Nissan launches Nismo smartwatch

Nissan has reportedly launched asmartwatch that monitors performance of both the vehicle and the driver.

The smartwatch called Nissan Nismo measures the wearer's heart rate, temperature and other biometrics along with tracking the car's performance, including average, speeds and fuel consumption.

According to the BBC, experts believe the watch could be an important step towards greater connectivity in cars as connectivity is the new battleground for car manufacturers.

The Nismo watch can be connected to the car's on-board computer system and provide data on vehicle performance and users can also receive tailored messages from Nissan through the gadget.

Marketing communications general manager at Nissan, Europe, Gareth Dunsmore said that wearable technology is fast becoming the next big thing and Nissan wants to take advantage of this innovative technology.

Editor-in-chief of What Car?, Chas Hallett, said that car connected watched could be even more useful than those offered by consumer electronic firms.

The Nissan Nismo smartwatch comes in three colours, can be controlled by two buttons on the screen and has a battery life of around a week, the report added.

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WikiLeaks server for sale on eBay

The server, which hosted WikiLeaks during its release of classified US State Department documents, is now on sale on eBay for a price of $25,200, as of Monday. 

The server belongs to the Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof, which was rented out to WikiLeaks in 2010. 

Wikileaks used that hardware to serve the so-called 'Collateral Murder' video, 2007 footage of US helicopter crew gunning down a group of men in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, apart from the Guantanamo Files, CNN reports. 

Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung said that all funds raised from the sale of the server will be donated to organizations in support of widening transparency, including Reporters Without Borders and the 5th of July Foundation. 

Karlung said that the server is a historical machine, a symbol for the freedom of internet and will be remembered forever. 

However, the buyers would have the 35 pounds of hardware wiped clean of any of the previous data through the 'Gutmann data sanitation method', which prevents data recovery by overwriting the hard drive 35 times. 

Karlung hopes to raise at least $50,000 by the time the bidding ends this week. 

The server, still in pristine condition, has survived numerous attempts by outside hackers trying to disrupt or cripple the server via denial-of-service attacks. 

Karlung further said that in light of the NSA scandal, the server should not go in the hands of the security agencies but to someone who protects the values of freedom of speech and the right for having one's own opinion, the report added.

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Amazon denies report of free smartphone

Amazon has quashed a report which suggested that the company may be in the process of bringing out a free smartphone to the market. As per a recent report by former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin, the online retailer was planning to bring out their long planned smartphone for free. Now, as per a new report by the same journalist, a spokesperson from Amazon has stated that there would be no smartphone from the company this year, and the phone at any point of time would not be free.

Amazon, which had made a foray into hardware with Kindle series of tablets and e-readers, has long been rumoured to be working on a smartphone.

The report about the free smartphone had raised eyebrows in tech circles since it can drastically alter marketing tactics for major manufacturers. In most markets, companies tie up with telecom operators to offer smartphones at subsidized rates.

The new report states that while the Amazon spokesperson refused to elaborate on his comment, he made it categorically clear that any smartphone from the company would not be available for free. There was also no word on the proposed pricing arrangements or discounts it may offer while marketing its alleged smartphone.

Amazon sells its Kindle range of tablets at cost, thus earning no profit from their sales. However, the company earns money via the apps, music, videos and books that users buy from these tablets.

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Continental teams up with IBM for self-driving cars

German auto parts maker Continental has announced that it is teaming up with US software giant IBM to develop systems that will eventually enable cars to drive by themselves.

Continental and IBM "want to jointly develop mobile connected vehicle solutions for automakers around the world," the German group's chief executive Elmar Degenhart told reporters on the sidelines of the IAA auto show which opens here this week.

The technology was aimed ultimately at "making automated driving a reality," he said.

There has been speculation in recent weeks that Continental was mulling cooperation with Google, which has long been working on driverless cars.

But Degenhart refused to be drawn into commenting on the rumours. "We're in touch with many companies," he said.

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Olympus bets big on mirrorless cameras

To stem the red ink on its loss-making camera division, Olympus has decided to rely on a format that so far has been a flop outside of its home turf in Japan. 

The company on Tuesday released the "OM-D E-M1", a mirrorless model Olympus says is the first of its kind to compete on quality with traditional single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras. 

Olympus is now hoping the E-M1, priced for the pro market at 145,000 yen ($1,500) for the body alone, will help it boost mirrorless and SLR sales by 24% to 7.3 million units to allow its camera business to finally break even for the first time in four years. 

The new model is the successor to Olympus's E-5, its last flagship SLR released in 2010. Executives are saying there are no current plans to develop more SLRs and the new camera likely signals the company's exit from a market that is dominated by Canon and Nikon. 

The E-M1 illustrates Olympus's dedication to the mirrorless format, heralded at its inception as a happy marriage between the size of a compact camera and the picture quality of an SLR. But the format has so far failed to connect with consumers outside of Japan, with most seeing it as an awkward compromise. 

Most consumers prefer smartphones for taking snaps when weight is an issue and opt for pricier SLRs when quality is a priority. 

Research company IDC originally projected the mirrorless segment to grow 31% in 2013 and to more than triple by 2017. But dramatically poor sales earlier this year prompted the company to change its forecast to a 1.2% drop this year and expansion of just 24% by 2017. 

