Google Wallet available for ALL Android phones and every US carrier

All devices running Android 2.3 and up will be able to utilize Google wallet mobile payment service. Google is again broadening what users can do with wallet, expanding availability of payment service. Google wallet is taking PayPal head on with direct money transfers. With the new updates, users will be able to transfer cash to anyone with an email address in the US, once that email address is linked to a bank account to the service. Funds are also accessible from current Google wallet balance but using a debit or credit card to make payments will result in additional fees.

Most important update, Google Wallet is now available on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile networks. Loyalty cards from retailers can also be added to Google Wallet simply by scanning or entering bar code on the back of each card.

With this aggressive updates, Google Wallet is trying to take over the market from PayPal. We have not heard of too many users utilizing Google Wallet; leave a comment below sharing recent Google Wallet transactions and experience.

Click here for more details.

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Making Technology Simple”

Google vs. Microsoft; Integrate or Not

Earlier this week, Google consciously disrupted some of the functionality of Microsoft’s latest attempt at a native YouTube app for Windows Phone. Google admitted to purpose towards determination that Microsoft had violated YouTube’s terms of service.

This is no new tactic, the history of the technology industry is plagued with examples of one or more company making unilateral decisions to block others’ features or applications from working with their won, often hindering the users they claim to service.

Similar incidents occurred, between social media giants Twitter and Instagram. People can argue the integration of posting Instagram photos to Twitter was a big contribution to the growth of the photo service. In addition to, users accustomed with Facebook as well.

Last year, relations between the two companies became somewhat bitter. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was highly opinionated in regards to acquiring Instagram, the micro-blogging service lost out on that interest when Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012, at a billion dollar price tag.

Whether or not the Facebook’s ownership had anything to do with it, Instagram made a power move in the control of its own users by discontinuing Twitter Card integration. This momentarily stopped users from being able to load Instagram pictures from automatically being posted to Twitter.

Unfortunately, users were the ones who felt the affect the worst. Instagram stated, “In the past, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence. We’ve since launched several improvements to our website that allow users to directly engage with Instagram content and believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives. We’ll continue to evaluate to evaluate how to improve the experience with Twitter and instagram photos. Instagram users will continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.”

The technology industry’s long list of history, involving unsuccessful and business hindering decisions towards interoperability makes it abundantly clear certain things do not change. When profits and control over users’ data and loyalty are at issue, more often than none, the users themselves end up as collateral damage.

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Making Technology Simple”

Can Satellite broadband sustain the urge for high speeds in UK?

Internet use is accessed by millions of UK resident daily. Millions of people use internet for research, trending topics, social media and online shopping. Unfortunately, the reliability, speed and availability of good internet connection is rarely experienced in rural areas throughout the UK.

In rural areas in this country, satisfying broadband connections are limited, causing concern among many residents and habitants  in the public sector, specifically within education. Particularly, in Wales, Estyn, the Assembly’s education spokesperson, has filed complaint due to the lack of completed assignments by students with slow internet speeds away from the classroom.

Member of Parliament, David Nuttall gathered a healthy share of government funding towards improving connections speeds in rural areas. “Those who live in area which have very slow broadband access speeds are seriously disadvantaged in this digital age. Although in recent months we have seen some progress, there is still much to be done.”

Recent alternatives and solution suggest residents aim satellites to the sky. In order to improve broadband speeds without having to over spend on infrastructure, satellite broadband is currently the answer to many rural residents prayers.

CEO of EuropaSat, Andrew Walwyn believes this could be a great way of boosting broadband speeds without doing too much infrastructure changes.

“Many people do not realize the role satellite broadband has in filling in rural notspots and connecting the last 5% of homes and businesses that will never get fast broadband over wires.”

In order to fill in the notspots here within the United States major corporations such as Google, Amazon and AOL are emerging with Fiber Networks connections throughout the United States such as southern Midwest and west coast.

What would be great alternatives for UK other than satellite broadband? Fiber lines throughout the UK would be unreachable with their budget but there are alternatives other than satellite broadband. Also, the United States experience similar issues in various areas throughout the nation, how can highspeeds be utilized by everyone?

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Making Technology Simple”

Human Error with Costly Computer Mistakes

Human error occur daily, with the capabilities of modern-day supercomputer available to banks nationwide. One would imagine, human errors are greatly magnified by automated systems and these errors seem to happen regularly. Mistakes such as this take place more often than expected, here are a few examples;

• PayPal created a temporary quadrillionaire by accidentally crediting $92,233,720,368,547,800 to a very surprised Chris Reynolds. The error was corrected quickly, but Reynolds said that if he had been able to keep the money, he would have paid down the national debt and maybe bought the Phillies.
• Bank of America mistakenly gave Ronald Page unlimited cash withdrawals from its ATMs — which he used to extract over $1.5 million ($1,543,104) over a few weeks. This 55yo Detroit resident lost it all gambling, and he’s been court-ordered to repay this sizable sum.
• Another accidental millionaire tried to run off with £3.4 million after his bank erroneously transferred that amount to his bank account. Hui “Leo” Gao wired the money to some foreign banks and took his girlfriend on a two year adventure. Eventually, he and his girlfriend were caught, and the bank recovered about £1.5 million.

