Jash's Blog

Paytouch lets you pay with your fingerprints

jashsayani — Sat, 25 May 2013 19:17:06 +0000

Mobile payments is a very active space with solutions like Google Wallet, PayPal wallet, Visa’s V.me, Isis mobile wallet and Square wallet transforming the way we make payments. The goal of all these services is to remove the wallet out of the picture and make your smartphone your wallet by storing credit card information on phones or in the cloud. Paytouch, a payments solution company in Spain, has introduced yet another new way to pay. Using your fingerprints.

How does this work? First, you go to the Paytouch website and sign up for an account with your credit card. Next, you visit a store which has its fingerprint-enabled payment terminal and make a purchase with the registered credit card and then use your fingerprints. This will link your fingerprints with your online account. You can also login to the website and add/change credit cards on file. Now whenever you use your fingerprints at a terminal, it will use the card on your online account. This is a great solution as it also eliminates smartphones out of the picture so phone batteries dying during checkouts in stores can be avoided.

So is this secure? Yes and No. Yes because Paytouch terminals use two fingerprints, which makes it very secure as both prints have to match in order for the transaction to go through. No because your credit card information is stored online on Paytouch’s system and while they follow security standards to encrypt data, everything is hackable and if they were targeted by hackers, credit card information could be compromised. Another issue is that is can be relatively easy to use fingerprints of the previous user to make payments. Human skin is oily and leaves marks on all surfaces touched. So the biometric reader will have your fingerprints if not wiped with a cloth after every use. Someone could just press on the reader with a take or cotton or other material to scan your existing fingerprints left on the reader, but this is not practical as stores would have people at the terminals.

One improvement Paytouch could make is the ability to add multiple cards to the online account and give a nickname to each card. Whenever you use your fingerprints at the terminal, it could show the list of cards and you could pick and confirm your selection. This would enable use of cards with preferable rewards depending on the store.

Paytouch is only available in Europe at the moment. More information at: Paytouch

Get ready for the new gTLDs

jashsayani — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 02:13:33 +0000

ICANN is preparing for the massive rollout of new gTLDs. There are a ton of new gTLDs to replace the old .com, .net and .org. Some of the popular ones include .app, .home, .inc, .art, .blog, .book, .llc, .shop, .movie, .music, .cloud, .hotel, .news and .eco. These new gTLDs will allow bloggers, entrepreneurs, artists and other web creators to get catchy domain names without trying out hacks like using different spellings, using prefixes and suffixes or using a TLD from a different country. Large corporations will also be getting their own gTLDs like .ibm, .pwc, .cisco and .samsung. This will also help in identification of authentic sites and prevent phishing scams.

Nearly 2000 new gTLDs will be launching later this year, out of which 600 will be open (anyone can register them). These new gTLDs will start becoming available from May of this year. Companies can get priority registration for their domains by registering with ICANN. This will allow them to buy domains that match their trademark, example: Amazon can register their trademark “amazon” and no one will be able to buy this domain with any of the gTLDs for 30 days (known as the “sunrise” period). After the 30 day period, if the company does not register the name, it will be available to the general public. This will prevent domain squatters from getting all the big brand names when they are made available. A trademark can be registered for a fee between $95 and $150 with the TMCH.

The regular public can expect to buy these new domains beginning of summer (May onwards) from popular domain registrars like GoDaddy. Beware that domains with .app and .cloud are most anticipated and will be gone quickly.

Google Keep takes on Evernote

jashsayani — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:00:25 +0000

Google just announced a new product, Google Keep. Keep lets you capture all your ideas, tasks and notes in one place and organize them. Yes, like Evernote. Evernote has been everyone’s favorite online note-taking tool for some time now. Over the last few years, it has evolved by revamping their web app and building new iOS and Android apps from the ground up. It’s the ideal service with a decent pricing model. It has also expanded into the enterprise world with Evernote Business. With the success of Evernote, Google wants to get into the space with Google Keep. Google had a similar service in the past called Google Notebook which was very basic and did not have much development, and was eventually discontinued. Google Tasks acts as a basic ToDo app as a part of Gmail. Google Keep is the combination of Google Notebook and Google Tasks with a few more bells and whistles. Right now, it cannot be compared to Evernote but has the potential to take on Evernote in the near future.

Google Keep has an Android app in Google Play and the iOS app is under way. Here is the official Google Keep video:

Source: Google Keep

Is Two Factor Authentication the new standard?

jashsayani — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:48:41 +0000

Banks have been using Two Factor Authentication for a long time now. Some banks require entering a token during login, others only need it for money transfers. In the recent months, with growing cases of user account hacking, many online services are implementing Two Factor Authentication. The popular ones are GMail, Dropbox and Amazon AWS. But recently Facebook announced Two Factor Authentication support. The Facebook iOS/Android app acts as a soft-token and users that don’t have a smartphone, can use SMS to receive their tokens upon login. I think this is a good move, since a Facebook account acts as a persons identity due to all the personal information fed into accounts. But does Two Factor Authentication solve the problem? Can hackers not hijack account with Two Factor Authentication enabled? The answer is obviously No. It does make hijacking accounts much more difficult by adding a barrier and might make it not worth the while to hijack an account. But having a strong password along with Two Factor Authentication does make an account slightly more secure.

Evernote had also been hacked recently and is currently forcing password resets on all accounts. They are also going to introduce Two Factor Authentication very soon.

Happy New Year !

jashsayani — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:33:43 +0000

We have concluded 2012 and entered 2013. Here is a comic strip that summarizes the current scene in the technology space and gives an insight into 2013.