Olympus admits that its overseas marketing has been lacking so far. 

"This is the kind of product that we have to carefully explain to individual consumers. It's not just a point-and-shoot that you can leave out on the shop floor and it sells by itself," Olympus President Hiroyuki Sasa said at the product launch in Tokyo. 

Tech bloggers who had been invited to test-drive the E-M1 in advance were effusive about the camera on Tuesday, praising its retro design, image quality and compatibility with all Olympus lenses, a first for the company's mirrorless models. 

But some criticized the camera's sluggish autofocus, a fault that has plagued mirrorless models and disqualified it for sports photography, thus barring it from a chunk of the pro market that Olympus is attempting to capture. 

Last year, the company's camera division lost 23.1 billion yen ($231.99 million) as compact camera sales shrank by a third and it shifted 6 percent fewer interchangeable lens camera sales, mostly mirrorless. 

In May, the company announced a plan to trim its camera division by cutting 30% of staff and whittling its production base to two factories from five. The camera division accounts for 15% of sales and is dwarfed by its profitable endoscopy business.

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Apps to automatically delete Facebook, Twitter posts

The Snapchat app popularized the concept of sending photos and videos that self-destruct in minutes and new apps do the same for posts on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. 

Smartphones and mobile apps have made sharing photos faster and easier than ever, but privacy has become a growing concern. Designers have created new apps because they said people want to control who sees their content and for how long on social media sites. 

"Most of these ephemeral media apps have been focused on private messaging. But this is more to do with control and cleaning things up so that the average user can't see what you've posted in the past on social networks," said Pierre Legrain, a developer of Spirit for Twitter, an app that can auto-delete Twitter posts. 

Secret.li, an iPhone app, lets users can take a photo with their iPhone's camera and post it to Facebook knowing it will be automatically deleted an hour, day, or week after it is posted. 

"Publishing is so easy but privacy is so obscure," said Deepak Touwari, co-founder of Secret.li, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

After taking a photo with the app, users can decide who they want to share it with and for how long. Recipients will see a scrambled or hidden version of the photo, which they can open and view completely in the Secret.li Facebook or iPhone apps. After the photo is deleted it also disappears from Facebook and Secret.li. 

"We see it more like a photo shedder application," said Touwari, adding the motivation behind the app was privacy. 

"(Social networks) are great keepers of memory but very poor keepers of context," he said. 

Another app for iPhone and Android, called Facebook Poke, which was created by Facebook, allows users to send their friends messages, photos and videos and decide how long they can view it. 

Spirit, a web app for Twitter released last week, lets members of the micro-blogging site add a hashtag to their tweet so it will auto-delete. Users authorize their account and add hashtags such as "#30m" or "#10d", which will delete their tweets after 30 minutes and 10 days respectively. 

Legrain, a former Twitter employee based in Palo Alto, California, said the motivation for the app was privacy. Part of the value of Spirit for Twitter, he added, is its ability to filter out content that loses accuracy or relevancy over time. 

"If you're a meteorologist or weatherman tweeting about an unfolding hurricane, you want the info on Twitter to be as relevant and accurate so tweets from half an hour (ago) shouldn't be there," he explained. 

Legrain attributes the popularity of the apps to the growing privacy concerns among consumers. 

"With the ongoing privacy scares, people are thinking about what they put out there now and looking for ways to have more control," he said. "People now feel they have slightly more control than they had yesterday," he added.

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‘Reach out to consumers via mobile coupons‘

Since selling his 26% stake in Dentsu India in 2011, adman Sandeep Goyal, 50, has taken the CAT exam, launched a food channel on TV and floated Mogae Media for venturing into the nascent mobile marketing and advertising sector. In a conversation with Gulveen Aulakh , Goyal said his company is inventing ways to monetise the mobile phone. Edited excerpts: 

How does mobile couponing work?

Companies spend large amounts on TV and print media marketing campaigns to prompt customers to buy a product. Today , it can be done far easier and efficiently using mobile phones. This is how it works: A brand sends out coupons to consumers using a telecom operator's database. The coupon can be sent to all consumers in a specific geography, say NCR or just Gurgaon, or while the consumer is entering a mall using a geofenced solution that serves the coupon in real time. The consumer then takes coupon to the merchant and gets a discount. The MoCoupon system reimburses the merchant on the brandowner's behalf via the mobile money account. 

But what if one doesn't have data connection?

You don't need a smartphone or data connection. Mobile coupons can be sent as an SMS or USSD with an alpha-numeric code that merchants can authenticate. 

What benefits do corporates see in associating with mobile couponing?

MoCoupons allows brands to access consumer base of the mobile phone company and target consumersby geography, time-of-day , location, ARPU , handset and a host of other tags. We have signed up 1,500 grocers in Delhi, which will swell to 2,500-3 ,000 by end September across NCR. 

How will customers benefit from couponing?

Customers (who are not on DND) will receive offers or discounts apart from the ones offered to other customers. Recently, a pizza brand used MoCoupons in a select business district of Gurgaon where customers got a dessert free with the pizza. We are working with a large MNC bank for a promotion at Palladium Mall, Mumbai, where the bank's credit card users get an extra 10%-20 % off at 40 participating outlets.

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