Consumer Technology World Brief

The advent of technology has led to it being used across aspects of our daily life from the time we wake up till the time we go back to sleep. Is has become so common that we now depend on the internet for storing most of the necessary data we require for our day to day tasks. One main concern that we need to take into account is definitely the security of our data. How vulnerable are we from hackers. One example is recently a British-based computer scientist has been banned from publishing an academic paper revealing the secret codes used to start luxury cars including Porsches, Audis, Bentleys and Lamborghinis as it could lead to the theft of millions of vehicles. We have come to depend on the remote for locking and unlocking our cars without realizing if it was ever hacked millions of cars are vulnerable to theft. This is definitely an incentive for criminals to try and pursue these modern methods of thieving. It is paramount that better information security is developed to help mitigate the risks that we are facing in the ever fact paced world of technology developments.

An area of huge interest in recent months is the upcoming release of smart watches that is being developed by a multitude of tech companies with Samsung releasing its version of the smart watch. One important question that we need to ask ourselves is how necessary is the supposed smart watch going to be. At the moment the hype is all about it will be a device to “enhance” and “enrich” the smart phone experience, says a spokesperson for Samsung which makes sense given the recent reports that it would be more of an accessory device than something that stands separate from a smartphone and is capable of making its own calls. Again the question of necessity arises and with the multitude variations of phones, tablets, phablets and google glass does the smart watch really add any value to the host of devices we own or is as far as a novelty device that we think we need. It can’t be decided for sure until the actual release happens and until then we can only speculate on how well it will be received and how seamlessly it can be integrated into our day to day activity.

North America World Review

Fast-food workers across the United States are expected to stage their largest strike to date in an almost year-long campaign to raise wages in the service sector. Employees of McDonald’s Corp, Wendy’s Restaurants LLC, Burger King Worldwide Inc and others have pledged to walk off their jobs in 50 cities from Boston, Mass, to Alameda, Calif., organizers say. They are expected to be joined by retail employees at stores owned by Macy’s Inc, Sears Holdings Corp and Dollar Tree Inc in some cities. The  strike is shaping up to be “the largest attempt at worker organizing in this industry ever” thanks to broad financial and technical support from the Service Workers International Union, and grassroots efforts from community groups, local politicians and the clergy, said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, an attorney at the National Employment Law Project.” The workers are responding to total failure on behalf of the federal government to raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation and the cost of living,” Gebreselassie said. The USD200 billion U.S. fast-food sector has come under the spotlight because lower-paying and part-time service work, including retail sales and food preparation, has made up most of the jobs added since the recession.

The Obama administration has delayed a step crucial to the launch of the new healthcare law, the signing of final agreements with insurance plans to be sold on federal health insurance exchanges starting October 1.The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified insurance companies on Tuesday that it would not sign final agreements with the plans between September 5 and 9, as originally anticipated, but would wait until mid-September instead, according to insurance industry sources. The reason for the hold-up was unclear. Sources attributed it to technology problems involving the display of insurance products within the federal information technology system. Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is expected to extend federally subsidized health coverage to an estimated 7 million uninsured Americans in 2014 through the marketplaces. But insurance plans must be qualified to meet specific standards if they are to be sold on the exchanges. And each insurer must sign a contract with the federal government. The Government Accountability Office cautioned in June that the law known as Obamacare could miss the October 1 enrollment deadline because of missed deadlines and delays in several areas including the certification of health plans for sale on the exchanges.

Asia World Review

China’s economy is showing clear signs of stabilization, helped by policy support and some improvement in global demand, and is on track to meet the government’s 2013 growth target of 7.5 percent, the state statistics bureau said on Monday. The issue of local government debt also remained under control, the National Bureau of Statistics said at a briefing organized by the foreign ministry that may have been aimed at allaying global concern about China’s slowdown. Beijing has said it is willing tolerate slower growth as it pushes reforms designed to reduce pollution, social inequity and an economic growth model which has an over-reliance on debt-financed construction and exports. The government has launched a series of targeted measures recently to support the economy, including scrapping taxes for small firms, offering more help for ailing exporters and accelerating investment in urban infrastructure and railways. But rapidly slowing growth has also been putting pressure on China’s heavily indebted companies and provincial governments, raising concerns that the country’s explosion in credit since 2008 may be on the verge of a meltdown .Credit in China’s economy almost doubled between 2008 and last year, pushing investment to 46 percent of GDP, much of that into infrastructure and property. The China Banking Regulatory Commission has recently begun working with China’s securities regulator to encourage the securitization of loans to help lenders sell problematic loans and is developing a platform to help banks sell such loans to investors.

China’s e-commerce market is expected to leapfrog that of the United States this year to become the world’s largest by total customer spending, management consultancy firm Bain & Company says. Online spending could account for half of all Chinese retail spending within a decade, according to Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group. The change in shopping habits comes as almost half of the country’s 1.3 billion population now have direct access to the Internet, and of that number nearly 80 percent own smart phones or tablets. China’s e-commerce market has grown at an average rate of 71 percent from 2009 to 2012, versus 13 percent in America, and its total size is expected to reach 3.3 trillion Yuan ($539.07 billion) by 2015, Bain & Company said in a report released on Wednesday. Logistics, however, pose a major obstacle to e-commerce development, and Alibaba is now working with Chinese logistics firms to improve nationwide infrastructure and delivery networks, said Shih. Gome Electrical Appliances, whose online revenue now accounts for 5-6 percent of its total earnings of 27 billion Yuan, is changing its retail strategy to accommodate the new wave of online customers. The firm closed a total of 35 stores in the first half of this year, said Helen Song, a spokeswoman for Gome. Now the company plans to continue moving away from its physical business to better supply China’s rapidly changing consumer habits.

Europe World Review

Business activity across the euro zone has picked up this month at a faster pace than expected, surveys showed on Thursday, led by Germany as it benefited from growing demand for its exports. While growth accelerated in the euro zone’s biggest economy, it was a different story in France, the bloc’s No.2 economy, which saw business fall as its economy went into a summer lull. Support from Germany and France, the 17-nation bloc’s two biggest economies, helped it escape from its longest recession on record last quarter, expanding a better-than-expected but still modest 0.3 percent. The problem faced by the European Central Bank in trying to stimulate growth – as it has been for some years – is still the heavily indebted.

The European Central Bank joined Germany on Wednesday in playing down talk of a third bailout package for Greece, but reaffirmed the euro zone would help the country trim debt as long as it stuck to its latest aid program. Speaking in Athens a day after German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble bluntly predicted Greece would need a new bailout, ECB executive board member Joerg Asmussen said he had not discussed the issue at talks with senior Greek officials. He referred instead to the euro zone’s pledge last year to support Greece until it can tap markets again, provided it sticks to its current bailout obligations and posts a budget surplus before interest payments. Germany’s finance ministry said the euro zone would take a fresh look at Greece’s aid program in mid-2014 and that Berlin was not aware of any discussions on how to structure a new rescue package. Progress on reform in the recession-stricken country has been patchy. Tax revenues continue to lag targets and the Greek economy has struggled to show signs of recovery after shrinking by about a quarter from its peak six years ago, mainly as a result of austerity policies imposed under two bailouts.