Features

SAN FRANCISCO — Live streaming video from a smartphone may soon be known as “meerkatting” thanks to a new app that allows anyone with an iPhone to become a roving reporter.

The free application called Meerkat has become a virtual overnight sensation since its low-key arrival on Apple’s online App Store late last month, winning over journalists, politicians, self-anointed pundits, social media celebrities and others.

Meerkat integrates with Twitter, allowing users of the messaging platform to launch live video streams with a single touch of an on-screen button.

In the rapid-fire Twitterverse, Meerkat has become a sudden hit with tens of thousands of users trying it.

Meerkat “marries the wide potential of livestreaming with the instant and social strengths of Twitter. Two great tastes that go so well together”, wrote Hawaii-based consultant and blogger Ryan Ozawa.

“Imagine the applications for breaking news. Imagine deploying Meerkat at an event, with broadcasters and viewers easily interacting throughout. I could easily see myself falling head over heels in love with Meerkat.”

The app uses the name and image of a meerkat, which is a long-necked carnivorous relative of the mongoose that lives in the deserts of southern Africa.

Twitter strikes back

The news blog TechCrunch described Meerkat as “the livestreaming app Twitter should have built”.

Twitter appears to have taken notice.

The one-to-many messaging platform announced Friday that it was buying the maker of a rival video streaming app called Periscope, which is in beta testing and has not yet been released to the public.

“Excited to officially welcome @periscopeco to the Twitter team. Can’t wait for everyone to see what they’ve built!” Twitter product vice president, Kevin Weil, tweeted on Friday.

Twitter did not release details about the deal, but media reports said Twitter was paying between $50 million and $100 million for the app, which has so far been available by invitation only.

Additionally, Buzzfeed.com reported Friday that Twitter was cutting Meerkat’s access to some of its features.

It was not immediately clear whether Twitter would maintain Periscope as an independent app or integrate it into the platform. Both companies are based in San Francisco.

“That is a worry for Meerkat,” Danny Sullivan, founder of the blog Search Engine Land, said of Twitter buying Periscope. “If Twitter gets their own live video, they will have a tendency to want to favour that.”

‘Meerkatting’ SXSW

Sullivan “meerkatted” — some are calling it “meercasting” — a stroll around the South By Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, shortly after arriving there on Friday.

“It is kind of neat to give a taste of South-By to people who have never seen it and want a taste of it,” Sullivan said, referring to the festival by its informal name. “It works surprisingly well; it is very impressive how easy it was to get going with the live stream.”

With Meerkat, a tweet is fired off containing a link that anyone can click to be connected to the stream while it is in progress. Tiny profile icons pop up to show who is tuning in to broadcasts.

“At one point we had 110 people all walking around with me,” Sullivan said.

Videos are available only at Meerkat while they are live, but the app gives users the option of saving what they have recorded on their devices.

On Friday, an array of Meerkat streams flowing from SXSW included casual tours of Google and PayPal lounges along with impromptu interviews there by journalists who have seized on the application as a tool for giving intimate glimpses at news gathering.

The Iowa governor’s office announced on Friday that it will use Meerkat to live-stream press conferences and other events on Twitter.

“By using the Meerkat app, Iowans will be able to join us as we tour communities following natural disasters; as we visit a small business, listen in to our weekly press conferences or even as we hit the trail for our annual 99-county tour,” said Iowa Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds.

SEATTLE — Microsoft is working on an advanced version of its competitor to Apple’s Siri, using research from an artificial intelligence project called “Einstein”.

Microsoft has been running its “personal assistant” Cortana on its Windows phones for a year, and will put the new version on the desktop with the arrival of Windows 10 this autumn. Later, Cortana will be available as a standalone app, usable on phones and tablets powered by Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android, people familiar with the project said.

“This kind of technology, which can read and understand e-mail, will play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame,” said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project, in an interview at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Horvitz and Microsoft declined comment on any plan to take Cortana beyond Windows.

The plan to put Cortana on machines running software from rivals such as Apple and Google, as well as the Einstein project, have not been reported. Cortana is the name of an artificial intelligence character in the video game series “Halo”.

They represent a new front in CEO Satya Nadella’s battle to sell Microsoft software on any device or platform, rather than trying to force customers to use Windows. Success on rivals’ platforms could create new markets and greater relevance for the company best known for its decades-old operating system.

