2017 iPhone May Be a Glass Act

Apple has been developing a glass casing for a new iPhone with an AMOLEDdisplay to be unveiled in 2017, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at KGI Securities, reportedly said this week in a note to investors.

That would mark a return to the design of the iPhone 4 and 4s, both of which had glass casings.

The use of the AMOLED screen will offset the heavier weight of a glass back for the device, Kuo reportedly said.

No more than 40 percent of iPhones will be made with aluminum bodies once the glass device is launched, he predicted.

Apple has lots of experience with using glass in the iPhone 4 line, Kuo pointed out, dismissing concerns about the glass casing being damaged when dropped.

The new iPhone will have curved panels on the front and rear and a 5.8-inch screen. The glass casing will provide a point of differentiation from the competition, Kuo reportedly said.

The Real Story

Kuo, who apparently has sources within Apple's supply chain, repeatedly has been correct with prognostications about Apple.

However, "the big story here is Apple's decision to build a phone around a new AMOLED display," commented Wayne Lam, a principal analyst at IHS. "The casing design is just a result of that decision."

AMOLED would let Apple "do something interesting with wraparound displays, and therefore, a glass material will give them flexibility in creating continuous curves on the back," he told TechNewsWorld.

People shouldn't put too much stock in the conjectures around the casing material because "it's going to be a 2017 phone [and] Apple still has over 12 months to lock in the industrial design with their choice of materials," Lam cautioned.

Apple "could go back to glass, but I'd imagine they'd do something different, like picking up sapphire glass for greater durability or add in wireless charging," he suggested. "Still, the starting point will be the new display. Everything else falls behind that in terms of design criteria. Glass is just one option they can play with."

In 2014, Apple was awarded a patent for an all-glass iOS device.

It could use transparent semiconductor technology to make the device see-through, speculated Mike Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Been There, Done That

Apple isn't the only company to make a mobile phone with glass front and rear panels. Samsung's Galaxy S6 and S7 smartphone lines have glass front and back panels sandwiching a metal frame. Lenovo unveiled an all-glass smartphone, the S850, in 2014.

"An all-glass device was a great idea several years ago, when it would've been the only one," noted Ramon Llamas, a research manager at IDC. "But now, several vendors have gone that route, so that point of differentiation isn't exactly as strong as it would've been some years ago."

Also, "what can you do with an all-glass phone that you couldn't do before?" he told TechNewsWorld. "A backing is a backing is a backing."

It's possible that Apple might offer an all-glass phablet-sized device, as "the last time they did glass backing for the iPhone it was for regular-sized devices," Llamas said. "But most people are going to cover up the back with a case anyway."

The real magic "is still going to be in the front of the device," he added.

Fear of Falling

Despite Kuo's assertions, durability will be a concern with an all-glass case, Frost's Jude told TechNewsWorld.

"Regardless of how tough the glass technology is, it's never going to be as durable as a metal-framed device," he said. "If Apple uses this approach, it can expect a higher damage and replace rate."

That said, however, an all-glass iPhone "would have a very high fashion cachet," Jude said. "Apple enthusiasts would definitely like a glass phone. It might even attract non-Apple users." 

Sports Fans and Social Media, Part 2: Perils, Pitfalls and Best Practices

his fall will see a 10-game pilot of professional football streamed on social media -- Twitter, to be specific. It's a continuation of the National Football League's search for gold in the veins of digital broadcasting and an opportunity for sports brands to forge new and deeper relations with fans.

Initially seen as merely a way to connect with teens and texting lovers, social networks have permeated the Internet with a proliferation of like and share buttons. For sports teams looking to bolster their brands, social networks have evolved into a critical channel for drumming up loyalty.

For sports marketers, social media could be just as important as television ad space or even more so in about five years. That is about how much time is left on the NFL's broadcast contract, and the league, after inking the deal with Twitter, indicated that it would look at widening its footprint in the streaming media market.

Social media networks have the ability to engage fans beyond game day, encouraging them to buy tickets and merchandise, said Jackie Reau, CEO atGame Day Communications.

