New smartphone app to help you save money

A new smartphone app that keeps tabs on your expenses, creates a monthly budget and suggests ways to curb over-spending has been developed.

On the basis of the financial information you provide to 'HelloWallet' while signing up, the application will instantly show you recent transactions, accounts and a budget summary.

HelloWallet also helps you determine where to trim excess spending so you can work towards saving more money, 'Mashable' reported.

The app also creates a budget to help you work toward your financial goals in addition to providing spending insights.

Hellowallet adds all of your financial information - income, checking, savings, credit cards, healthcare and investments, the company said on its website.

It connects to your banks to retrieve balances and transactions to keep information current and creates budgets and analyses trends, it said.

The application keeps tabs on your spending on its own, keeping you in the loop with the help of alerts and reminders, the report said.

HelloWallet also has a unique feature to help you reduce your interest rates and other fees that can add up to big spending.

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6 gadgets to get you fitter

The festive season is always fun. It's the time for family and friends; there are weddings and parties to attend. What joy! But there's a downside to the revelry. Before we even realize it, we're sleeping later than usual, rising later too, and our diets go for a toss. Our pants get that little bit tighter, and blouses need some opening up at the seams...

Well, the celebrations are going to continue well into January, but we don't need to wait till the New Year to make resolutions towards healthier living. Here are some cool tech toys that'll encourage you to exercise and help you to stay fit...

One step at a time



Exercise is not only about sweating it out at a gym, or jogging for kilometres on end. To ease yourself into a fitter lifestyle, you can start by climbing stairs, walking whenever possible, and involving yourself in some sort of physical activity. And this is where the Beurer AS50 Activity Sensor comes in. The device, which also works when stored in a handbag, keeps track of all your movements and tells you if you're doing enough to stay healthy. It calculates how many calories you've burned, and advises you whether you need more exercise. Its free EasyFit software for your PC automatically logs your fitness data - and if you're meeting your target, the device rewards you with encouraging smileys. How cute!

Price: Rs 6,000

Also consider: Omron Step Counter HJ-313-AP ( Rs 3,000), Portronics Health Key 3D Pedometer ( Rs 1,250)

Scales and measures



If you've been indulging in mithais, chocolates and scrumptious dinner spreads, the Withings WS-50 Smart Body Analyzer can gently nudge you back to a healthy lifestyle. Besides your weight, this high-tech scale measures your Body Mass Index (BMI), heart rate, and also the air quality in your bedroom to warn you of excessive carbon dioxide build-up.

The WS-50 supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connections, and stores up to eight password-protected profiles - enough for the entire family. You only need to weigh yourself once every morning for all your data to be sent to the free app on your smartphone or tablet.

Withings Health Mate, available for Android and iOS devices, provides a precise history of past weigh-ins, fat mass, and recommended heart-rate values. Women may hate it for its candid readings, and men with paunches will barely be able to see its display in the beginning. Nonetheless, the WS-50 is a great device to coax you into sticking to your diet, and working out some more.

Price: Rs 19,500

Also consider: Withings Wireless Scale WS-30 ( Rs 11,200), Salter 9124 Full Body Analyser Scale ( Rs 5,200)

It's all on the wrist



The Fitbit Flex is a simple-looking device that's capable of some complex tasks. This water-proof wristband tracks number of strides, distance covered, calories burned, and uses LEDs to show your progress, with each of its five lights representing 20 per cent of your goal. Its free online tools - and apps for Android and iOS - allow you to follow your progress through graphs and charts. You can log your workouts and weight, create a food plan to eat smarter, and before you know it, you'll have a complete picture of your progress.

At night, the wristband measures sleep quality. Its online Fitbit dashboard reveals how long you slept and the number of times you woke up, to help you learn how to sleep more soundly. Flex also has a silent alarm that gently vibrates to wake you at your desired time.

The band automatically syncs your data to your computer or smartphone via its wireless sync dongle or Bluetooth to give you real-time access to your stats throughout the day.

The best part, this band shares its data seamlessly with over 30 popular health apps, including MyFitnessPal, LoseIt!, SparkPeople, Sleep Debt, Microsoft HealthVault and FitStar. And if your friends have a Fitbit Flex band too, you can challenge and compete with them on Fitbit.com. Yes, this band does all of this and more. All you have to do is put in the exercise.

