The Knowledge to Decide

Have you caught your Pokémon yet? Pokémon Go – the mobile application-based game – is immensely popular. The game uniquely uses Augmented Reality technology. It has succeeded in growing its user base beyond just fans of the Pokémon comic. With the ability to drive foot traffic to stores, the app has created a new and potentially powerful platform for companies . Clocking in 7.5 million downloads since its debut in the U.S. on July 2016 , is the app a marketer’s boon – or is it destined to become just another “has-been” fad? What is Pokémon Go? Taking gamification to the next level, Pokémon Go is a gaming application based on the concept of augmented reality (AR) to deliver a real-life Pokémon experience. Released in July 2016, the game was developed by Niantic Labs and published by the “father” of Pokémon, Japanese company Nintendo. Using Augmented Reality technology similar to Google Maps, players need to find Pokémon characters at random physical locations and captur...

High volume online shopping makes it difficult for US regulators to keep track of overseas manufactured items, effectively putting customers at risk. E-commerce has enabled popular products such as fidget spinners and vaping machines to win huge numbers customers without the help of any big brands. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) took a year to put new safety standards on hover boards after it entered US markets. Five months later, ten hover boards were recalled as their lithium ion battery packs were likely to catch fire or explode without warning. Should buyers beware or can cross-border e-commerce be made safe for consumers? https://www.spireresearch.com/newsroom/spirethoughts/cross-border-e-commerce-comes-with-safety-risks/

As Singapore continues its drive to promote cashlessness, automated tray return systems might soon become a regular sight at hawker centers. Customers will be asked to make cash deposits which are refundable when they return their trays. Would customers be willing to accept digital refunds? Japnit Singh, Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Spire Research and Consulting, shared his viewpoint, published in Today Online’s news portal. Automated tray return systems could be rolled out across 25 hawker centers. Patrons going to hawker centers such as the ones in Marsiling Mall and Bukit Merah will have to shell out cash to make deposits of SGD0.50 and SG1 respectively for each tray they take. These deposits would be refunded upon the return of the tray. In a separate development, Ez-Link cardholders can also use their cards to pay for drinks and food at 1,000 stalls in over 30 hawker centers from April. An integrated cashless hawker center experience may entice customers to ...

As dependence on big data and analytics grows, so does the risk of IT security breaches. The imperative for companies and governments to protect their IT systems has never been stronger. IT security today is a USD60 billion industry with the U.S. at its forefront. As the number of threats increases, will our existing IT security tools be enough to hold the line? The IT security industry is poised for growth. Its core product offerings continue to perform well: firewalls, anti-malware, authentication and encryption, plus 80 other product categories. Investors in the US are bullish about this sector. They ploughed USD3 billion into IT security companies between 2011 and 2013, eventually funding some 300 firms. The most recent instance of a wildly destructive IT threat was the Heartbleed bug, discovered in April 2014. It left 600,000 servers vulnerable. The Achilles heel it exploited was the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) – an encryption technology...