Just a matter of minutes elapse when a person makes simple mistakes that changes are persons’ life forever.  Is there going to be a more progressive change for automated systems,  in additional places other than grocery stores, ATMs and RedBox?

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Making Technology Simple”

In-house Server

After looking at what cloud-computing has to offer users, Let’s consider the options you have when purchasing an in-house server. When it comes time to upgrade from an older unit or purchase one for the first time, there are a several factors to consider. When going with an in-house setup, we assess the needs of your company and help you choose the most cost-efficient type of server.

For a first-time buyer there are a wide variety of vendors to choose from. Servers that SMBs purchase are called “dedicated servers.” A dedicated server is a single server that only allows one company access. It is “dedicated” to one client and is not shared with any other clients/companies. The advantage of an in-house server is that it allows you to operate the system the way you see fit, without any restrictions on use. However, routine maintenance and management becomes the responsibility of either the company’s in-house IT department or an independent tech-support company.

In the past, having an in-house network meant a room full of dedicated servers, switches, and firewalls. The overhead of maintaining several independent servers is significant: not just in equipment prices, but also in cooling and electrical costs. With the advances in technology, this costly option has been replaced by using a single server with software designed to share it’s resources and have the one server operate as if you had multiple servers.

This option is known as “virtualization.” Virtualization is a combination of software and hardware that creates virtual machines (VMs) – It allows single server to emulate many servers, which shares the resources in a single server.

The end goal of virtualization is to reduce the number of physical servers required for day to day operation. For example, if you had 8 physical servers, virtualization could allow you to consolidate this down to one physical server, but with the functionality of your previous 8 server setup. But why would you want to consolidate your physical servers?

By doing this, you can reduce hardware maintenance costs because of a lower number of physical servers. Additionally, you can increase space and cooling efficiency. This is advantageous not only because of the reduced cost of operation, but also by minimizing your carbon footprint, which can help improve your company’s image.

It also becomes easier to standardize a virtual server build that can be easily duplicated which will speed up server deployment. Virtualization allows you to run multiple operating systems on a single hardware platform (i.e. Windows Server 2008/2012, Linux, etc). By having each application within its own “virtual server,” you can prevent one application from impacting another application when upgrades or changes are made.

Disaster recovery, something Small Businesses do not think about very often, is also streamlined with a virtualized server setup. Instead of having to rebuild every machine with individual backups, a single image is stored, which makes restoration simple and efficient.

After getting your in-house server customized and configured to maximize your efficiency, you’re going to need to look into security. Security should be on the mind of every company. Many companies have sensitive information stored on their network, and the threat of unwanted access to privileged information has been on the rise throughout the decade. An important consideration is who will be maintaining the network, whether it be through physical upkeep or software updates. Many businesses do not have the IT staff onsite to handle this, so outsourcing these tasks is the only answer. TechITFast has the personnel and experience to make sure that your network is operating efficiently and securely.

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Making Technology Simple”

High Speed Internet across the United States

Assessing new technology for our nation’s schools, the quality of technology varies from district to district, school to school. President Obama revealed a new initiative, that in turn should help level technological expenses across the nation. Obama plans to have 99% of our US schools, grades from 3 – 12, access to high speed internet within 5 years. The internet, has been growing by leaps and bounds with various online apps, to heavy content filled websites. Schools are currently dealing with tremendously slow internet speeds, which hinder the education of students.

With the innovated ideas from companies like Google. Bringing Google fiber, 1 gigabit (Gb) speeds, to cities at a reasonable price seemed ideal. This massive increase of internet speed at a low price, is placing pressure on other competitive internet providers. Companies such as AT&T and Time Warner have both began upgrading their networks in different cities to compete against Google Fiber. Having high speed internet is not just used for large companies, but for other organizations such as industrial and educational facilities.

On June 18, 2013 the Los Angeles Board of Education approved a purchase of $30 million worth of IPads for their students. The initial step of $500 million to get California schools into the Tech age, in hopes to deliver better education for their attendees. Los Angeles has the second largest school district in the US. The main reason for these substantial spending efforts in LA, is to prepare students for the new technology-based curriculum known as “Common Core State Standards”, which is set to launch in the school year of 2014.

“We want to make sure that our classrooms are the classrooms of the future,” Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Jamie Aquino stated, “which I’d like to say, should be the classrooms of today.”.