Price: Rs 6,600

Fits like a sock



Now if you plan on some serious jogging and walking, it pays to be kitted just right. And the Nike Flyknit range of shoes is probably one of the lightest pairs of footwear you'll find.

The Flyknit marries the age-old craft of knitting with high-tech fibres and pressure maps of the foot to result in a shoe that fits snugly like a sock, but with just the right amount of support and flexibility. In fact, over time, the shoes take on the characteristics of your foot, so the more you wear it, the better it fits.

What's uber neat, however, is that a Size 9 Free Flyknit weighs just 207g. It's light all right, and it will help you shed some weight as well.

Price: Rs 12,000 onwards

Watch your heart



The Suunto M1 is more than just a trendy timepiece. Strap the included sensor belt around your chest before you start exercising, and then navigate to the Heart Rate mode on the watch. Within seconds, you'll see your cardio fitness levels displayed on your wrist. The hi-tech M1 displays your heart-rate zone—calculated after measuring your 'maximum' and 'resting' heart rate—to help you exercise better, whether it is to develop endurance, aerobic capacity, or your cardiovascular system.

It maintains a log of your activity, and also gives you a real-time reading of the calories you've burned while you work out. In keeping with an active lifestyle, this fitness timepiece is engineered to operate in extreme temperatures, between -10°C to +50°C, and is water-resistant up to 30m. Indeed, this hard worker promises to get the job done. The question is, can you keep up?

Price: Rs 9,500

Also consider: Polar FT 7 Heart Rate Monitor ( Rs 9,000)

Look ma, no ropes



Skipping rope has many health benefits. It's a great fat-buster (helping you shed up to 450 calories in just half an hour). It promotes cardio-vascular activity, and even fights osteoporosis by boosting bone density. But skipping indoors isn't advised: You'd need a fair amount of room so you don't knock stuff off tables - or worse, tangle the rope in your ceiling fan.

The Portronics Wireless Skip takes care of these problems. This portable, battery-operated gizmo sports a digital panel that measures the numbers of skips, as well as calories burnt. It allows you to pre-set your workout, and beeps accordingly. And since it's actually rope-free, you can use it almost anywhere and at any time. The best part, you don't even have to bother about tripping when skipping!

Price: Rs 1,799

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BlackBerry starts offering free BB10 apps

Canadian handset makerBlackBerry is betting on the apps ecosystem to turn around its fortunes with free and discounts on apps across categories like games, music and productivity for users of its BB10 platform.

"BlackBerry is kicking off the winter festive season with a variety of offers on some of its most popular apps on the BlackBerry World. The offers will roll out throughout the month of December 2013," a BlackBerry spokesperson told.

He added that the offer would be available to users of handsets like Q5, Q10, Z10 and Z30, which run on its BB10 operating system across the world. The company does not disclose the number of its users. Under the first offer, BlackBerry will offer one free apps each day between December 1 and December 25.

"One free app per day from the likes of Angry Birds, Pacemaker and Monopoly would be available for free download for a 24 hour period," the spokesperson said. Under the second offer, BlackBerry will launch its 'Hello Winter $0.99 Sale', where content will be offered at the discounted price during the entire month of December.

"BlackBerry World has over 1,40,000 apps for BB10 OS. India, in particular, has been a robust growth market for us from an apps standpoint, so I am confident that we will see tremendous traction with these offers," the spokesperson said.

According to sources, 27-30% of its sales in India is of devices powered by the BB10 platform.

In India, the four BB10-powered devices are priced between Rs 22,000 and Rs 44,000.

The Canadian firm has been facing stiff competition from other smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung as sales have declined over the past few months. It is now placing big bets on apps, including taking its popular messaging service BBM to other operating systems, aimed at raking in additional revenue in the coming months.

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Snapchat finds its niche with disappearing messages

 

For 13-year-old Coral Fairchild, Snapchat trumps old-style text messaging as the way to socialize with friends in the mobile Internet age.

The northern California girl adds mustaches to faces in pictures or speech bubbles using touch-screen features that allow people to draw on Snapchat images being sent.

"You can take a regular selfie and customize it into a princess or a unicorn or whatever you want," she explained. "It's just a more fun way to communicate."

But if the message turns out to be too embarrassing, no problem. It will disappear in seconds.

The Southern California-based service has gained notoriety for the app that lets people send smartphone photos or video snippets timed to self-destruct 10 seconds or less after being opened.

