Technology

Microsoft to end device limits for consumer Office 365 subscribers

Microsoft will soon drop the device limit on its consumer-grade Office 365 subscriptions and increase the number of users allowed under a single Office 365 Home plan, the company announced today.

"Starting October 2, subscribers can install Office on an unlimited number of devices," wrote Jared Spataro, a Microsoft executive in the Office and Windows division, in a post to a company blog.

Under current rules, Office 365 Home, which costs $100 per year, allows for installation of the suite's applications — Word, Outlook, Excel and the rest — on only 10 devices, or an allowance of two devices for each of the five users who can shelter under the umbrella of a single subscription. Meanwhile, Office 365 Personal — a $70 annual plan with rights for just one individual — capped the device count at two total.

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On the heels of Google rebranding Tez to Google Pay in India, and Walmart acquiring a majority stake in e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, Amazon is also making a run in India to hone in on the countrygrowing economy.

According to multiple reports, Amazon has paid around $40 million to acquire Tapzo, a startup that aggregates a number of app-based services — such as Uber, Ola, food delivery services Swiggy and Zomato, Book My Show, bill payment service BillDesk and more — into a single app. Amazon is reportedly paying between $30 million and $40 million, and its intention is to leverage Tapzoone-stop services app to help grow Amazon Pay usage in the country.

Amazon Pay has reportedly been seeing awider global pushto spur adoption of the service. But in India, the drive to get people to use Apple Pay may be particularly strong. Rival wallet services like Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, Mobikwik and others have swooped in a market where payment card usage is not that widespread, and consumers are conducting a growing number of transactions on their mobile devices. If you can get traction for your mobile wallet, that puts you into a strong position for dominating in all kinds of commerce and transactions in Asiasecond-largest economy.

We&d heard talks between Tapzo and Amazon have been in the works for a while, but now that a deal has been done, the two seem to be downplaying the details.

Messages sent to Tapzo founder and CEO, Ankur Singla, did not get responses. Another Tapzo executive we reached on the phone said he could not comment but also didn&t deny the report. And in a statement provided to TechCrunch, Amazon also did not explicitly confirm the deal, nor did Amazon deny it.

&Our commitment to the vision of a less-cash India remains the same,& a spokesperson said. &Our goal is to make it easier than ever before for customers to make digital payments by improving the customer experience, affordability and daily routines.&

An email to one of Tapzoinvestors, Sequoia, also did not get a response. Tapzo had in all raised about $23 million, with other investors including Ru-Net, American Express and RB Investments.

The deal pairs together a startup that has had held a lot of promise but has also has been through several rebrands and pivots in search of a viable business model; with an e-commerce leviathan that has already invested billions of dollars money into India but is looking for a way of expanding its reach in beyond its own marketplace.

Tapzo has attempted to address a particular niche in the Indian market: Smartphone usage has taken off in India, with many using mobile handsets as their primary &computer& for getting online. That creates an opportunity for companies looking to connect with customers, but also a challenge: there is a lot of app churn, and an added pressure on publishers to provide lasting value to consumers whose devices might be space-constrained and wallets cash-constrained to use and pay for anything but the most top-priority data services.

&One of the worst-kept secrets of the mobile app industry is that almost all apps (except for the top 5-8 apps) see 60-80 percent uninstall rate within 90 days of users installing the app,& Singla wrote in a blog post when explaining the challenge in the market. &India probably has the highest uninstall rate in the world, so when an app says it has 20 million installs, you can do your math.&

Enter Tapzo: the idea is that by loading the Tapzo app with multiple services, it makes the whole app much more valuable to users, and having all the services existing within one app also means that a users of Tapzo do not need to dedicate as much space to multiple apps that could be more likely to get uninstalled on their own.

That formula appears to have hit the right note in the market: Tapzo claims to have over 5 million users across some 100 cities in India turning to Tapzo to connect with more than 40 different services. It says that to date itenabled over 25 million transactions.

But Tapzosuccess has not come quickly nor smoothly. The company has been through a number of pivots and rebrands since 2010, starting first as Akosha, a platform for businesses to communicate with customers; then becoming Helpchat, a personal assistant and chatbot; and lastly its most recent pivot to Tapzo. (And the company owning all three of these has yet a different name, Coraza Technologies.) VC Circle earlier this year reported that Corazalast round in January this year was a down round, from a peak valuation of about $85 million in 2016.

Tapzo in its latest incarnation potentially plays directly into Amazonstrategy to build out its presence in India by way of Amazon Pay, Amazonpayment processing service that competes against the likes of Google Pay, PayPal and the rest.

Tapzo and Amazon Pay had already been working together on promotional efforts: to encourage more people to integrate and use Amazon Pay for transactions on Tapzo, the two have run multiplepromotionswhere users could get money back and discounts on a wide range of services you can access through Tapzo.

A closer relationship by way of acquisition could not only see Amazon Pay becoming a (the only) default payment option, but it could give Amazon the chance to use the app to promote its own network of services and merchants, whether itfor restaurant delivery or for a deal on a new mixing bowl to cook it yourself — a twist on the companyclassic marketplace model.