"Teams should be using social media to connect with fans all year long with fresh content, gamification and insights into the organization," she told TechNewsWorld.

The Potential

Social media followers of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls outnumber the people living in those cities. Census data from 2013 put the populations of Los Angeles and Chicago at about 3.9 million and 2.7 million, respectively, while their basketball teams have followings of roughly 26 million and 21 million, respectively.

Those followers provide teams with a wealth of data and staggering marketing potential, all of which is for naught if sports organizations fail to use them effectively.

Some teams leverage real-time data to measure each fan's engagement and distribute loyalty points proportionally to that, according to Quinton Porter, director of business development and partnerships at Zoomph. That can lead to organizations rewarding fans with discounts, which could compel the most loyal of the bunch to buy merchandise and tickets.

However, the larger strategy consists of sports brands engaging with influencers in their audiences. By default, that's "a loyalty push," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Because if you aren't engaging them, they will just die off and go away," Porter said. "But by engaging with your fans, you make them feel as if they are a part of something. Conversations always bring people back."

To reach new fans, teams often tout new players or groups of athletes, said Mary Ingram-Waters, honors faculty fellow at Arizona State University's Barrett Honors College. While it happens across all types of social media platforms, it's most common on sites such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

"But specific players, who may or may not be officially speaking on behalf of their teams, also use social media to connect with fans," she told TechNewsWorld. "They can do this for a variety of reasons that may not have much to do with promoting team fanship as much as individual player fanship."

Engaging Female Fans

Sports teams have asserted that they have been widening their fan bases to include more women, but their social media content doesn't reflect those assertions, according to Ingram-Waters.

"You see the same kinds of ads of men enjoying watching games with their male friends," she said.

Women account for about 34 percent of participants in fantasy sports, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

It's certainly the market with the most potential for growth, Ingram-Waters said.

"Where women fans show up, though, is through their following of individual players on social media," she said. "The women we interviewed over the last four years told us that they like to follow players who share stories and images of themselves."

Players typically aren't official spokespeople for their teams, so while they may be an effective means of bolstering women's loyalty, there doesn't appear to be a unified effort to use individual players to market to the demographic.

"It's possible that efforts to use individual players' social media accounts to appeal to women fans would be recognized as transparent marketing and thus would ruin what women are looking for: an authentic personal connection to the player," Ingram-Waters said.

Technological Pitfalls

Another possible pitfall for sports marketers on social media is more perilous: the sheer amount of content teams have to manage and the necessity to respond to fans in real time.

"So automation is difficult there, but fans understand there isn't a whole team of folks behind a desk typing messages to you," Zoomph's Porter said. "But having some sort of response makes the conversation feel authentic, which the fans like."

However, making conversations feel authentic is a tactic that is being used increasingly by those with bad intentions, according to Devin Redmond, general manager of social media and compliance at Proofpoint.

"Sports teams and the fans who follow them on social media really have to be wary of what happens on places like their Facebook accounts," he told TechNewsWorld.

Social media spam and phishing attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication, according to Redmond. Scammers have been particularly interested in sports fan pages, where they can prey on people caught up in a major game.

Scammers often hop on team pages during or after a big game, commenting on content the sports organization has shared with its followers. The scammers will plug malicious content into comments on a team's post, using custom language to make it look both benign and authentic.

"They may look like they're participating in the conversation," Redmond said. "'Hey, Steph Curry made this great shot,' a team may say. A bunch of people talk about it, and then a scammer will jump in and say something like 'Hey, that's a great shot. Want to see more?' and then they post something that takes people somewhere bad."

The scammers know to pay attention on game night and they follow the action using things like listening tools, he said. They'll customize their content and distributed it across several accounts.

"If you can put up one comment that has the ability to reach all the followers of a page, and that page is now at 3, 4 million followers, that's a really good ROI compared to the traditional scams that might happen over email when you send a thousand emails to get one person to click," Redmond said.

Fans should not follow links from comments, and teams should employ a technology-first approach to dealing with spam, rather than attempting to manage it manually, he warned. "They'll never keep up with the bad guys that way." 