Snapchat has rocketed to popularity since the initial app was released in September of 2011. Its growth initially sparked fears that, in a world of selfies, it would provide a false sense of security for teenagers thinking of sexting risque photos.

That concern appears unfounded, according to Matthew Johnson, director of education at Canadian not-for-profit digital literacy organization MediaSmarts.

"There is no evidence that Snapchat is being used any more recklessly than any other message service," Johnson said.

"Young people expect their friends and peers to do the right thing and rely on social pressure when it goes wrong," he continued, citing research done by MediaSmarts.

"In general, their instincts are very good, and they have in many ways a better handle on the social and emotional aspects of these technologies than we tend to think."

Conversations based on ephemeral images also reduce the potential for misunderstanding by providing expressions and other visual cues absent in email or basic text messages, according to Johnson.

"Many adults can relate to reading an email and not knowing whether the person who sent it was being angry or sarcastic," he said.

"Move that to text messaging where there is a limit to the number of characters you can use and the back-and-forth is faster, and there is always the possibility of something exploding because someone misunderstands something."

Along with providing pictures, typically selfies showing expressions, the mere fact someone is using Snapchat usually sends a signal that they are being playful and not serious, according to Johnson.

"Snapchat is essentially one big Smiley," he said, referring to a well-known happy-face emoticon.

The startup made news when the Wall Street Journal reported it rejected a $3 billion offer from Facebook, presumably because its founders believed it would be worth more than that.

And other reports said Snapchat delivers some 400 million photos or videos daily from users, although the number is believed to count each time a recipient opens a file, possibly counting some messages more than once.

Snapchat skews young due to the fact it is aimed at people who prefer messaging from mobile gadgets.

Snapchat chief Evan Spiegel was recently quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that 70 per cent of Snapchat users are women.

The company's in-house sociology researcher, Nathan Jurgenson, sees the service as a natural place for pictures that won't return to haunt people.

"It's easy to underestimate the significance of injecting more ephemerality into social media," Jurgenson said in a blog post.

"Part of the Snapchat appeal is that it serves as a social cue that something shouldn't be saved, not that it can't," he said.

"Young people say they will use it for something silly or a little embarrassing that they still want to share just with friends."

Jurgenson said the fact that the messages are timed to destruct means people will give them more attention: "When you look fast, you look hard."

Snapchat recently added a "Stories" feature that strings together a series of "snaps" to create a narrative that is available for repeated viewing by recipients for 24 hours.

But even with though the messages disappear, it is quite easy to copy Snapchat messages or pictures before they vanish, and research shows that young people are aware of that, according to Johnson.

Johnson expected the merging of pictures and text to become the new standard in messaging, while Coral Fairchild portrayed Snapchat as the "great next step" in mobile communications.

"I don't Snapchat anyone I don't know; that would be weird," Coral Fairchild said, noting she would make an exception for Harry Styles of mega-popular boy band One Direction.

"He wouldn't get my ugly faces, unless we were best friends."

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Hackers latest target: SmartTVs, security cameras

Besides PCs and mobile phones, internet-connected devices like smartTVs, routers and security cameras are also now vulnerable to attacks from cybercriminals, security software provider Symantec said.

With millions of devices now connecting to the internet and in many cases, running embedded operating systems like Android, these devices are becoming a magnet for cybercriminals to hack into, Symantec director, technology sales (India and Saarc), Tarun Kaura told.

"The number of internet-connected devices is growing and studies show there could be about 50 billion connected devices by 2020. The threat landscape has grown as security researchers have already demonstrated attacks against smart televisions, medical equipment and security cameras," he added. He stated that while these newer devices may not hold information themselves, they are often a gateway to access the network and access enterprise data.

Symantec discovered a new Linux worm that is capable of attacking a range of small, internet-enabled devices like home routers, set-top boxes, security cameras and and even industrial control systems in addition to traditional computers. Although no attack against these devices has been found in the wild, many users may not realize they are at risk, since they are unaware they own devices that run Linux.

"Many companies making these devices don't even realize they have an oncoming security problem. These systems are not only vulnerable to an attack, they also lack notification methods for consumers and businesses," he said.

Asked what steps users can take to protect themselves, Kaura said the basic requirement is to use the in-built password protection. "Most people continue to use default passwords like '1234' or '0000', which is easy to guess," Kaura said adding that software vendors are now working on how to notify customers and get patches for these new vulnerabilities.

