ad placement. This means that if you visit a certain website, it will follow you on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and what’s more – on your every device! In fact, there is a real-life example, which makes me feel uncomfortable using my own gadgets: today at 19:30 i was checking out hm.com from my mobile and spend a few seconds more staring at 2 particular items. Now I see them popping up in my Facebook news feed! That is kind of scary. I can’t say that by seeing this ad I feel motivated to buy those items, or it makes me question if I really want those things. It only makes me feel spied by intrusive ads of H&M and decreases my loyalty to this brand.

To make a long story short, targeted advertising raises privacy concerns. Targeted advertising is performed by analyzing consumers’ activities through online services such as cookies and data-mining, both of which can be seen as detrimental to consumers’ privacy. In other words, companies monitor what you do, where you go, who you interact with and what your interests are. They do it privately and securely, and it’s all automated so that no human being actually learns anything about you. And then the online world becomes customized, just for you. The ads are always the things you want to buy. The services are just what you’re looking for. But does it really works the way it was designed?

 

 

Sources:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2567076
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2690822/security0/why-do-contextual-ads-fail.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/business/how-targeted-advertising-works/412/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising

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Bitcoin – Future global currency or big bubble?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When I first saw a movie In Time starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Sayfried last year, I began to wonder if it is possible to unify the global payment system. I am not talking about extending a person’s lifetime, as it is shown in the film, but one global currency. For those who like sci-fi and various visions of the future world, I strongly recommend this film. But let’s talk about cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin in particular.

In Time (2011)

Is it possible for Bitcoin to become world’s global currency? With the market cap of nearly $100 billion it surpasses its crypto competitors and is definitely the most popular one. Just imagine how convenient it would be, going abroad and not thinking about exchanging the currency, doing business with international partners and not worrying about the decline in the value of a particular currency against other. America will never accept euro as its own currency, eurozone on the other hand will never accept dollar as the local currency. The same is happening with other great powers and their currencies. And at this point a bitcoin appears. Cryptocurrency, which is decentralized, has no bank over it, and all transactions are extremely difficult to trace. Sounds beautiful? Unfortunately, it also has its disadvantages. Thefts are also extremely difficult to trace and decentralization has its pros and cons.

The questions is what Bitcoin holders are expecting it to be? Do they hold it just to sell it with profit, to speculate, or do they believe that one day it will become global currency, commonly accepted in all countries by all shops and institutions. Right now you can pay using Bitcoin in some restaurants and shops but still it is long way for Bitcoin to be widely used. On the other hand, we are seeing increasing interest from the states and institutions. The Swiss city of Chiasso has recently made it possible to pay taxes with bitcoin, state institutions see a profit in it and we hear more and more about the possibility of taxing all cryptocurrencies. European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi recently said that ECB has no power to regulate Bitcoin and that cryptocurrencies are not mature enough to think about regulating them. So we can breathe a sigh of relief, because in the near future politicians will not put their hands on it, but unfortunately investment banks will, Goldman Sachs is thinking about trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. If this happens it will just be another speculative asset.

 

 

Sources:

In Time movie

Cryptocurrencies market cap

Regulating the cryptocurrencies

Swiss town to accept tax payments

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Vinted, would it change online clothes shopping?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Vinted is a website and mobile application. It was invented to sell clothes between people, not business to business model but customer to customer. Everyone who has used clothes or clothes which would not be used anymore by them, could create account and show things they would like to sell to other people. Moreover it is not always about selling on Vinted people can also exchange with goods.

 

Let’s start from the beginning, Vinted was created in 2008 in Vilnius, Lithuania by two people with brilliant idea, Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas first they were testing a prototype site where Lithuanian women could trade their clothes which they do not want but they could be wanted by other. Then with the help of advertising and promotions company was expanded into Germany, where it operates under the brand Kleiderkreisel. In 2010, Vinted launched in the United States. In 2012 the company introduced mobile app which is available on iOS, Android and desktop browsers.

 

 

To use application you have to first sign in and create an account then you put your preferred location, size, favorite color, basically you personalize your future filters and research preferences for your future clothes, shoes and make up search, the same information you are adding to the goods which you would like to sell, after it goes to your profile and people can add your clothes to the favorite and they can watch how many interested people are with the same thing, if it was sold or price went up or down. After deciding to buy exact thing you write to the person who is selling this exact good and either you can meet in person if this good is close to you to buy this shoe, shirt make up etc. or you agree on the bank transfer and sending good through post office.

 

The question is how it will change online shopping market? Mainly websites are offering only new and branded clothing, possible competition for Vinted would be Allegro, Gumtree and OLX where people are offering many goods and there also clothes, but the advantage for Vinted is that they specialization is clothing and make up, not furniture, flats and other things which appear on  this 3 other platforms. The application is perfect for people who have many clothes in perfect condition and would like to sell it to people who would use it and be happy to have it, moreover the application is clear because it is only about make up clothes and shoes, the sell is easier and research of the goods also. The Vinted in my opinion has really bright future and by adding new features to their offer on website and application it becomes more and more popular in Poland.

So what do you thing guys? Would you start using Vinted? In your opinion how would it change online shopping?

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinted