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So far Mike Feibus has created 220 blog entries.

DeX: Samsung Kicks Off New Product Category at Unpacked

2020-02-02T16:29:59-07:00April 3rd, 2017|

The Galaxy S8/S8+ and the new Gear 360 VR camera grabbed most of the headlines from Samsung’s hour-long Unpacked reveal at Lincoln Center last week. So you may have missed the very last announcement: the unveiling of DeX, a cradle that gives you the ability to use the new smartphones just like a PC.

DeX pairs the phone with a keyboard, mouse and display. Once the phone is docked, it transforms into a desktop computer, with all the usual apps in windows that you can manipulate with the familiar mouse and keyboard commands we all know and love. And oh by the way, DeX also charges the phone.

Sounds cool. But should you buy it? Find out.  Watch my latest video HERE:

Voice Assist for Business is Good Business

2020-02-02T16:31:26-07:00March 22nd, 2017|

The tussle for supremacy between Amazon and Google to create the most useful voice assistant is getting louder. But while this battle is largely taking place in home speakers and phones, another player – IBM — is carving out territory in the ear.

At Mobile World Congress earlier this month, Big Blue showed that it is getting down to business with voice, previewing applications that help a wide swath of professionals, from family doctors to firefighters, work smarter by using voice to tap into the Watson cognitive engine.

And together with partner Bragi, the German hearables pioneer, IBM offered a glimpse into what else might be possible with Watson actually sitting right inside your ear.

Want to learn more? Read my entire column in the Tech section of USA Today HERE.

Qualcomm and 11ax: Cure for the Internet Rush Hour?

2020-02-02T16:32:33-07:00February 13th, 2017|

The proliferation of connected devices combined with exploding demand for video streaming and other real-time data types are straining Wi-Fi deployments across the globe during the Internet Rush Hour: peak usage times when the most people are on the network at the same time. It is especially challenging to deliver during the Internet Rush Hour in congested areas – sites like sports stadiums and concert venues, and high-rise apartment complexes and enterprise deployments.

In fact, there may not be a more taxing scenario to test the mettle of Wi-Fi installations than at stadiums during what Mike Leibovitz calls “pinnacle events” – bucket-list affairs like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics. Leibovitz should know. He is the Director of Product Strategy at Extreme Networks, the official Wi-Fi provider for the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl Record
During Super Bowl LI in Houston earlier this month, more than 35,000 fans combined to set a new record with their smartphones, transferring a total 11.8TB of data via W-Fi. During peak demand, more than 27,000 fans pounded the Wi-Fi network at once.

“We absolutely look at the Super Bowl as bleeding edge,” he said. “There’s lots of people. Lots of consumption. Lots of data.”

For those like Leibovitz, who deploy Wi-Fi in high-traffic sites, relief is in sight, courtesy cellular pioneer Qualcomm. The company today announced a completely new approach to the evolution of Wi-Fi with a pair of chipsets that support 802.11ax. The emerging industry standard borrows cellular-industry advances to help Wi-Fi serve much more data to many more devices. The two chipsets – the IPQ8074 for routers and the QCA6290 for laptops, smartphones, tablets and other client devices – together make up the first end-to-end offering announced for the developing Wi-Fi standard.

Wi-Fi wasn’t conceived to handle today’s network demands. In the early days, it was mostly used to connect a single device – usually a laptop – to the internet. Network architects didn’t have to worry about how to handle large numbers of devices all contending for access. And they didn’t have to worry about minor delays and disruptions because there was so little real-time data like streaming music and video. So developers concentrated on making the connection faster and extending the range.

Now, finally, the focus of Wi-Fi development is shifting from optimizing bandwidth – connection speeds to an individual device – to maximizing capacity. That is, ensuring that all devices on crowded networks get the bandwidth they need. Even during the Internet Rush Hour.

Qualcomm has been a leader in moving Wi-Fi development in this new direction. The company was the first to offer multi-user MIMO, which multiplies the number of devices the network can talk to concurrently, and Wi-Fi SON self-management features.