According to research firm Gartner, the global security software revenue grew 7.9% to $19.2 billion in 2012 over the previous year as evolution of new threats and working practices like bring your own device (BYOD) drives spending on security.

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Is Jeff Bezos' Amazon to be the 'next Walmart'?

Jeffrey Preston Bezos may probably have the most recognisable laugh — "a guttural roar that sounds like a cross between a mating elephant seal and a power tool," as Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Brad Stone describes it — among America's tech titans, but don't let that fool you. Few bosses may be harder to please than he.

The founder-CEO of Amazon. com finds it baffling that others cannot match his intellect and once told an employee who wondered when Amazon would have better worklife balance that the company may not be the right place for her. Amazon's revenues, which in 2012 were $61.09 billion, have been growing at an enviable clip, but the 19-year-old Seattle-based company has struggled with profitability.

It lost $39 million last year, while Google made $10.74 billion on revenues of $50.2 billion. But this is not surprising to Amazon's shareholders, who have bought into Bezos's long-term vision, driving up the company's market value to $175 billion, as Amazon has moved from an online seller to a marketplace to cloud service provider to tablet maker.

Stone's recent book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon captures this contradiction methodically alongside Amazon's many battles, including with publishers, eBay and Apple. Earlier this month, the book won the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award. Excerpts from an email interview with Stone:

When did the idea to write this book occur? How long did researching and writing take?

I had the notion of writing this book years ago, but there was not much interest in telling the Amazon story. It didn't quite seem as interesting as, say, Google or Facebook. When the Walter Isaacson book on Steve Jobs came out, I saw that not only was there a big appetite for books about the tech icons changing our world but that the Amazon story kept getting more and more interesting. So I went for it. The entire process took about two years.

Amazon has been a listed company for 15 years but still it is not making enough money. Why then are investors still backing it?

I would say Amazon's profits are there, but they are invisible. It has demonstrated glimpses of this in previous years, such as 2010 or 2011. But it has telegraphed the fact that it sees great opportunity in the future of the internet and e-commerce and that it will continue to invest in its operations. Over the past two years, Amazon CFO Tom Skutak has said the company is in an "investment cycle," as it has been releasing new hardware, entering new product categories like groceries and building fulfilment centres all over the world.

It is long-term and shareholders understand all this. They are not concerned with the bottom line as much as market share growth and free cash flow. They are investing in what they believe will be the "next Walmart". So far, Amazon's top line growth has hardly slowed at all, so there are plenty of reasons to remain very optimistic if you are an Amazon shareholder.

How has Bezos managed to resist investors' attempts till now to get someone else to run the company?

There was only one moment of doubt — in late 1999 and 2000, around the time of the dotcom bust. Amazon's directors wondered if Amazon was losing too much money and whether Jeff had the leadership abilities to run a big company. Jeff himself may have doubted himself at that time. But ultimately he decided he wanted to be deeply involved, and the chief operating officer of the company left Amazon after a year.

The board might have considered trying to replace Jeff — though several denied it to me — but ultimately he and his family owned such a large percentage of the company that it would have been difficult to achieve. And now of course Jeff is considered one of the greatest living CEOs in business.

When you compare Bezos to Steve Jobs in your book why do you say Bezos's propaganda about Amazon is 'persuasive but ultimately unsatisfying'? What about Jobs's propanganda?

First, I'm not sure Steve's "reality distortions" were any more persuasive than Jeff 's. Both are relentless advocates for their companies and wear their passions on their sleeves. Jeff talks about wanting Amazon to be the most customer-focused company in the world. I described that as unsatisfying — for me as a journalist, at least — because no company would ever describe itself as not being customer focused.

Jeff speaks directly to his customers; it's disciplined public relations. But to truly understand Amazon, we have to look for new ways to describe it. In a way Jeff Bezos can not effectively characterize his company, since he is such a devout proponent for it. It's why we need outside accounts like The Everything Store.

You quote Bezos as saying there is 'no aha moment' in how an idea is birthed and that it's a messy process. The quote seems to imply he believes in the collaborative nature of ideation.

Jeff clearly drove many of the big ideas at Amazon, particularly over its first 15 years. Colleagues described him to me as an idea machine capable of spouting new notions nearly every day. Some were way, way ahead of their time — the idea to stock two of any products in a fulfilment centre, to meet any possible customer request. But Jeff also constantly and relentlessly challenged how he and his colleagues thought of their own business.