California isn’t the only school district that is trying to place, technology into their school curriculum. A smaller school district in Mooresville, has incorporated going digital in their school district of 5,500 students.  The Mooresville Grade school district distributes one laptop to each student starting from 4^th grade, then trained teachers to apply the technology in their lesson.

“At this school, this has only been going on for a few years, but so far the results have been remarkable,” stated President Obama, to a crowd full of middle school students, teachers and administrators. “Graduation rates are up. Last year out of 115 school districts in North Carolina, you ranked in the bottom 10 in the amount of money you spend per student, but you ranked number two in student achievement.” said President Obama speaking at Mooresville middle school.

With understanding technology is the future of America, should schools use money to allow students to receive new IPads in hopes to achieve a better learning environment? One might say  it’s a waste of money, while others are testify these changes across the nation help our students future. Let’s look at some of the advantages of having not only high-speed internet available to the students, but the equipment to utilize the services. One aspect of having new technology available to students such as the iPad or other products like it; allows for books and reading material to remain current. With a digital book, an updated version would be available instantly. Paper wasted across the school district will significantly drop, which in turn saves money, tests would be able to be digital which would allow teachers to get test scores faster and free up time for them to concentrate on planning and implanting other educational assignments.

Setting up America to have high-speed, 1Gb internet access, across the country will allow for consumers to implement new practices. Will this increase performance in schools? Will the availability of having internet access become cheaper for the average consumer? Let’s just say a country in motion stays in motion and this is another great push in keeping America on that path.

What is the “CLOUD”?

What is “the Cloud”? It is the internet. Everybody uses it. However, the term “cloud computing” refers to the services that have enabled the cloud to become so prominent in everyday life. For decades, people/businesses from across the world have been using the cloud in a simplest way. Using the internet to send e-mails, school papers, research and more. All of the old services with a lot of extras, new product developments such as Netflix (video streaming), Dropbox, Google Apps, Groupon. These companies are all offering services via the cloud.

Sadly, the term “cloud-computing” does not have a specific definition to what it is, a true definition of what is the cloud can be argued for days. Lets discuss services in more detail.

Cloud-computing

Think of cloud computing in two stages. Stage one is the user of the computer/device; while stage two will be the centralized servers in one location, containing vital information.

During stage 2, the cloud computing system, will take care of your computing power by running the applications for you. A end user no longer needs a robust computer, to handle all the resource demands from programs. Only requirements for stage 1(user end) is a system interface software, which could be as simple as a web browser. Exp: accessing your web e-mail (yahoo, Gmail..) the information is not your actual computer that you see, it’s in the stage2(cloud) servers.

A cloud computing company will have several clients; consequently they will have a high demand for not only processing power, but storage as well. Most cloud providers will have twice the amount of storage devices to keep all clients information stored. In case one computer/server breaks down, the administrative system will retrieve your data on the backup machine. Voila; you will always, have access to your information anywhere there is internet access.

The cloud in today’s era has come a long way from what it used to be. As time progresses, more applications will be created to allow you to utilize its infinite amount of resources. There are constantly new ideas and new applications being brought to the table; as cloud services becomes more popular and in some cases, a necessary option for many businesses. The variety of applications that providers can offer to consumers’ will continue to grow.

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Customer Satisfaction is our Promise, Quality Service is our Guarantee”

Cloud vs. In-House Virtualization

As someone who owns or manages a business, we all know, at times situations can be tiresome and very complex. Many different business owners have came to a point, wondering if their server infrastructure is getting old and outdated.

Has your equipment been operating at its highest efficiency and now reaching the end of its lifespan? You’re at a point that so many other business owners/managers are facing. The option of, replacing their old server with new equipment or do you transition over to a cloud environment.

With all the buzz and talk towards opting out of an in-house server and going with the cloud approach. It’s hard to figure out what would be best for your business. The options are endless, and the cost for both setups, vary on a wide scale. So what do you do? Do you replace that old server with a new host, or migrate towards a cloud environment?

Let’s take a look at a variety of features a cloud-based server can offer over having your own in-house equipment. Current tech savvy professionals and a few articles state, moving to a cloud environment saves money, in addition to reducing overhead cost. This is used as a primary reason to entice companies to switch to the cloud, though in reality it’s just a major incentive. Large cloud providers are able to offer more computing power for a lower cost; leading to the value of doing more with less.

With cloud computing you have the ability to pay for what’s being used and not feel pushed ––(theoretically) to pay for unused services. This is great, for retail industries that need to fluctuate their network load demands for peak and non-peak seasons. Nobody wants to pay for something that’s unnecessary or paying for something twice.

Purchasing equipment is a particular headache of a owner/manager, making decisions about a server’s life expectancy and compatibility. The great thing with cloud providers, your company is always working with modern and efficient equipment. This alleviates the, difficult decisions of which network equipment to purchase. Lastly, maintaining software is another issue faced by the IT department. Studies have shown that a large part of an IT employees’ days are spent to achieve this mundane task, leaving very little time for any strategic planning.

