The Top 10 Fastest Growing Tech Companies in the USA

Forbes, the famous list maker that we all love, has put together a list of the top 25 fastest growing tech companies for the year of 2013, of which we are just interested in 10. From what it's showing, Facebook and Apple aren't even at number one, though they are the close runner-ups in the contest. Some other interesting companies were brought to our attention through this and it is definitely cool to see what innovations are being ingeniously brought to fruition in today’s fast-growing tech world.

In first place, it was the professional and social connecting network LinkedIn that led the pack. In the last 12 months, it accumulated sales of 1.1 billion dollars and it's only looking up for them, as their estimated 3 year average sales growth is set at 102%. The company with the young CEO Jeffrey Weiner has more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories and it's a great place to engage with others in a professional setting. According to Forbes, the heavy growth is due to LinkedIn's recruiting tools, advertising and subscriptions.
The next runner up is of course Facebook whose revenue is 5x that of LinkedIN. That being said, the company isn't heading uphill quite so easily as the other social network. Their recent Facebook Home flop and HTC First disaster could be a cause for this. Recent reports say that teens, who for the longest time were the FB target audience, are now moving away to other social networking services as too many grown-ups are using FB now. The huge blue giant brought in 5.5 billion in the last 12 months and had a mere 36% growth in sales in the last 12 months. For the next three years, it looks like they will be at a steady 87% sales growth rate, unless Mark Zuckerberg has some new tricks up his sleeve.

That didn't work out as planned!'/ © Facebook/DailyFinance/AndroidPIT

Apple made its way to third place. The computer hardware and software company hit an earth-shattering 169.104 billion in the last 12 months, though their growth is even slower than that of Facebook and their shares are way down. The growth sales rate in the last year was at 19% while there is a predicted 55% growth rate for the next 3 years to come. According the slide-show master Forbes, Apple stands as the N. 1 in the World's most powerful brands and is No. 26 as one of the most innovative companies. This is a huge drop from its 5th place ranking back in 2011.

And the remaining top ten companies are....

3D Systems' niche is based on printing 3D objects from scratch: quite an interesting concept. IPG Phototonics has created some fiber-optic lasers for welding. EPAM Systems is an IT outsourcing and software development shop, while Shutterstock is an online picture library and the the ring-leader in microstock image rentals. InvenSense has created miniscule gyroscopes and accelerometers. These are used to track motion in tablets, smartphones, TV remotes and video game controllers: it's safe to say that they will only see growth in the years to come. Finally in 9th and 10th place, Shutterfly has invented greeting cards, mugs and albums while Opentable is a great app for reserving restaurant tables.

 The top 10 companies are a real mix: social networking, digital imagery, online photos and reservations. © Forbes

It’s interesting to see which companies are doing so well and it gives a clear indication in which direction technology is going. Though we have put a big emphasis on social networking as underlined by Facebook and LinkedIn's success, there's still room for smaller, more innovative companies to grow as well. What’s more, most of these companies are set in California!

Samsung Galaxy S4 Top 10 Tips and Tricks

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is probably the most feature-laden smartphone ever released. In addition to the wow-worthy Smart Stay and Air Gestures features, the Galaxy S4 is packed with helpful tools for increasing battery life, blocking unwanted calls and notifications and helping you stay safe when you're traveling alone. Let's take a look at some of Samsung Galaxy S4's top 10 tips and tricks.

Top Galaxy S4 Tips and Tricks / © AndroidPIT

1. Decrease Lag in Touchwiz

If you don't see yourself using S Voice too often, you'll find that disabling it will lead to a much smoother Touchwiz experience. Have you noticed the slight lag between hitting the home button and the home screen appearing? That's because your Galaxy S4 thinks you might be trying to launch S Voice. To speed up the transition, open S Voice and turn off the "Open via home key" option.
Another way to speed up Touchwiz is to change a few options in the Developer Options menu. Go to Settings –> More –> About Device. Then scroll down to the build number and tap it seven times.
Now go back and you should see the Developer's Option Menu. Turn off "Drawing," "Window animation scale," "Transition animation scale" and "animator duration scale."  There will be less animation now, but Touchwiz should be more responsive.