Such flexibility spawned the effort that gave birth to the Kindle and to Amazon Web Services. Clearly many of his colleagues were deeply involved and responsible for bringing those visions to fruition. But unlike the situation at many other Silicon Valley companies, where the creation was more collaborative, Jeff really did drive the vision at Amazon.

 

Apple seems to be feeling Jobs's absence and since Amazon is as closely identified with Bezos as Apple was with Jobs, how difficult would it be for Amazon to envision a post-Bezos scenario?

All founder-led companies ultimately have to face this difficult transition. It is a huge challenge for Amazon because the company is tuned to the way he thinks and how he processes information. It is also not clear to me that there is anyone so fiercely intelligent and versatile to run not just a retail business but a digital services business [the Kindle] and an enterprise business [Amazon Web services]. That said, Jeff is about to turn 50 years in January and likely has many decades ahead running Amazon.

You say Amazon still wants to have a brick-and-mortar presence. Why? Any idea what form it will take?

It is something they have always explored. For now it is not quite clear what unique innovations they might bring to it — and how they could get the same return on invested capital by building actual physical locations. At the same time, it's clear they are searching for new retail channels for their growing family of hardware devices.

Soon Amazon might have phones and set-top boxes. These are devices that people want to handle in person, and Amazon may not be able to rely on retailers like Best Buy that view Amazon as a rival. To consider it further, the idea of an Amazon store is interesting. Microsoft and Apple can sell only their own products in their stores.

Amazon could sell its Kindle devices while also selling a sampling of popular products from across its site. Who knows, they might use physical locations as hubs for a budding Amazon Fresh grocery business. I'm speculating, but never underestimate the ability of Bezos and his team to try bold things.

Amazon has often been accused of using its might to its advantage in relation to competitors and publishers? Do you agree this is no different from a large retail chain squeezing out momand-pop stores or a large company leveraging its size to get better deals from its suppliers?

I agree. I endeavored in the book to put Amazon in the broader context of retail and large discounters over the past century. Success of these companies — Walmart, Target, Tesco, Woolworths, all the way back to A&P grocery chain in the US — usually has a damaging effect on businesses around them. Perhaps with Amazon the effect is a bit different, because small retailers can also sell on the Amazon marketplace. Ultimately Amazon is a weather pattern that disturbs everything around it.




Bezos warns his executives against 'narrative fallacy'. Did you also have to battle it while telling Amazon's story?

Absolutely. The narrative fallacy suggests humans have a biological inclination to simplify stories and leave out the complexity and chaos. There was probably no way to avoid it — I was writing about lots of events that happened simultaneously, such as the emergence of the Kindle and Amazon's cloud business.

Yet I was attempting to string them out into an organized narrative. So I tried to concede that inevitable flaw in the prologue and then I plunged ahead anyway.

Do you think it's too early to gauge Bezos's legacy and what do you think it would be?

It's not too early. Amazon is 20 years old and has already changed the way people shop, read and the way other companies run their computer infrastructure. It has been one of the defining corporations of the Internet age and all of it springs from Jeff's ingenuity and relentless drive. Right now, Jeff 's legacy as one of the most important businessmen at the dawn of the Internet age is secure. That said, he might accomplish even more.

If his space company Blue Origin fulfils its mission of lowering the cost of access to space; or if Amazon reaches the size of Walmart one day; or if Bezos himself turns around the Washington Post and finds a role for newspapers in the new media environment, we may think of him as one of the greatest businessmen ever.

 

Few tech companies seem to have striven so much for 'value to the customer' at the cost of its employees' welfare (Bezos's scoffing at work-life balance) and its profitability. What do you think are the takeaways?

I don't think I would quite agree with that. I don't think value to the customer is achieved at the expense of employee's welfare. I think Bezos and Co have created a driving culture that rewards hard work and constant innovation and big ideas. The culture suits some people; it does not suit many others. There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon.

Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do. Continually motivate employees so that they never get too complacent — see Yahoo, AOL and many other Internet companies for evidence of what happens when they do. Regarding profitability, Bezos was smart to train his investors from early on.

In his first letter to shareholders he said he would favour free cash flow over profits, and he has done it. Not many other tech leaders can get away with that. But Bezos can, because he described his philosophy early on and he has been proven right again and again.

Do you think Amazon Web Services is what will deliver profits for the company in the immediate future?

