Category Archives: Technology

Selecting a Smartphone is as difficult as leasing a car

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iphone 6s plus

The new iPhone 6s plus

2 years ticked off the calendar and it was time to look into replacing the old iPhone 5s with a new and improved iPhone.

We’ve been with AT&T for the past 5 or 6 years and since several of of the family members on our plan wouldn’t be eligible to upgrade their phones for 6 or 7 more decades (kidding) it seemed logical to remain with AT&T

This time I was interested in the larger 6S Plus unit as my old trusty iPad 1.0 was obsolete as was my Garmin GPS so it seemed to make more sense to replace the iPhone, the iPad and the Garmin with a single device even though this phone is extremely large.

Deciding on the model of phone and amount of memory (64 GB) was the easy part.

The difficult part was figuring out the best financial option available. In the past I would just pony up the $300 or $400 and walk out with the phone but doing that now would mean a larger monthly connection bill of $25 as AT&T really wants you to use their NEXT program, which is essentially a lease program.

After having my team of Accountants evaluate every possible financial scenario it worked out to be about $250 cheaper over 24 months to go with the NEXT program but the kicker is that I have to return the phone down the road. So like a leased car, AT&T has factored in some residual value and hopefully they won’t penalize me for excessive road rash.

Now onto the insurance. If you’re like me then you really hate to buy insurance but sadly it is necessary to have some sort of protection on these little devices as it will be 2 years before I am eligible to run through this thrilling process again with what I can only assume will be the iPhone 7s extra plus.

My last experience with AT&T’s insurance at $6.99 month wasn’t a pleasant one as the coverage for the broken screen was pretty terrible and there was an additional cost (deductible) of $120 so after 24 months of the AT&T insurance with 1 broken screen you can expect a bill of $288 plus some major hoops to jump through to file a claim. A better alternative, in my opinion, is Apple Care+, for $129 plus $99 if the screen breaks. That’s a savings of $60 over 2 years but more importantly it is super easy to get service by Apple either over the phone or at one of the Apple stores.  It’s worth noting that the AT&T stores, at least the one that I went to, really want you to buy their insurance and don’t have Apple Care available, which can be obtained at Apple.com or at one of the Apple stores.

All in all, this new iPhone is a great phone that has allowed me to combine 3 devices into 1 and while the cost of the new iPhones are higher than in the past (as the vendor underwriting went away) I was able to save considerably by combining 3 devices into 1.

Still, it shouldn’t be this difficult to buy a cell phone. Thankfully I didn’t have to address the whole data plan issue at this time…..just let it ride this time please.

Soviet Space Dog Sparks the Birth of the Internet

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laika

Laika (Sputnik II Space Dog) – Photo Source: NASA

This past Tuesday (Nov 3rd) was Election Day. Not the big Election Day where we pick a new President, that comes next year BUT did you know that over the past 220 years we have elected a new President 7 times on a Nov 3rd?

They were: 1796 John Adams (#2 – Federalist), 1868 Ulysses Grant (#18 Republican), 1896 William McKinley (#25 Republican), 1908 William Taft (#27 Republican), 1936 Franklin Roosevelt (#32 Democrat), 1964 Lyndon Johnson (#36 Democrat) and 1992 William Clinton (#42 Democrat).

Most of us also remember #42’s Vice President was Al Gore who has been quoted and misquoted as taking credit for inventing the Internet during a March 1999 interview by Wolf Blitzer. Sad to say but Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet and Al also disputes making that claim, but I digress.

Nov 3rd has great significance in the history of the Internet as on Nov 3, 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched orbiting earth satellite Sputnik 2, which was the second spacecraft launched into Earth’s orbit, and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika (knick named Muttnik in the US). First in space was….you guessed it Sputnik 1, which was a ‘dog less’ flight that launched just a month earlier.

The successful launches of the Sputniks surprised the American public and shattered the perception of the United States as the technological superpower and the Soviet Union as a backward country (The Legacy of Sputnik [Editorial]. (2007). New York Times, p. 28.)

In response to Sputnik(s), the United States established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 within the US Department of Defense (DoD) for the purposes of forming and executing research and the development of projects that expand the frontiers of science and technology.

From ARPA came ARPANET in 1969 with 4 network nodes in an Interconnected Network. Many twists & turns, new technologies, new communication protocols, new standards and new names over the next 20 years gave  rise to the Global Internet (INTERconnected NETworks) in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s.

In case you were wondering about Laika, it didn’t end well for her as she died by the fourth circuit of flight from overheating. It was a suicide mission from the start for poor Laika as Sputnik 2 wasn’t designed for reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.

Laika is memorialized in the form of a statue and plaque at Star City, Russia. (I’ve been there).

Think of Laika the next time that you update your Facebook status on your Smartphone as without her sacrifice we may not have the Internet as we know it today. She boldly went where no dog had gone before. (couldn’t resist)

John Mack, The Entrepreneur who brought us everything

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gold_bulldogJohn Mack (born Oct 27, 1864) can probably be credited, more than anyone else, with providing virtually everything that moves between manufactures, merchants, warehouses, retail outlets and homes.