The 802.11ax spec brings a host of new features, all aimed at improving capacity and network management. These include:

  • 8×8 MU-MIMO, which doubles the number of concurrent devices from the 4×4 MU-MIMO in 802.11ac, the previous generation,
  • Adds OFDMA, a small-packet feature from cellular that enables the network to handle up to 37 simultaneous data streams, and
  • Scheduling features, which are commonplace methods of controlling traffic on cellular networks but new to Wi-Fi

Although commercial deployments will benefit most from 802.11ax, even consumers who need just a single router in a small apartment will notice performance improvements. That’s because scheduling and other intelligence features will help to focus only on the home network traffic and block out neighbors’ Wi-Fi.

Leibovitz expects strong demand for 802.11ax from hospitals and other healthcare facilities. “In healthcare, you have clinicians and patients and family guests on the network. So you have life-critical systems that are sharing airtime with patients in bed watching Netflix.”

And, of course, pinnacle events at stadiums also stand to benefit greatly. You know, like the Super Bowl.

“Frankly, no one cares about the other 79,000 people,” Leibovitz said. “We all have the expectation that it’s just going to work.”

 

CBS Overnight America: Augmented Reality, Energy Harvesting, Alexa/Voice UI, the Tech Bubble and More

2020-02-02T16:38:01-07:00January 19th, 2017|

CBS Overnight America’s Jon Grayson and I discuss what CES told us about what to expect in the year ahead. We talked about ODG, Vuforia and the overall augmented reality scene. We explored energy harvesting and what that portends for wearables and the Internet of Things. We chatted about Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s plans and what other Voice UI developments we have to look forward to. And we reviewed the latest developments in the widely-anticipated Snap IPO. Listen here – or find all my CBS Overnight America spots HERE.

Wearables Makers Want You to Want Them in 2017

2020-02-02T16:40:22-07:00December 31st, 2016|

by Julie McClure

LAS VEGAS –Most everyone who wants a smartwatch or fitness tracker already has one. That’s not good news for wearables makers, because their appeal doesn’t reach far beyond early tech adopters, professional athletes and fitness freaks.

As wearables companies converge on Las Vegas for CES 2017, they face a difficult task: how to make their products attractive to normal people.

Wearables makers are nowstarting to make some headway in the corporate wellness segment. To succeed there – as well as to spark further growth in the consumer market – they will need to make their hardware more reliable and introduce more compelling metrics than counting steps or even basic heart rate. And most important, they will need to focus more on patient/consumer engagement.

In his latest USA Today column, Mike Feibus digs deep into the three things wearables makers need to improve. Read his entire column HERE.

Hearables: Wearables Never Sounded Better

2020-02-02T16:41:50-07:00November 23rd, 2016|

As the wearables market begins to slow, many manufacturers are looking beyond the wrist. They are training their eyes on your ears, which they see as the site for the next big growth area in this $10 billion market.

These new products, dubbed “hearables,” add sensors and smarts to wireless headphones and earbuds. That means they can do much of what their wrist-worn brethren can, like monitor heartrate and count steps. And because of their northern exposure, they have some distinct advantages as well.

FeibusTech forecasts that hearables shipments will overtake smartwatches and wrist-worn fitness trackers by 2020. For more on that, see my LinkedIn column HERE.

Also: I’ve been evaluating three smart headsets. Read all about them in my latest column in the Tech section of USA TODAY.

netgear’s Orbi Helps Ring In New Era Of Wi-Fi Simplicity

2020-02-02T16:57:10-07:00November 21st, 2016|

In my recent USA TODAY column, I talked about the coming sea-change in home Wi-Fi. Consumers, I said, want to buy routers that just work. They want connectivity anywhere they go in their home. They want the network to be efficient, self-managed and secure. And they want the hardware to be brain-dead easy to set up.