Revenues, certainly, but profits perhaps not. They see lots of growth opportunities in "the cloud" and are expanding rapidly, layering on features and adding infrastructure and expensive data centres. Right now rivals like IBM and Microsoft are scrambling to catch up with Amazon, so I can't imagine Amazon would be comfortable resting on its laurels. They are reinvesting in the business.

Has anything happened since Bezos wrote back to Ted Jorgensen, Bezos's biological father who, till you met him, did not know what his son had become? Did they meet?

I do not believe it has progressed past that email.

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Andriod app Homely for house property search

Trivandrum-based IT company Mind Media Innovations has launched an Andriod application   'Homely', which helps users to find house properties.

The application 'Homely' lets users browse through properties by major builders and find their dream home, the company said in a statement.

The main attraction of 'Homely' is that it lets you find homes by specific builders as well as your requirements such as location, amenities and budget, it said.

"There are many home-finder websites in the market but 'Homely' gives users the edge of searching for homes in their smartphones from anywhere, anytime," Mind Media Innovations MD Narayanan Nair said.

The app provides users with details of a property such as floor plans, image gallery, amenities, number of bedrooms, etc.

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Computers can play chess but can they negotiate business deals?

 

The game of chess and the process of business negotiation share many similarities. Two sides engage in a strategic dance toward their objectives. Back and forth, each player's move affects the other's next move in an exciting tangle of calculation and strategy.

As technology has advanced, computers have been learning how to play human games. IBM's Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997. Unlike chess, however, business negotiations involve the deeply human elements of collaboration, emotion, language, subjectivity and trust, all of which have to be taken into account. That's why few would have anticipated that, only 15 years after Deep Blue's victory, computers would be playing a bigger role in the much more complex game of negotiation.

Nowadays computers can promote win-win strategies and even trust in online sales negotiations. For a recent paper, which I wrote in collaboration with Yinping Yang of A-Star, Nuno Delicado of Pluris and Andrew Ortony of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., we found that trust can be built between humans and computers by adding a simple dynamic into the mix: taking the initiative of putting a single priority on the table, explaining the motivation to do so and inviting one's counterpart to do the same.

While face-to-face negotiations can be of benefit if the individuals involved trust each other, trust also is important in online interactions. Our experiments suggested that, by volunteering information that it need not disclose, a computer agent can alleviate mistrust in humans engaging with it.

We know that, in human-to-human negotiations, if a win-win negotiation move is adopted, such as proactively sharing interests, this can yield more value. There are many advantages to win-win strategies: long-term business relationships, efficient processes and more value in the outcomes for both sides. What is fascinating in our findings is the discovery that what works in human-to-human negotiations also seems to work in computer-to-human negotiations. These findings have practical implications for companies using software in negotiations.

We conducted a multi-issue negotiation in which a computer agent was the seller and humans the buyer of laptop computers. The machine had four issues in its negotiation arsenal: price, quantity, service level and delivery terms. In one condition the computer honestly revealed its No. 1 priority, price. In this condition, however, even if the human counterparts revealed their preference back, the computer did nothing to maximize the preferences of the human counterpart. Interestingly, the perception among the human participants was that it did.

There was a marked difference in the number of agreements when the computer was proactive in sharing its priority, with 22 out of 27 possible agreements, compared to 14 out of 27 when it was not. Similar results were reflected in the satisfaction of the "buyer." The majority of participants also responded to the computer's invitation to share their priorities to align with its four issues.

Even more interesting was the discovery that distrusting humans came on board with the machine once it put one of its cards on the table, shared its intention to collaborate and invited the other party to reciprocate. In this case "Machiavellian" personality types, who are less trusting, reacted similarly to those with more trusting personalities during the negotiation. This suggests that, if you make the right moves and share information that can help both parties become better off throughout the negotiation, you can normalize even distrustful counterparts. This cuts the need to try to profile your opponent before a negotiation.

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Twitter halo fades after listing: Facebook, LinkedIn hold ground

After a big-bang listing, Twitter shares seem to be losing its fizz while social media rivals Facebook and LinkedIn are holding the fort amid portfolio churn by investors.

In a dream debut, microblogging site Twitter's stock popped up on NYSE debut on November 7 and closed with 73 per cent gain for investors who subscribed to its initial public offering price of $26 apiece.

The firm, which lets people post 140-character messages, raised $1.8 billion in a keenly watched IPO.