2. Prolong Your Power

So you've got 10% battery left and the whole night ahead of you. What do you do? It's pretty easy: to increase your Galaxy S4's battery life, all you need to do is turn on Power Saving Mode. You can find this option in the Quick Settings notification pane.
The feature allows you to turn on CPU power saving, screen power saving or turn off haptic feedback. For best results, try disabling all three. If that doesn't work, turn off your data connection.

3. Enable Multiple Window Mode

If you're a multi-tasking fiend like me, chances are you're going to want to enable multiple window mode on your Galaxy S4. This feature allows you to run two applications at once, like email and web browsing for example.
To do so, simply hold down the back button to trigger the multi-window menu, which appears on the left hand side of the screen. Slide it out, select which apps you want to run simultaneously and enjoy!

4. Customize Your Notification Panel

From the notification pane, tap on the icon that looks like a few squares and two arrows in the very top right corner. Now tap the pencil icon that appears on the left.
From here, all you need to do is drag and drop icons around to move your most-accessed settings into the top five.

5. Enhance The Quality of Your Photos

You'd think the Galaxy S4 would take 13MP shots out of the box, but you'd be mistaken. To enable the highest quality shots, you're going to have to set the size for 13MP by opening the camera and hitting the settings button.

6. Get 50GB of Free Cloud Storage for 24 Months

This one's easy: to enable free cloud storage, just download Dropbox and log in. Voila! You have 50GB of free cloud storage for two years! You can enable Dropbox to upload any photo you take yo cloud storage, which means you won't lose those photos if your phone gets lost or stolen. Yes, Google+'s photo upload feature works well, too, but Dropbox will save your photos in the highest quality.

7. Enable Air Gestures

To answer your phone simply by moving your hand above the sensor, enable Air Gestures. You can easily do this via Quick Settings.

8. Take a Screenshot

You can take a screenshot using two methods. Either hold down the power and home buttons together or swipe your palm across the screen. The latter method requires you to first enable it by going to Settings –> My Device –> Motion and gestures –>Palm Motion and switch on "Capture Screen."

9. Block Unwanted Calls

To ensure you're not bothered by unwanted callers, turn on "Blocking Mode" via My Device. With this enabled, you can block all incoming calls, notifications, alarms and even your LED indicator. You can either turn it on manually or set it to disable communication between specified hours of the day.
If you want to reject specific numbers, go to Settings -> My Device and under "Call" menu, go to "Auto Reject" enter a specific number, check the box next to it and you'll never have to hear from that person again. You can even have the Galaxy S4 send a personalized meson to the person explaining why their call was rejected.

10. Enable Safety Assistance Mode

This is a great feature if you're traveling somewhere alone and concerned something might happen to you while you're away. By holding the volume up and the volume down keys, you can send an emergency message to predetermined contacts, as well as two photos taken by the front and rear cameras. Your phone will also send your location to your contacts. To turn it goon, go to Settings –> My Device –> Safety Assistance

WWDC 2013: 50 billion iOS apps downloaded, $10 billion paid to developers

Apple as always started out its WWDC 2013 keynote with some interesting numbers about the company and about the App Store. The big number this year was way up in the billions: iOS users have downloaded 50 billion apps from the App Store. Additionally, there are over 900,000 apps in the App Store, and 375,000 of them are optimized for the iPad.

How are those developers doing? Pretty well in general terms. Apple has paid out a total of $10 billion to developers since the App Store opened. $5 billion was paid out just in the last year alone. According to Apple, that’s three times more than all other platforms combined. When looking at app download share by revenue, iOS takes 74 percent, Android takes 20 percent, and the collective category of “other” takes 6 percent.

Some other notable stats: there are 575 million registered iTunes accounts most of which have credit card information added. That’s up from the 400 million announced at WWDC 2012. Plus, last year, there were 650,000 apps in the App Store compared to over 900,000 today.

These are pretty good numbers so far. Apple does usually save the biggest ones for big keynotes. WWDC 2013 is only just beginning so stay tuned!