In short if you’re a startup, small company, a company that is virtual or a company that has employees located around the world a cloud-based infrastructure is the right move. Completely eliminating the aspect of unforeseen cost that can occur in the future, which will lead to additional unnecessary expenses.

What if you’re a company that doesn’t have a network that fluctuates in demand as much.  Maybe you have a company that provides landscaping services, a shipping company, a specialized service provider, the list can go on. Suppose you have maybe 20 users within your business who require network access. Lets say you are satisfied with your existing applications, switching to a cloud could have an effect on existing applications from working effectively. You don’t employ a full/part time IT guy, but have a service contract with a reliable local IT firm.

Today’s technology has come a long way to allow you and your company to utilize the vast amount of trending options. Companies that opt into keeping or starting off with a in-house servers for their company becoming cheaper every year; along with new applications. Quite a few companies ranging from 2-75 users still use in-house servers and can see better cost savings and applications performance , than with the cloud.

What are some options when having an in-house server? Follow up with us for our next post, which will outline the effectiveness of in-house servers and virtualization.

Update: 5/29/2013 Take a look at another one of our blogs “What is the cloud”

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Customer Satisfaction is our Promise, Quality Service is our Guarantee”

Network Virtualization

Mobile provider trying to make a positve change to stay competitve

Are cell phone discounts coming to an end? Looking at the trend of today’s markets and understanding how the cell phone discounts work. It looks like our low cell phone prices will become a thing of the past. One company that has started this trend in the past year, here in the United States is T-mobile.

T-mobile’s new marketing campaign, created headed by the new CEO John Legere, are bring back the cool to the carrier. It is the fourth largest cell phone carrier in the US and looks like they are making efforts to get back in competitive position in the mobile industry by adding the iPhone 5 to their lineup.

Dan Hesse, a Sprint CEO, states that “because subsidies products continue to increase just keep going up the industry can’t afford to turnaround with a new product as often.”

Some indications of why companies might be moving over to this new approach, because Smartphone’s are becoming more durable, and innovation from one phone to the other are slowing.  As for example Apple’s iPhone 4S is out sells the newer Iphone 5 to this date a phone that was launched two years ago.

Realistically, mobile Smartphone prices are not going to skyrocket from our norm $199.99 to $500.00 and up over night.  We will most likely start seeing the prices rise year after year until the full price of phones are reached. Hopefully some carriers will keep some subsidies on new purchases. Only time will tell. For all of us waiting and holding off until our phones are completely broken before buying a new one. You may need to think about getting an upgrade, sooner than later.

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Customer Satisfaction is our Promise, Quality Service is our Guarantee”

NEW Multi-Angle Camera Views for Tech Smartphones for 2013

With smart phones, tablets becoming the norm in mobile devices, they are seen everywhere. Using hand-held devices to look at Facebook pages, people taking pictures and placing them on Instagram to share with their friends and the world.  The obsession with our mobile phones always being nearby, allows users to be able to capture events on camera more frequently than ever before. Sharing with friends a specific moment in our lives that normal text messages just can’t touch.

Being able to capture video from more than one camera angle takes home videos to the next level. Some even say a professional film crew standard can be achieved from your smart phone (subtracting the quality of the camera). Smart phone cameras, all now have the norm of 8 megapixels or higher, now all handheld cameras concentrating their efforts on video editing. A couple of mobile phone manufactures such as LG and HTC currently have a version of Muvee editing software already installed.

Thanks to companies like Nvidia Tegra or Qualcomm, their new generation processors for smart phones will pack enough power to be able to handle video for the next generation of 4k televisions. Taking the technology of today’s High Definition quality to more than three times the pixels overall.  With the next generation of cell phones increasing their processing power, cell phones will have brut power and speed to process high-definition movies. Of course the quality of the programs that will be made for these cell phone processors, will define  which would be the best product.

You don’t have to wait for these next generation of cell phones and processors to be released to the general public. There are some movie editors that allow you to edit movies from multiple angles directly on your mobile device. A product called switch cam allows multiple users the ability to capture video of the same event and share them on a unique server. Which then allows other users to take another video of the same event made by someone else and compile the video together. Though the choices for Android are slim, an app called Vyclone made to work with the iOS and android platform seems to catch the public eye the most.  This app allows other people you know to record a video and stream it together and pick a variety choice of angles for your movie.

What do you think of the trend of smart phones for video editing?

 

Here is a link to go check out how this program works, http://ak.c.ooyala.com/QzazNmNTo95JS-9nrd4mUclEJ3oiZsrj/DOcJ-FxaFrRg4gtGEwOnI5OjA4MTtA06 .

 

Tech IT Fast, Inc. “Customer Satisfaction is our Promise, Quality Service is our Guarantee”