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Today’s topics include news about Microsoft’s Office Lens app, surprising findings from a smartphone study, a move by Intel to create a tablet to combat credit card fraud and a promising finding about growing numbers of female software developers.
Microsoft’s popular and free Office Lens app, which turns a smartphone into a pocket document scanner, is now being offered in Android and iOS versions.
Apple iPhone users can download the new Office Lens for iPhone app for free from the Apple App Store, while Android users can download a preview version by signing up in a special Office Lens Android Preview Google+ community that has been set up for the app’s development.
Android participants can click the “Join community” button in the upper right-hand corner of the site and then click the “Become a Tester” link under the “about this community” link.
It may seem like everyone around us has a smartphone nowadays, but that conclusion is wrong, according to a new study conducted by the Pew Research Center. In fact, only 64 percent of U.S. adults own and use a smartphone, leaving a full 36 percent of U.S. adults out of the smartphone marketplace.
Interestingly, the 60-page study, titled “U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015,” also found that some 7 percent of U.S. adults depend mostly on their smartphones for Internet access because they have no broadband access at home.
Intel is partnering with European payment solutions provider Ingenico Group to develop a tablet that will support near-field communication (NFC) and Eurocard, MasterCard and Visa chip cards—payment methods that banks use to help thwart credit card fraud, according to officials with both companies.
That announcement came a day after Broadcom unveiled new microcontrollers with integrated NFC support to enable a range of connected devices—including those that make up the Internet of things, as well as PCs and point-of-sale terminals—to securely accept mobile payments.
A recent Evans Data study shows that there are more female software developers at work today than in the last 15 years. According to the Evans Data research, in 2015, 22.2 percent of software developers are women, or a little over 4 million female software developers worldwide.
While today’s numbers are strong compared with 2001, they are even stronger compared with the years of 2003 to 2009, when the percentage of female developers dipped into the single-digit range.