New magnetic film could make storage technology 10,000 times more efficient

Magnets, how do they work? Researchers at MIT have recently discovered that we might not have the firm grasp of magnetism once assumed. Past experiments have occasionally hinted at a bizarre phenomenon that caused thin magnetic films to flip polarity in the wrong direction — against the electron flow. Now the team from MIT has published a paper detailing the effect, and it could have a huge impact on storage technology.

Seeing a magnetic pole going in the wrong direction is a rare occurrence, so researchers have been understandably curious about the cause of this effect. Geoffrey Beach and his team at MIT have found that it’s not the magnetic material that’s responsible for the flipping pole, it’s the metal it is placed next to.

Beach used very thin films of ferromagnetic material to work out the specifics. When this film was placed on a slab of platinum and exposed to a current, it exhibited the backwards magnetic pole (or spin orientation). Move it over to a backing of tantalum, and the poles go in the correct direction again. Here is where the plot thickens: both platinum and tantalum are nonmagnetic, so how could they affect the magnetic properties of the film?

The mechanism relies on the way a spin orientation behaves in a very thin magnetic film. In most materials, the direction of pole changes is essentially random over time. With thin materials, all the poles are aligned. The current applied can push the magnetic domains with more or less force depending on the nonmagnetic material it is passing through. Platinum, for example, allows the current to bowl over the spin orientation of the magnetic film to the “wrong” side.

So how does this change storage technology? All magnetic storage media are based on the arrangement of magnetic domains. Positive and negative alignments in a magnetic material make up the ones and zeros that describe your favorite cat GIF, or that video you took on vacation. With this effect, small amounts of power can change the spin orientation of the film dramatically. Thus, it is incredibly high efficiency.

Beach and his team suspect that magnetic storage based on these films could be 10,000 times more energy efficient than traditional technology. Thin magnetic films could be used to provide dense, low-energy storage for both hard drives and solid state systems. This could mean dramatic power savings for mobile devices, which rely on NAND flash memory to store data.

This new class of magnetic material is not even a science-fiction proposition — it is completely compatible with present day manufacturing technology. Manipulation of magnetic domains on this scale was unthinkable even a few years ago, and the benefits could be enormous. Beach suggests thin magnetic films could find their way into consumer storage technology sooner than you think.

10 Stroller Games for Tots

The kids loved the windows and getting to watch the world as I ran!

Exercise with your kids

Sing a silly song together – make up the songs, or change the words of the songs you and your child know.

Pretend you are a car a “vroom” and your way along the sidewalks.

Have your kids play Red light Green light with you.  As you push, they get to decide if it’s green and you run, yellow and you walk or red and you come to a stop.

I Spy.  Ask them to identify things that you see as you walk.  If they are older, have them guess at what you are looking at.

Check out the storage!  We were able to fit a gallon of water, bag of
apples, blankets to sit on, plates/cups, and dinner for the kids and I 
- with room to spare in our Zumu!

More Outdoor Activities

Pack a picnic.  Eat a meal or fun snack together halfway through your run.

Beanbag Toss.  Give your child a bean bag.  They throw it ahead of you.  Dash with the stroller to the bean bag.  Do a 3 squats, pick it up.  Run for a couple of paces, have your child re-throw the bag and then do jumping jacks or a when you “pick it up”, etc.

Play the Alphabet game.  Find the letters of the alphabet as you walk.

Dance Walk.  Try it with your kids – Dance while you walk – it is guaranteed to make your kids giggle, make you (and any bystanders) smile.

The front wheel axle can be easily replaced with a 
bike hitch - very versatile!

Get Moving with the Kids

Draw a curvy line on the sidewalk (or have an older run ahead of you and draw the line for you), do laps following the “swerves”.

Count to 100 together with every step, or if you are in a neighborhood, with every house that you pass.  Then count backwards on your way back home.

Thanks again to Zumu Products for sponsoring this post.  We can’t wait to hitch up a bike and take our kids for a ride!

Please go like them on facebook to learn more how they focus on helping families enjoy outdoor activities together.