He was an inventor and a manufacturer who co-founded the Mack Brothers Company, which manufactured heavy duty trucks from 1900 in New York City. A company that would later be known as Mack Trucks Inc.

His first mover company developed buses, the first Hook & Ladder and commercial trucks. John was inspired by Orville and Wilbur Wright, Willis Carrier and Henry Ford’s inventions, into producing heavy duty trucks and engines. 

John invented the Mack “Bulldog” type engine. The bulldog remains the present company’s icon and part of its logo and certainly the best hood ornament ever.

Interestingly enough, while in his teens and 20’s John worked on the railroad as a teamster. The teamsters later became a significant force in trucking. Is it possible that one man developing the disruptive commercial trucking industry is also responsible for bringing the teamsters into that industry? If so then John Mack might be a serial disrupter.

 

Credit Card Fraud Liability pushed to Non-compliant Merchants as of Oct 1st

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On Oct. 1, 2015, new credit card rules went into effect which will transfer fraud liability to whichever party is the least EMV-compliant in a fraudulent transaction. This would apply directly to merchants who continue to use old “swipe” credit card processing machines. Compliance is deferred to 2016 for most ATM providers and 2017  for pay-at-pump gas stations and the balance of ATMs.

EMV-compliant card with embedded chip

EMV-compliant credit card with embedded chip

To address increasing credit card fraud, the U.S. has formally moved to EMV-compliant cards, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa. EMV is a global standard for cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions. EMV is embedded onto a payment card in a microprocessor chip that stores and protects cardholder data.  The EMV technology is designed to improve payment security, making it more difficult for fraudsters to successfully counterfeit cards.

EMV-compliant merchant card reader

EMV-compliant merchant card reader

Businesses who accept credit card payments have been faced with updating all credit card processing machines to comply with the new cards being issued. Those firms that did not update their machines by Oct. 1 can be held financially liable for any credit card fraud that takes place. This represents a major shift in liability from the credit card companies to the businesses that accept card payments.

Consumers are already seeing a difference in the way that they use their credit cards as instead of swiping in the traditional way, cards are either inserted into a terminal slot (card dipping) or tapped against the terminal scanner (near field communication) for processing.

Dipping the card begins the process of data verification between the issuing bank and the chip.  Once the card is verified, the unique transaction data is created. Near field communications cards (aka as Contactless cards) have been rolled out largely in Canada and Europe.  Most cards and terminals in the U.S. will require dipping.

EMV does not totally reduce the risk of credit card data being captured and reproduced as it still has vulnerabilities, which is why we can probably expect to the additional authentication requirements of a signature or a PIN layered on to all transactions in the near future.

Sources: Molly Brogan (NSBA.biz) and Sienna Kossman (Creditcards.com) 

 

Bassett’s Blog Rebooted: Small Business Entrepreneurship

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Blog Clearwater 2015-10-09 15.21.54

There is no reason that business can’t be transacted poolside as technology is the great ‘place shifter’.

This Blog has been home to well over 400 Rotary related posts over the past few years. While it has enjoyed a rich and an extremely large global readership as a Rotary Portal of sorts, it’s time to reboot it with an entirely new focus: Small Business Entrepreneurship with an emphasis on technology challenges and opportunities.

One of the challenges that a college professor wrestles with is determining exactly what their research focus / agenda is going to be as it largely defines their academic career. While some professors are able to narrow down a research focus very early on, others vacillate for years before settling into an area that suits their unique qualifications and interest level, unfortunately I fall into the later camp.

For nearly the past 15 years I’ve done research and/or published papers on Cybersecurity, Outsourcing, Databases, Social Media Mining, Sustainable ERP, Project Management, Cloud Computing and Infrastructure hoping that a thread amongst them would emerge as a single theme. Finally the preverbal lightbulb has lit up with the focus of: Technology challenges and opportunities  Small Business Entrepreneurs face.

It’s surprising that it took this long to narrow down this research focus as I have over 3 decades of first hand experience as a successful Small Business Entrepreneur running several companies and working directly with nearly 1,000 other Small Business Entrepreneurs but sometimes you just can’t see the hand in front of your face until it slaps you hard enough.

Rick Bassett
Associate Professor & Dept Chair
Management / Mgmt Information Systems / Int Business Dept
Southern CT State University

Multi-district Success Seminar was held in Cromwell Connecticut today

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The Multi-district Success Seminar was held in Cromwell Connecticut today and was attended by just over 100 attendees from 11 districts as far away as New Jersey. The seminar is sponsored by Zone 32 and was organized by PDG Alan Hurst (Rotary Coordinator) , his Assistant Rotary Coordinators and Delores Morgano from the East Hampton Rotary Club.

The Success Seminar featured informative sessions on:

Public Image
The Rotary Foundation
Membership
The New Rotary Website
Rotary Club Central
Youth Services

The seminar was kicked off by our very own PDG Ernie Luise introducing Incoming Rotary Directory Julie Phelps.

Geographically Cromwell CT is still part of District 7980 although we don’t currently have a club there. We are looking to establish a new club in Cromwell if anyone is interested in helping us getting one off the ground.