Pay as you go: Starbucks Starts the Trend

This revolutionary step to paying by phones at stores and retailers is going to be huge. In a time where people can forget their wallets at home but not their smart phones, companies are betting huge that this technology will take off and become the norm in the future. The technology that can make this happen is near field technology, it “is a new, short-range wireless connectivity technology that evolved from a combination of existing contactless identification and interconnection technologies."

Apple is experimenting with the technology and wish to adapt it to the next generation iphone in which the phone will be able to communicate with any Mac device and make it your own. Starbucks tried paying as you go in a small part of the west coast and it was so successful that they implemented it companywide just recently, you can find the article here. With all these innovations, will stores be able to increase sales effectively? Will security issues arise with this new technology that will prevent its popularity from expanding?

As technology gets introduced you have new people hacking it all the time, all it will take is for someone to pass right by you and your smart phone and capture your personal information using this technology which will take identity theft to a whole new level. But with all these issues that can arise, the idea is pretty cool and it’s definitely a step forward in an era of technology innovation. 

Online Music Piracy, a threat to the Music Industry

As technology advances, it becomes increasingly harder to detect illegal downloading of music which is copyrighted online. The industry world wide lose over 12 billion dollars to piracy a year and over 400 million in tax revenue in the United States. Many attempts have been made to reduce this piracy online but it hasn't had the affect that officials and companies want which is to reduce piracy significantly and ultimately eliminate it. The most recent solution which i find could help the industry is a program which acts as a fingerprint and detects illegal music downloading which would help track these illegal acts that are being committed every day. The technology is patent pending and its called DIF - Digital Interactive Fingerprinting for the detection and prevention of online music and video piracy.
Whether this solution works is yet to be seeing but with the rapid technological advances, companies who are hurt by piracy must figure out a way to stay two steps ahead in order to combat these threats that are damaging their bottom line.
As consumers grow more technological savvy, this might seem like an impossible task to accomplish but this is the trade off that the music industry has to conform with in order to stay in business, ultimately, they might be able to reduce internet piracy but its virtually impossible to eliminate it completely. In the meantime, file sharing sites such as Limewire continue to exist. Until next time, i'll be back, i have to go get the latest song of Pitbull, it sounds catchy.