Android And iPhone Owners Can Experience BlackBerry 10 With Live Demo

If you’re an Android or iPhone user who is interested in checking out BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 OS, a new live web demo is now available that turns your smartphone into a temporary BB10 device. By pointing your mobile browser to BlackBerry.com/glimpse, users can take a tour of the new OS, checking out the BlackBerry Hub, the BlackBerry Keyboard, BBM with Screen Share, and Time Shift Mode.

The demo is nothing that intensive, but does give users a feel of what living with the BlackBerry 10 OS is like. The BlackBerry 10 OS has been released to nominal fanfare, and is still catching criticisms as it struggles to come into its own in a market saturated by Android and iOS devices.

So if you are considering dumping your Android or iPhone handset for BlackBerry 10, check out this demo for a taste of what you may be getting into.

BlackBerry 10 Jam kicks off in Belgrade, Serbia

Today I’m attending BlackBerry’s developer event in Belgrade, Serbia, which is organized by the company’s Balkan developer network. Even though the Canadian company was losing market share in the last few years, they’re eager to tell everyone they’re a different company now, one that has a brand new platform to compete in today’s market.

We had a chance to watch the live demo of select BlackBerry 10 features, including the sexy-new UI called Flow with the “Peak” preview capability, TimeShift camera mode (licensed from Scalado, as far as I’ve understood) and the BlackBerry Hub all-in-one messaging/alert center. The company’s representative also reminded us that their platform is more secure than anything else on the market, and has even got certification from the German government.

As developers are looking beyond “two default platforms,” iOS and Android, BlackBerry is looking to attract them to its eco-system. And so does Microsoft, and the Canadian company is doing its best to make it as easy as possible for developers to choose BlackBerry 10 over (or in addition to) Windows Phone.

To that end, BlackBerry is investing a ton of resources to help developers not only port existing mobile apps to BlackBerry 10 but also make brand-new apps. In that sense, individuals and companies looking to make applications for the platform can visit dedicated forums, ask assistance from BlackBerry tech centers, get training and certification, as well as app exposure if their “work” uses all of the elements of the platform.

But that’s not all. The company also gave away more than 12,000 Dev Alpha BlackBerry 10 devices, 20,000+ Playbooks, and 7,000+ Z10 Limited Edition devices to developers to help them test their apps. All this produced impressive results, driving the app count from 20 in June 2012 to more than 100,000 apps in April 2013!

Finally, we were also able to get a hint about BlackBerry’s future plans, which go beyond mobile and include not only computing devices but also (connected) cars and other in-house appliances.

As I’m finishing this text, the company’s Aaron Ardiri is giving as an overview of developer tools. The launch break will follow, after which we’re off to developer sessions…

83 percent of Americans don’t know BlackBerry 10 even launched

Well, RIM’s not off to a good start with the launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system and new BlackBerry Z10 phone. Let’s be real though: did anyone actually think BlackBerry 10 was going to be RIM’s total saving grace? While it’s a definite step up from the BlackBerry models we’ve come to loathe, the problem RIM is having is that no one seems to give a damn, at least according to recent polls.

MKM Partners researched BlackBerry 10 by the numbers and found, well, some pretty bad ones. When asked the question, “Are you aware that BlackBerry 10 was launched in Canada and Europe in late January 2013?” 82.6 percent of respondents said “No.” To be fair, Americans are being asked about a Canadian and European launch, but for nearly 83 percent of them to not know anything about RIM’s new flagship product months after a pretty large debut is still pretty sad.

Additionally, The Wall Street Journal reported that over 50 percent of BlackBerry Z10 buyers ended up returning it, which would mean returns are outnumbering sales. This is a claim RIM later denied, stating that return rates are on par with other smartphones.

Another poll indicated that 71.4 percent of participants said they would never buy a BlackBerry compared to 31.3 percent saying the same about Android and 19.7 percent saying that about an iPhone.

After all this I think it’s safe to say RIM has a real problem on its hands. Even with BlackBerry 10, the platform has failed to stay relevant in the eyes of consumers. What’s next will either be imminent doom or a miraculous turnaround.