Amazon could also use it as a loyalty and points service: book your next Ola car through Tapzo, pay for it with Amazon Pay, and get money towards your next purchase on Amazon.in. That could be one way of fulfilling Amazongoal &to make digital payments by improving the customer experience, affordability and daily routines,& with Amazon getting a cut on those payments.

We&ll update this post as we learn more.

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Californiastate Assembly voted 58-17 on Thursday to advance a bill, called S.B. 822, that would implement the strongest net neutrality provisions in the U.S.

The bill now heads back to the Senate for final approval. If a vote is not held by end of day tomorrow — the deadline for lawmakers to pass any legislation until 2019 — it won&t get the official green, or red, light until next year.

The bill, written byDemocratic Senator Scott Wiener, would not only bring back Obama-era net neutrality rules ousted by the FCC in December, but go a step further, adding new protections for internet users. The billprohibits internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful content, apps, services or non-harmful devices. Plus, it bans paid prioritization, the practice of directly or indirectly favoring some traffic over other traffic in exchange for money, typically.

Herewhere it goes above and beyond the policy developed under the Obama administration: The bill also bans zero rating, which allows service providers to charge customers for data use on some websites but not on others. If you want to dive deeper into the nitty-gritty, take a look at the bill here.

The decision is a blow to Comcast and AT-T, for obvious reasons. They&ve been advocates for ending net neutrality and had lobbied aggressively against the bill. Net neutrality lobbying groups, on the other hand, are pleased with the results.

&No one wants their cable or phone company to control what they see and do on the internet,& said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocacy group for digital rights, in a statement. &California just took a huge step toward restoring protections that prevent companies like AT-T and Comcast from screwing us all over more than they already do.&

&This historic Assembly vote is a testament to the power of the internet. Big ISPs spent millions on campaign contributions, lobbyists and dark ads on social networks, but in the end, it was no match for the passion and dedication of net neutrality supporters using the internet to sound the alarm and mobilize.&

In December, the FCC voted to kill Obama-era net neutrality regulations developed in 2015to keep the internet open and fair. The organization is led by Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed to the role by President Donald Trump.

The decision from CaliforniaAssembly comes a day after Northern California congressional members asked that the FTC investigate Verizonthrottling of the Santa Clara County Fire Department, which hadreportedly exceeded their monthly allotment of 25gigabytes when they were making calls and handling personnel issues amid fighting a massive wildfire.

California lawmakers are one step closer to bringing back Obama-era net neutrality protections

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Demand for sustainable coffee is growing, a boon for socially conscious coffee lovers — but many small growers are missing out because they lack the ability to verify that their coffee beans are grown using sustainable labor and eco-friendly practices. In fact, verification is often accessible only to large coffee estates or cooperatives. Enveritas wants to change that. The nonprofit, which recently completed Y Combinatoraccelerator program, uses geospatial analysis to make the process more efficient, enabling it to offer free verification to smallholder farms.

Enveritas& goal is to end poverty in the coffee sector by 2030. Before founding Enveritas in 2016, CEO David Browning and head of operations Carl Cervone worked at TechnoServe, a nonprofit that serves businesses in developing economies. Browning led TechnoServeglobal coffee practice, while Cervone advised coffee growers in Africa, Asia and Latin America about sustainability trends.

Browning tells TechCrunch that TechnoServecoffee team spent a lot of time working with smallharder farmers, many of whom don&t have access to sustainability verification because their farms are too remote or small. The typical coffee grower served by Enveritas has less than two hectares of land, lives on less than $2 a day and relies on cash crops for their familyincome.

&The existing solutions work well for large estates and it can also be effective for farmers organized into cooperatives, but many of the worldcoffee farmers are smallholder farmers and not organized into cooperatives,& Browning explains. &For those farmers, the existing solutions can be more difficult to access.&

Part of the reason is because many verification solutions rely on field workers who visit farms and track sustainability standards using pen and paper, a time-consuming and costly process.

Enveritas& technology lets small growers tap into the market for sustainable coffee

To develop a more efficient and scalable system, Enveritas uses geospatial and machine learning to identify coffee farms through satellite imagery and monitor for issues like deforestation. Though it still relies on local partners to visit farms and confirm that sustainability standards are being followed, its technology enablesEnveritas to provide verification services for free.

Enveritas checks for 30 standards, which it divides into three categories: social, environmental and economic. &Social& includes no child labor and workers& rights; &environmental& checks for problems like deforestation, pollution or banned pesticides; and &economic& covers minimum wages, ethical business practices and transparent pricing, among other standards.

The organization currently operates in 10 countries, including Uganda, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, with plans to expand into more markets.