Skeptics were left speechless as the valuation of the firm, which is yet to make profit after 7 years of existence, soared to over $25 billion even as tech firms like Facebook and LinkedIn ended 2-4 per cent lower that day.

However, the momentum in Twitter shares seem to be falling already and analysts have begun to question the company's current valuations vis-a-vis Facebook and LinkedIn, arguing on better margins and larger size for the two.

After closing at $44.90 on November 7, Twitter share price has failed to reach new highs and has entered December with a last traded price of $41.57 apiece -- an over seven per cent drop from first day closing.

Along with a knock on share price, volumes have sharply dried up too. From 117 million shares traded on debut day, daily number of shares traded stand at about 6 million at present.

In contrast, the overall US markets have inched up during this period as economic recovery picked up pace. Besides, Facebook and LinkedInstocks have also begun to warm up.

Mark Zuckerberg-led social networking giant's shares haven't moved up from $47 levels on the day of Twitter's fantastic debut but investors have not lost money in Facebook.

In fact, Facebook IPO investors are sitting on good profits since its listing in May, 2012 at around $38 levels.

"A multiple (of Twitter) that far above its peer group of 17.4 times leaves little to the imagination; there seems to us no upside (to price) scenario not already more than included in Twitter's implied growth outlook...," research firm Hudson Square said in a note to clients.

Professional online networking portal LinkedIn has already landed gains for investors if they bought its shares instead of Twitter on Day 1 of microblogging site's listing.

From $211 apiece, LinkedIn now trades six per cent higher at $224.

It's been a dream run for LinkedIn IPO investors after the issue hit markets in 2011. From $45 levels, the stock has more than quadrupled in less than 4 years.

Experts feel in the medium term, business-wise Facebook and LinkedIn are better-placed than Twitter.

"We expect Twitter's average annual revenue per user to amount to $2.8 in 2013, which stands significantly below our expectation for Facebook and LinkedIn. While the figure for Facebook is expected to hit $6.5, the same for LinkedIn will reach $8.3. It is evident that Twitter has a long way to go in terms of monetising its platform," analyst firm Trefis said in a report this month.

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Meet K5, a night watchman on wheels

The night watchman of the future is 5-feet tall, weighs 300 pounds and looks a lot like R2-D2 - without the whimsy. And will work for $6.25 an hour.
A company in California has developed a mobile robot, known as the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, as a safety and security tool for corporations, as well as for schools and neighborhoods.
"We founded Knightscope after what happened at Sandy Hook," said William Santana Li, a co-founder of that technology company, now based in Sunnyvale, California. "You are never going to have an armed officer in every school." But what is for some a technology-laden route to safer communities and schools is to others an entry point to a post-Orwellian, post-privacy world.
"This is like R2-D2's evil twin," said Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, a privacy rights group based in Washington.
And the addition of such a machine to the labour market could force David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, to rethink his theory about how technology wrecks the middle class.
The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25, and $8 in California. Coming in substantially under those costs, Knightscope's robot watchman service raises questions about whether artificial intelligence and robotics technologies are beginning to assault both the top and the bottom of the workforce as well.
The K5 is the work of Li, a former Ford Motor Company executive, and Stacy Dean Stephens, a former police officer in Texas. Knightscope plans to trot out K5 at a news event on Thursday — a debut that is certain to touch off a new round of debate, not just about the impact of automation, but also about how a new generation of mobile robots affects privacy.
The co-founders have chosen to position their robot not as a job killer, but as a system that will upgrade the role of security guard, even if fewer humans are employed.
"We want to give the humans the ability to do the strategic work," said Li in a recent telephone interview, describing a highly skilled analyst who might control a herd of security robots.
The robot, which can be seen in a promotional video, is still very much a work in progress. The system will have a video camera, thermal imaging sensors, a laser range finder, radar , air quality sensors and a microphone . It will also have a limited amount of autonomy, such as the ability to follow a preplanned route. It will not, at least for now, include advanced features like facial recognition, which is still being perfected.
Knightscope settled in Silicon Valley because it was hoping for a warm reception from technology companies that employ large security forces to protect their sprawling campuses.
Over all, there are about 1.3 million private security guards in the United States, and they are low paid for the most part, averaging about $23,000 a year, according to the Service Employees International Union. Most are not unionized, so they are vulnerable to low-cost automation alternatives.

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