Are phones the new gaming console?

jashsayani — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:48:03 +0000

Smartphones have transformed from PDA devices used by business executives to a multimedia device primarily used for entertainment. Smartphones such as Blackberry and Windows Mobile provided E-mail service with sync capabilities to enterprise servers. It allowed executives to stay connected to their work network. Today, smartphones have almost nothing to do with E-mail, enterprise or even compatibility with enterprise systems. A smartphone is criticized if Angry Birds does not run on its platform or it does not have enough “apps”. Not many people review the different types of VPN protocols supported by the platform. The main consumers of smartphones have drifted from business to teenagers. The heart of the platforms has become social media. Facebook and Twitter have become core OS features which are built into the platforms. This has even drifted to Apple’s Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Microsoft’s Windows 8 systems, which have Facebook integration built-in across the system.

Gaming was primarily done on PCs, as in computers or desktops. It then moved towards consoles. Still, a big chunk of the gaming market is driven by consoles. But mobile is catching up. The advantage that mobile gaming has, is that its mobile. When you are at a doctor’s clinic waiting to be called, or waiting for someone to arrive at the coffee shop, or traveling. This advantage along with powerful and affordable hardware is driving mobile gaming. When app marketplaces were launched as a central place to find software, they included games. Eventually, the gaming category boomed and now the marketplaces have separate sections for “Apps” and “Games”. The games section then further breaks down into different types of games.

I believe that mobile gaming was surging as it was mobile. This included casual games like crosswords, sudoku and other puzzles that are usually played in spare time. Rovio’s Angry Birds created a fusion between casual gaming and arcade style games. One of the reasons for it being popular is that anyone can play it. While racing games and shooting games are primarily for gamers, Angry Birds adds the casual audience. This gave it a massive target audience to begin with. Angry Birds highlights the gaming aspect of mobile phones. Now, we have other categories of games beginning to become popular. This includes racing, shooting, puzzle, online casino games and a plethora of other categories.

This leaves us with one question. Are smartphones going to be phones, or will they become an online social media and gaming device?

Spotify goes online with web app

jashsayani — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 04:44:22 +0000

Spotify is doing pretty well after its debut in the United States. It closed a funding round for $100 million is is worth $3 Billion. It has a strong user base in the US and many users are switching from other music services like Pandora and Rdio. Spotify has been regularly pushing updates to its apps with new features like Apps and Radio. Today, it announced that its working on a web app. The beta is now live. After using the web app for some time, it looks pretty stable and might exit beta pretty soon.

Spotify users should expect an email blast as soon as the web app is out of beta. Stay tuned…

Google shows off its data centers

jashsayani — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:42:51 +0000

Google Maps is THE way to find routes while travelling. Street view lets you see better by showing images of the street and the surroundings. But this is all for the outdoors. Google Maps cannot show you around in a Walmart store or a Target store. Well, thats about to change! Google has started mapping indoor locations starting with their data centers. Just like street view, you can enter the building, navigate through the cubicles, and zoom in on places. Google has posted a video showing indoor street view with their data centers.

Disable Metro in Windows 8

jashsayani — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:34:11 +0000

The Windows 8 launch is right around the corner. People that have purchased PCs recently will get incentives for upgrading to Windows 8 by either getting a license for a lower price or even a free upgrade. While the new Metro interface brings Windows to new tablet devices, its not the best interface for desktops or even laptop computers. The horizontal scrolling makes it tedious to use the Metro screen with many non-touch devices. Some users might want to use the good old Start menu in Windows 8 and disable the Metro screen completely. Windows does not have a setting for this but there are third party applications that let you do this.

ViStart is a Windows application that will disable the Metro screen on Windows 8 and add the old Start menu on the taskbar. Whenever the Metro screen shows up, it automatically selects Desktop and exists out of the Metro screen and when the application launches on system start-up, it will add the start button on the taskbar.

Link: Download ViStart for Windows 8

A dive into Windows 8 RTM

jashsayani — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 06:10:03 +0000

Microsoft just released Windows 8 RTM (Release To Manufacturer) today. This is the version this is given to the manufacturers and will be shipped to consumers. This means that I had higher expectations from this release. When I first boted into Windows, I noticed the new blue logo (yes, the colored flag is not the logo anymore). The interface is completely Metro – feels like a Windows Phone device. The first startup screen asked me to login with my Microsoft Account (Hotmail/Windows Live Passport) and then I got an SMS asking me to confirm the association with Windows PC. I clicked on the link and confirmed the computer. After a few minutes, my desktop was setup. The first thing you see is the Start screen with Live Tiles and Apps. This version also has the Windows Store (which is separate from Windows Phone Store). There are a few apps published, I downloaded Box and iHeartRadio from the Store and was able to login and use the apps. I also used Connect with Facebook and the app worked as a mobile app would. The Desktop is similar to the old Windows desktop with a few UI changes. But the Windows 8 focus lies on Tiles and the tablet functionality.

To summarize with a few bullet points, here are a few things that bother me about Windows 8:

Too much focus on Tablets, it needs to be still catered to primarily PC/Desktop users
Horizontal scrolling on PCs dont work. Tiles screen scrolling for PCs should be rethought

Here is what I expect to be able to do with Windows 8:

When I login with Hotmail/Microsoft account, my tiles should be synced (including position), I should see all my installed apps (with my user data and settings) and it should feel like my PC
Apps such as Finance should have all my Watch list items synced across devices using Hotmail/Microsoft account

I think this is a step in the right direction and Windows is really becoming a more polished and smoother experience.

And if you dont know yet, the release date for Windows 8 is October 26th, 2012.