Now, finally, new routers are coming available to meet this demand. And all but one are from startups or relative newcomers to the home router market. The exception: Orbi, from Netgear.

Why is Netgear heading into this new segment? And how serious is the market leader about pursuing it? Thus far, other established suppliers seem content to stand pat, offering only traditional router lineups that cater more to hard-core gamers and technophiles than to everyday consumers.

Recently, I had a chance to chat with Patrick Lo, Netgear Chairman and CEO, and David Henry, Senior Vice President for Home Networking Products, about the state of the router market, as well as their new Orbi product line. I came away convinced that they have a sense for just how big this new product direction could become. But Lo cautioned against being too optimistic before consumers have had a chance to get familiar.

“This is a completely new market,” Lo told me. “So we really don’t know yet how customers are going to react.”

Lo and Henry said they believed that the Orbi system offers advantages over the existing competitors in this new space. For example, the system costs $399 rather than $499, which is what the higher-priced pioneers cost. As well, they said Orbi is the only system available today that dedicates a separate radio for network management operations, which results in better coverage and higher data rates.

Though early systems are selling well, Lo pointed out that early offerings in this nascent category are still pretty expensive. He said to watch for Netgear to fill out the price points for the Orbi line, though he wouldn’t disclose when that would happen.

Lo did say he believes that, once Orbi is available at mainstream price points, the new segment could “blossom into a pretty sizable category.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The Sea Change in Home Networking

2020-03-12T18:48:17-07:00November 1st, 2016|

The home router market is entering a period of dramatic upheaval. FeibusTech believes it is a
market that is ripe for disruption, for one simple reason: there is a large and widening gap
between what most available products offer and what consumers need to keep their networks
seamlessly delivering the content and the experiences they want.

For router suppliers, they have two choices: disrupt or be disrupted.

Find out more. Read our just-published research brief on the topic HERE.

And don’t miss my column on the topic in the Tech section of USA TODAY.

Managing Stress with Nervana: Worked for Me!

2020-02-02T17:01:37-07:00October 19th, 2016|

What does Nervana do for you? It seems like there’s a wide variety of answers to that question.

From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like my experiences are similar to a lot of new Nervana users. One difference, though: I was able to document the changes I thought I was feeling.

A few weeks before I received my Nervana, I got a wearable called Spire. About the size of the knob on the Nervana generator, Spire clips in along the belt line of your pants. It monitors your breathing, and senses whether you’re stressed, calm, focused or (d) none of the above. It’s supposed to help you be more mindful of your stress.

The weeks leading up to Nervana, Spire was telling me that about 80 percent of the time it characterized was tense, and that I was calm for most or all of the rest.

Nothing changed during the first few days after I got my Nervana, which isn’t surprising. Like many, it took me a couple of days to dial it in, choose the right size earbuds and spray the right amount of saline for a good connection. I found that I tolerated the stimulation well, and switched to formula mode after only a couple of days.

What I did notice was that, over time, I had a better handle on my stress. It’s not magic. I still get stressed. But it’s for much shorter periods. And it’s markedly easier to control.

Spire seems to agree. About five days after I got Nervana, it started to report noticeably more calm – at the expense of tension. And about a week later, Spire reported that my calm kicked into another gear. That trend continued for another week.

And then, all of a sudden Spire began reporting a marked jump in focus, a trend that gained steam for a few weeks. At first, focus was coming at the expense of tension, while calm more or less held steady. But eventually, focus began eating away at the percent of calm as well.

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been working really hard these past few months, and it’s much better to be tackling tasks with focus than with tension. I am getting a lot done, and having a much more pleasant time of it.

Biomedicine: shocking alternative to drugs

2020-02-02T17:03:12-07:00October 10th, 2016|

by Julie McClure

Can researchers shock us out of our drug habit? It’s an intriguing question that has been drawing more investment lately. Google and GlaxoSmithKline is one of the growing number of ventures cropping up in the exciting new frontier of biolectronic medicine. Mike Feibus recently wrote about it in his latest column in USA TODAY.

