Tuesday, May 27, 2014

drag2share: Younger Americans are open to Google, Apple, PayPal becoming their bankers

Source: http://gigaom.com/2014/05/27/younger-americans-are-open-to-google-apple-paypal-becoming-their-bankers/

Your next bank migt just be Google or Walmart if the younger generation of North American bread earners has anything to say about it. A recent survey conducted by Accenture found that many people between the ages of 18 and 34 were amenable to the idea of doing their banking completely online as well as getting their financial services from non-traditional financial service providers.

PayPal was at the top of the list, with 46 percent of that age group saying they would be “likely” of “very likely” to bank with the eBay-owned company. That shouldn’t be too much of surprise since PayPal is already a dominant player in payment services. But Google, Amazon, Apple and Walmart rounded out the top 5 list of potential alternate banking providers – not the first companies you’d think of when opening a checking account.

"Open to Alternatives: If these companies offered banking services, how likely would you be to bank with them?"

Accenture’s poll of 3,846 bank customers in Canada and the U.S. found that we’re becoming much more comfortable with the idea of “branchless” banking where all transactions, from depositing checks to applying for loans, are conducted in the web browser,  on the mobile phone or by telephone. When asked whether they would consider a branchless alternative when they next switched banks, 27 percent of those polled answered in the affirmative. Among the 18-34 demographic that number rose to 39 percent.

Of course, whether many of these companies would ever consider becoming banks is doubtful. They would be joining an industry much more heavily regulated than their own. I’m not sure if Google wants to add the Federal Deposit Insurance Coporation and Federal Reserve to its list of regulators.

"Branchless Banking: If you were to switch banks, would you consider a bank with no branch locations?"

Still for companies that are already getting heavily involved in their customers finances like PayPal, Walmart and even Amazon; banking might be the logical next step. One of the more interesting nuggets from Accenture’s report was about Square. While Square isn’t yet a well-known consumer brand, 50 percent of those polled that were familiar with Square – likely the small business owners that use its services — said they would bank with Square if they could.

Also being a virtual bank doesn’t necessarily require a company to become an actual bank. One of the more popular online banking services Simple doesn’t actually maintain any accounts. Rather it contracts out with Bancorp to and CBW Bank to hold its customers’ money – and deal with regulators – while Simple provides the front-end services.

 

 

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
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drag2share: This Breakthrough Power Source Is Thinner Than Paper, Bendable, And Can Charge Your Phone

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/breakthrough-flexible-power-thinner-than-paper-2014-5

What if your Fitbit or FuelBand were more like a slap bracelet? Many electronic components are already small enough to make this achievable, but batteries historically make it downright impossible. They take up the largest spaces within our devices today and are completely inflexible.

Enter James Tour of Rice University. Along with his colleagues, he's developed an electrochemical capacitor that's thinner than paper, bendable, and capable of storing enough electric energy to charge your phone — they say it could power the next generation of electronic devices.

We're still waiting to see if flexible smartphones will ever take hold, but e-paper, bendable touch-sensitive screens, and plenty of wearable gadgets are already here and ready to benefit from such an invention.

Flexible power

The capacitor, recently published in the Journal Of The American Chemical Society, is made out of a thin film of nickel and fluoride, which enables it to store energy in an electric field. It's covered in tiny holes called "nanopores" that enable ions to easily flow through it, which is what enables it to also function as a power source.

Researchers were able to bend and fold the film and recharged it thousands of times, demonstrating "little loss in performance," they write in the paper. Here's what it looks like:Untitled 2You can see in figure B below that the capacitor is definitely bendable. And figure C shows a closeup of the nanopor! ous laye r, which is where the ions flow and actually disseminate electric energy.

Untitled 3

Ready for the main stage

If the trend is to continue to make our devices as small and unobtrusive as possible, a flexible capacitor is a hugely important development.

We don't know for sure if Tour and company plan to turn this into a business, though the researchers mention that they believe their product "can be easily scaled up for mass production" and implementation in your next gadget.

As for what the immediate future holds, Tour said that he and his team are investigating other special properties of this material, including its potential application in generating energy with a process called "water splitting" in which a molecule of water is broken into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which can be used as fuel.

SEE ALSO: These Incredible Nanosatellites Are Making Old Satellites Obsolete

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drag2share: The LG G3 has a keyboard that grows, shrinks and learns

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/27/lg-g3-smart-keyboard/

Despite an occasionally groan-inducing press conference in London, there's little denying that LG's new G3 has plenty going for it (personal aside: I've never been more smitten by an LG phone). It's usually the little things that make the biggest difference, though, and the G3's thoughtful Smart Keyboard seems to fall right into that category. Why? Because it pays attention.

The keyboard will slowly shift the way it interprets your touches as it learns how you type, though it won't actually look any different. Do you always type S's when you want A's? The G3 will try to discern your meaning and expand the sensing area for the A key if it "thinks" you're having trouble. That'll sound more than a little familiar if you're a BlackBerry buff: a very similar feature is baked into BlackBerry 10's soft keyboard. You can also manually change the size of the G3's keyboard, too, a real boon for those of us suffering with sausage fingers or bum eyes. You'll only be able to stretch and compress the keyboard so much though -- at their largest (see above), the keys are spacious and plenty accommodating for my gorilla thumbs, and the smallest is well-suited for preserving precious screen real estate. Throw in the ability to change the symbol keys that appear on either side of the spacebar and you've got yourself a pretty flexible way to jot down your innermost ruminations. On some level, it seems a little silly to get worked up over a keyboard (especially when LG has spent the better part of our morning/evening lauding other technical achievements), but it's always nice to see companies shape our user experiences in subtle, smart ways.

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drag2share: Apple Patent Hints at Plans for LiquidMetal and Sapphire iPhone Chassis

Source: http://gizmodo.com/apple-patent-hints-at-plans-for-liquidmetal-and-sapphir-1581960344

Apple Patent Hints at Plans for LiquidMetal and Sapphire iPhone Chassis

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued Apple with a patent that finally suggests how the company may have planned (or be planning) to use LiquidMetal : in conjunction with display glass made from sapphire to form a single, integrated chassis for the iPhone.

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drag2share: Unbelievable Display Technology Uses Levitating Particles as Pixels

Source: http://gizmodo.com/unbelievable-display-technology-uses-levitating-particl-1582096744

Unbelievable Display Technology Uses Levitating Particles as Pixels

The Pixie Dust display uses sound waves to create images and animations from real particles that appear to float in mid-air. It probably sounds implausible, but there's video of it in action. And yes, what you're seeing is actually happening, no gimmicks or special effects.

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