With Latest Opera Browser, Everybody Gets Free VPN

Opera on Wednesday announced that it would add a free VPN service to the latest version of its browser.

VPNs, or virtual private networks, add an extra level of security for Web surfers. Companies use them to provide secure communications for employees remotely accessing office systems, and consumers use them to block unwanted snooping on their online activity.

"Now, you don't have to download VPN extensions or pay for VPN subscriptions to access blocked websites and to shield your browsing when on public WiFi," said Krystian Kolondra, Opera's senior vice president of engineering and new products.

"Until now, most VPN services and proxy servers have been limited and based on a paid subscription," he added. "With a free, unlimited, native VPN that just works out of the box and doesn't require any subscription, Opera wants to make VPNs available to everyone."

Commercial-Grade VPN

Opera's VPN contains a number of features found in commercial-grade VPNs:

• Hiding an IP address. Opera will replace a user's IP address with a virtual IP address. That makes it harder for sites to track a user.
• Unblocking firewalls and websites. If a user needs to access a website blocked by a firewall or entity like a school, country or company, the VPN allows the user to do so.
• Protecting sessions at public WiFi hotspots. Public WiFi spots are popular targets of hackers sniffing for data. A VPN can thwart those snoops.

A VPN maintains a user's privacy by making communication unreadable by eavesdroppers, said Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions forRadware.

"A VPN is equivalent to placing items into a purse instead of a transparent plastic bag. When the items are in a purse, they are not readily visible to passerby traffic or people who might be following you," he told TechNewsWorld.

"However, this is not foolproof. Items in your purse can still be seen if someone is very dedicated to seeing what's inside, and the same holds true with many VPNs," Herberger said.

The Opera VPN isn't likely to shake up the VPN market very much. "Standalone VPNs are incredibly more feature rich and desirable," he said.

Enterprise Threat

"Many users will welcome this with open arms. They can now try to circumvent proxies and filtering at work and school," said Zach Forsyth, director of enterprise product line management at Comodo.

"The fact that it is enabled natively in the browser and doesn't require the user to download software or extensions cuts corners and makes browsing even more user-friendly," he told TechNewsWorld.

While accessing forbidden websites may sound attractive to users, it could be a potential headache for system administrators. However, that won't be the case for companies with appropriate protection systems in place.

"This should not be an issue for an enterprise if they are using Layer 7 firewalls and advanced secure Web gateway platforms, in conjunction with an intelligence platform that can identify traffic and anomalies," Forsyth said.

"Most good enterprises should be blocking a VPN network that they don't know coming out of their corporate network. They should be intercepting and stopping that," said Ethan Schmertzler, CEO of Dispel.

"If for some reason, someone can route that traffic out and create a VPN tunnel through their firewalls, that could create a security risk to the enterprise," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Security devices can be used for both offense and defense," Radware's Herberger added. "VPNs can be an excellent way to withdraw stolen data from within an organization, and they can also be used to direct nefarious bots inside an organization with unimpeded communication."

VPN Warts

Although VPNs have been touted as a way to protect user privacy, they often are flawed, maintained Schmertzler. "If not well made, they can be subject to data leaks that expose what websites you're going to and what you're doing online."

"Most VPN networks are not well made," he added.

"VPNs are old technology," Schmertzler said. "They rely on static infrastructure, and their bandwidth is unreliable."

Regardless of how well made Opera's VPN is and how easy it is to use, it still may be beyond the tech IQ of many users.

"Building in a VPN isn't a bad idea, but most users don't know what to do with a VPN," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

For that reason, the new feature isn't likely to be something that will enhance Opera's place in the browser standings.

"If Opera had the ability to market the feature and explain to people why they should use it, then this could have a significant impact," Enderle told TechNewsWorld, "but they don't." 

Facebook Messenger Lets 50 Friends Get In on a Call

Facebook last week announced that it had rolled out group calling worldwide in its Messenger app. Members engaged in a group conversation can tap the phone icon on their screen to initiate a group call. They can manage individual participants on the next screen.

Members of a group who miss the initial call can tap the phone icon in the group chat to join the call while it's in progress.