Much of the biolectronics efforts focus on vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS. It has been used for decades to treat seizures and depression. Researchers are looking at VNS to help people recover from injury and illness as well as prevent a growing list of mental and physiological maladies.

We’ve also just released a new FeibusTech research brief on the bioelectronics in association with Nervana, a startup that makes a wellness VNS device that uses electrical signals to stimulate the vagus nerve where it passes by the ear canal. Download Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana HERE. 

Qualcomm Life Connect16: Balancing Data Security & Data Fluidity

2020-02-02T17:27:54-07:00September 8th, 2016|

by Julie McClure

Can researchers shock us out of our drug habit? It’s an intriguing question that has been drawing more investment lately. Google and GlaxoSmithKline is one of the growing number of ventures cropping up in the exciting new frontier of biolectronic medicine. Mike Feibus recently wrote about it in his latest column in USA TODAY. Much of the biolectronics efforts focus on vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS. It has been used for decades to treat seizures and depression. Researchers are looking at VNS to help people recover from injury and illness as well as prevent a growing list of mental and physiological maladies. We’ve also just released a new FeibusTech research brief on the bioelectronics in association with Nervana, a startup that makes a wellness VNS device that uses electrical signals to stimulate the vagus nerve where it passes by the ear canal. Download Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana HERE. Qualcomm Life Connect16: Balancing Data Security & Data Fluidity

Balancing fluidity and security in digital health is a Catch-22. You need the data to be fluid. The more fluid the data, the more valuable. Unfortunately, the more fluid the data, the more exposed it becomes. So how to balance the two?

Learn more. Watch my security keynote and panel from Qualcomm Life’s Connect16, held Sept 30-31 in San Diego, CA.

Time to Inject Style into Corporate Laptops

2020-02-02T17:35:57-07:00August 1st, 2016|

We know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, as the old adage goes. But we do it anyway.

It’s why we tend to replace the things others can see and associate with us – like cars and smartphones – while they’re still serving their purpose. And it’s why we wait for things like water heaters and air conditioners to die before we buy new ones.

Corporate IT organizations historically bought laptops as if they belong tucked away in the utility closet, opting for dull, nondescript machines rather than those with any hint of fun or fashion. But they can no longer afford to do that.

The computer your employees carry increasingly factors into others’ impression of them – and of the organization. As well, study after study shows the latest devices play a big role in attracting and keeping employees.

Read my full Fortune Insiders column HERE.

Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana

2020-03-12T18:50:25-07:00July 18th, 2016|

Vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS, has been used for decades to treat seizures and depression. Today, researchers in the exciting field of bioelectronic medicine are looking at VNS to help people recover from injury and illness as well as prevent a growing list of mental and physiological maladies.

We produced a new research brief on this promising technology in association with Nervana, a startup that makes a wellness VNS device that uses electrical signals to stimulate the vagus nerve where it passes by the ear canal.

Download Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana HERE. 

It’s Not Snake Oil – It’s Science!

2020-02-02T17:54:52-07:00June 27th, 2016|

If there was a wearable that could alert you and your doctor if you were in danger of having a heart attack, would you want it?

I sure would. But apparently, not everyone feels the same way.

Take Dr. James Madara, CEO of the American Medical Association, for example. Last weekend, he took time to rant about how technology is overrunning healthcare in his speech at the AMA annual meeting in Chicago.

“From ineffective electronic health records (EHR), to an explosion of direct-to-consumer digital health products, to apps of mixed quality,” Madara said, according to his prepared remarks. “This is the digital snake oil of the early 21st century.”

Did he really just say that?

Read what I have to say about that in my column in USA TODAY Tech HERE.

Brains and Beauty: New smart scale is insightful, attractive

2020-02-02T18:26:40-07:00May 9th, 2016|

Many people buy fitness bands to offload the burden of tracking their activity. But when they load the device’s app onto their smart phone, they find activity is only one piece of the health-and-wellness equation. They still have to find a way to track their daily calorie intake, and their resulting weight.