Sustainable coffee isn&t just in demand by caffeine lovers with a penchant for social justice. Many of the worldbiggest coffee companies, including Illy and Starbucks, have launched sustainability initiatives as part of their corporate responsibility measures. Offering coffee grown using sustainable labor or environmentally friendly practices also helps differentiate their products in a crowded marketplace. Research by the National Coffee Association, an American trade group, recently found that many millennials prefer sustainable coffee, with up to two-thirds of 19 to 24-year-olds surveyed said they pick their coffee based on whether it was grown using sustainable labor and environmentally friendly farming practices.

While coffee is currently its main focus, Browning says Enveritas& system can be applied to other agricultural products that need more visibility in their supply chains. For example, it also can be used to verify the sustainability of cocoa, cotton and palm oil.

As a nonprofit, Enveritas faces different funding challenges from other tech startups. Browning says it is currently at the equivalent of being ready for a Series A. Much of its backing comes from coffee companies (Enveritas can&t disclose which ones) that hope to benefit from Enveritas& solutions.

&One of the advantages of this system is that it reduces the cost for coffee companies relative to the traditional pen and paper system, but italso simultaneously free for farmers,& Browning says. &Thatone of the most compelling innovations, so ita win-win for both.&

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Weebly is part of Square now, but it continues to update as a standalone product. This week, for example, the company announced a number of new e-commerce features for the Weebly mobile app.

Those features include the ability to ship and print labels, to respond to customer questions (via Facebook Messenger, which can be embedded on Weebly sites), to approve customer reviews, to create branded coupon codes and to edit every aspect of your store, including product listing and pricing — all from the app.

Much of this functionality already existed on desktop, so the announcement is about moving these capabilities onto smartphones. In a blog post, the company outlined a vision for the mobile phone to become &the new back office.&

Weebly CEO David Rusenko told me that as his team has been adding more features for merchants, he wants people to think of Weebly &increasingly as an e-commerce platform,& not just a simple website builder. And support for mobile was an important part of that.

&This is what our customers were requesting,& Rusenko said. &Basically, people are taking their entrepreneurial lifestyle and having the freedom to work on things wherever you are.&

And apparently mobile usage is already up significantly, with a 75 percent increase over the past year in customers using the Weebly mobile app to manage orders, as well as a 120 percent increase in mobile usage to manage product listings.

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If the security community could tell you just one thing, itthat ¬hing is unhackable.& Except John McAfee cryptocurrency wallet, which was only unhackable until it wasn&t — twice.

Security researchers have now developed a second attack, which they say can obtain all the stored funds from an unmodified Bitfi wallet. The Android-powered $120 wallet relies on a user-generated secret phrase and a &salt& value — like a phone number — to cryptographically scramble the secret phrase. The idea is that the two unique values ensure that your funds remain secure.

But the researchers say that the secret phrase and salt can be extracted, allowing private keys to be generated and the funds stolen.

Using this &cold boot attack,& itpossible to steal funds even when a Bitfi wallet is switched off. Therea video below.

The researchers, Saleem Rashid and Ryan Castellucci, uncovered and built the exploits as part of a team of several security researchers calling themselves &THCMKACGASSCO& (after their initials). The two researchersshared them with TechCrunch prior to its release. In the video, Rashid is shown setting a secret phrase and salt, and running a local exploit to extract the keys from the device.

Rashid told TechCrunch that the keys are stored in the memory longer than Bitfi claims, allowing their combined exploits to run code on the hardware without erasing the memory. From there, an attacker can extract the memory and find the keys. The exploit takes less than two minutes to run, Rashid said.

&This attack is both reliable and practical, requiring no specialist hardware,& said Andrew Tierney, a security researcher with Pen Test Partners, who verified the attack.

Tierney was one of the hackers behind the first Bitfi attack. The McAfee-backed company offered a $250,000 bounty for anyone who could carry out what its makers consider a &successful attack.& But Bitfi declined to pay out, arguing that the hack was outside the scope of the bounty, and instead resorted to posting threats on Twitter.

This new attack, Tierney says, &meets the requirements of the bounty in spirit, even if it does not meet the specific terms that Bitfi have set.&

McAfee earlier this month said, &the wallet is hacked when someone gets the coins.&

Bill Powel, vice president of operations at Bitfi, told TechCrunch in an email that the company defines a hack &as anything that would allow an attacker to access funds held by the wallet.&

&Because the device does not store private keys, that is what prompted the unhackable claim,& he said.

When pressed, Powel did not address the specific claims of the cold boot attack. McAfee, who was copied on the email to Bitfi, did not respond.

Within an hour of the researchers posting the video, Bitfi said in a tweeted statement that it has &hired an experienced security manager, who is confirming vulnerabilities that have been identified by researchers.&

&Effective immediately, we are closing the current bounty programs which have caused understandable anger and frustration among researchers,& it added.

The statement also said it will no longer use the &unhackable& claim on its website.

Rashid said he has no immediate plans to release the exploit code so as to prevent the estimated few thousand Bitfi users from being put at risk.

Just last month, Bitfi won the Pwnie Award for Lamest Vendor Response, a traditional award given out at the Black Hat conference for companies that react the worst in response to security issues.

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