The feature allows up to 50 participants and is available only in the latest version of Messenger.

Move Over, Phone Carriers

The announcement likely will cause concern among telecommunications companies because "if you consider that social media's a form of asynchronous communication, then Facebook is the largest telecom on the planet, with about 1.3 billion subscribers," observed Michael Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

"Now add synchronous communications -- that is, communications in real time -- and Facebook's beginning to come into focus as the next paradigm of communications: async and sync combined," he told TechNewsWorld. "This could be a game changer."

Messaging apps Viber and Line already offer group calling for up to 200 people.

However, "Facebook is different -- it's a social media site with a huge following that now offers direct communication to groups of people," Jude said. "Viber and Line are much smaller pools of people and don't have the rich social media capabilities that Facebook does."

The calling feature is in software, so "if Facebook sees a need to expand the scope of the service, they could probably do it by flipping a switch," he noted.

Facebook stands to gain "a substantial portion of the millennial telecom business," Jude suggested.

Further, the company launched a beta of its Messenger Platform with bots and its Send/Receive API, as well as bots for the Messenger Platform. How those features will play into group calling remains to be seen.

Killing Off Telcos

Facebook's move highlights the threat that new technologies pose to telecom companies.

"As we move farther and farther from traditional PBXs and wired phone lines to VoIP services, many of which are either very cheap or free, telecom companies are going to lose this revenue," noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"They've had plenty of warning," he told TechNewsWorld. "This is just another one of those services that will make it easier for small companies and individuals to cut their phone cord."

Facebook began offering VoIP in 2013. A year later, it fully rolled out audio calls and had 10 percent of the global VoIP phone call market.

Facebook "is a much bigger threat" than chat apps "because far more people are likely to try and like it, due to its visibility," Enderle said.

Facebook Messenger has more than 900 million monthly active users.

"The overall trend is making traditional telephones obsolete," Enderle said. "This is just another indicator that trend is reaching critical mass, putting traditional telecom services increasingly on death watch."

Wireless carriers won't be hit as hard, because data charges apply to calls made through Facebook and other apps, unless WiFi is used.

Bodhi Linux 3.2 Promises Clearer Path to Enlightenment

Bodhi Linux 3.2.0 is an update to the Bodhi Linux 3.x series and features key kernel and desktop improvements.

It is a different kind of Linux distro. Its developers refer to it as the "Enlightened Desktop," because it draws its energy from the Enlightenment desktop.

Enlightenment started as a project to build a window manager for X11 in 1996. It became something much more than a window manager -- it grew into a desktop environment in its own right. The Enlightenment Project is currently version 17, known as E17, and the Bodhi crew recently forked it.

This release of Bodhi uses the Moksha desktop. Both the distro name and its desktop moniker are Sanskrit terms. "Bodhi" means awakening or enlightenment. "Moksha" means emancipation, liberation or release.

Bodhi is one of a few Linux distros embracing the Enlightenment environment. Enlightenment is used in the Manjaro, Macpup and Elive distros, among others.

Until recently, Bodhi also ran the Enlightenment desktop, but the Bodhi developers lost faith in seemingly stalled advancements and misdirections from the Enlightenment community and forked it.

Bodhi Revisited

I last looked at this distro last year. I was very impressed with Bodhi back then. The latest version was released last month, and the improvements make Bodhi an even better computing environment now.

The project takes a minimalist approach by offering modularity, high levels of customization and choice of themes. In addition to basic 32- and 64-bit systems, Bodhi maintains designated ISO images for Chromebooks and legacy machines.

Moksha version 0.2.0 is a continuation of the Enlightenment 17 desktop. That is when the forking occurred. The latest version of the Enlightenment Compositing Window Manager and Desktop Shell is 0.18.7 or E18.

Moksha consists of the back porting of bug fixes and will include features from future Enlightenment releases, as well as the removal of half finished or broken things E17 contained, according to one of Bodhi's primary developers, Jeff Hoogland.

Making the fork to Moksha from E17 was "a big step for the Bodhi project. Only time will tell if it is a good one or a bad one," he said.