Fortunately, there are apps to help simplify the calorie-counting task. And if you’re willing to step on a connected scale every morning, it will take care of the rest.

I’ve been testing an innovative new scale that’s coming to the US from China, as an Xberts Pioneer. Check out my review at xbert.com HERE:

The High-Tech Spring

2020-02-02T18:32:18-07:00April 30th, 2016|

SAN FRANCISCO – I love watching people experience virtual reality for the first time. The cumbersome headsets exaggerate their movements as they scan left to right, and then nod up and down.  And every time they look in another direction and spot something new, you can almost feel their amazement through the goggles.

Lately, I feel as though I’ve put on a VR headset and never took it off. Because every time I turn, it seems, I spy something truly inspirational.

There’s a lot going on out there in this High-Tech Spring of Springs. Read all about it in my latest column in USA TODAY’s Tech section.

CBS Overnight America Tech: NetFlix, Theranos, Microsoft and More

2020-02-02T18:36:52-07:00April 21st, 2016|

Good morning! I sat down with CBS Overnight America’s Jon Grayson to share my take on the latest news. If you are a trucker or insomniac, you probably already knew that. But if you’re the kind of person who likes to sleep when it’s dark, you probably missed it. Fortunately for you, you can listen to the replay here.

We chatted about NetFlix’ prospects in the wake of its earnings release; the rise and fall of the once high-flying Theranos; Microsoft’s quest for real intelligence from its artificial intelligence projects; and wearables fatigue. Enjoy!

iPad Pro: Too Little Too Late for Big Business

2020-02-02T19:12:03-07:00March 24th, 2016|

Apple, a company forever relegated to the fringe of big business, holds onto the misguided belief that it can forge into the core of business computing with a new tablet, and supplant hundreds of millions of aging PCs in the process.

It’s can’t. Like Apple, tablets were never able to break into the heart of enterprise computing. And the iPad Pro brings too little too late to change that. If the iPad Pro is going to replace any business computers at all, it will be Apple’s own MacBooks deployed in traditional Apple beachheads like content creation and point-of-sale applications in retail settings.

Read my entire column in the Tech section of USA Today HERE.

HIMSS16: New care models take shape

2020-02-09T12:35:46-07:00March 15th, 2016|

The HIMSS Conference and Expo is a great opportunity to take the mHealth industry’s temperature each year. To be sure, the show earlier this month in Las Vegas was a very different show than last year, and not just because it moved west from Chicago. Last year was all about the seemingly insurmountable transition to electronic health records (EHR).

This year, EHR was more of a foregone conclusion. As a result, more attendees seemed interested to take the next step, and talk about what they might be able to do with the data.  A few mega-themes presented themselves over the 1.3 million square feet of exhibit space. Among them:

  • New cloud capabilities from large-scale suppliers
  • Patient-minded care and workflow models
  • Modifying behavior for healthier outcomes, and
  • Security

Read the entire HIMSS16 roundup HERE

Trio Motion, from UnitedHealthcare

2019-12-16T17:40:34-07:00March 13th, 2016|

LAS VEGAS – The greatest, most game-changing product I saw earlier this month at the country’s largest health-tech event was a little black activity tracker perched on a small stand in a big booth.

This non-descript little tracker is the too-rare device developed in the true spirit of the healthcare system overhaul: that is, keeping healthy people healthy. It’s called Trio Motion, from UnitedHealthcare.

You can’t buy Trio Motion. The custom-designed device is free for employees at companies that UnitedHealthcare insures. Further, the companion wellness program, called Motion, is paying those employees for meeting daily activity goals. Up to $1,460 per person per year. Depending on the program, the funds might be designated to pay for healthcare. Or employees might just get a check.

Read why the little Trio Motion is such a groundbreaking device in my Fortune column HERE.

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