The concept of “artificial intelligence” is broad, and mobile phones and computers already show dexterity with spoken language and sifting through e-mails for data, for instance.

Still, Microsoft believes its work on speech recognition, search and machine learning will let it transform its digital assistant into the first intelligent “agent” which anticipates users needs. By comparison, Siri is advertised mostly as responding to requests. Google’s mobile app, which doesn’t have a name like Siri or Cortana, already offers some limited predictive information ‘cards’ based on what it thinks the user wants to know.

Microsoft has tried to create digital assistants before, without success. Microsoft Bob, released in 1995, was supposed to make using a computer easy, but ended up being the butt of jokes. The Office Assistant nicknamed ‘Clippy’ suffered a similar fate a few years later.

“We’re defining the competitive landscape... of who can provide the most supportive services that make life easier, keep track of things, that complement human memory in a way that helps us get things done,” said Horvitz.

Outside his door stands “The Assistant”, a monitor showing a woman’s face that can converse with visitors, has access to Horvitz’s calendar and can book meetings.

On his desktop, Horvitz runs “Lifebrowser”, a programme that stores everything from appointments to photos and uses machine learning to identify the important moments. A keyword search for his university professor instantly brings up photos and video from the last time they met.

Cortana could tell a mobile phone user when to leave for the airport, days after it read an e-mail and realised the user was planning a flight. It would automatically check flight status, determine where the phone is located using GPS, and checking traffic conditions.

None of the individual steps are a breakthrough, but creating an artificial intelligence that can stitch together the processes marks a breakthrough in usefulness, Microsoft says.

Rivals are on the same track. Google’s latest mobile app uses the predictive power generated from billions of searches to work out what a user is doing, what they are interested in, and sending relevant information, such as when a favourite sports team is playing next.

Apple is also pushing Siri, which uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine in the background, into new areas with its CarPlay and HomeKit platforms, as well as the recently unveiled Apple Watch.

The key to Cortana’s success will be knowing where a user is, what time it is, and what they are trying to do. Albert Einstein’s work on the relationship between space and time gave rise to Microsoft’s secret project name, said Horvitz.

“Einstein was brilliant about space and time,” he said. “It’s using brilliance about space and time generally in our agents.”

ATHENS — Photographs of Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in his beautiful Athens home in a French celebrity magazine caused a storm on social media Friday as his ministry admitted it may raid the country’s social security funds to stave off bankruptcy.

Varoufakis is seen in Paris Match at a piano in his living room, and dining in some style on the roof terrace of his “love nest at the foot of the Acropolis”, while telling the magazine how he abhorred the “star system”. 

“There is always a relationship between a democratic deficit and a deficit of values,” he added.

Paris Match also revealed that Varoufakis and his wife, the glamorous artist Danae Stratou, are about to move from their present home in a building owned by her industrialist family at the foot of the Acropolis, to a larger apartment.

The reaction on social media was instant and unforgiving of the finance chief in Greece’s new hard-left Syriza government which has described the country’s financial plight as a humanitarian crisis.

Financial Times economics editor Chris Giles tweeted: “The humanitarian crisis in Greece... Un-put-downable... Highlight of the morning.”

Varoufakis’ fellow economist Benn Steil, of the US Council on Foreign Relations, joked, “Lifestyles of the rich and famous, Syriza edition”, while Eric Maurice, of the European Journalists Association, also tweeted, “Varoufakis has a good lifestyle but very bad PR.”

The article in the glossy weekly came days after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he had asked his flamboyant finance chief and other ministers not to give so many interviews and focus on getting things done.

The debt-wracked country faces repayments of 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion) in the next two weeks alone and, with its bailout frozen, the finance ministry is asking parliament to allow it to raise money from the reserves of the pensions and social security system.

The timing of the photographs could not have been worse for the self-styled “erratic Marxist” economist, whose first speech as finance minister lacerated the culture of bling which had helped sink Greece into debt. 

The new radical left Syriza government, he insisted, heralded a return to the restraint of the ancients. “We are in favour of austere life. Growth does not mean having Porsche Cayennes on narrow Athens streets,” he said. “Greeks created when they were austere: they didn’t have loans and overdrawn credit cards.”

‘Yanis, don’t overdo it’

There were noticeably fewer negative reactions to the photos on social media in Greece than from the rest of the Europe. And his French publishers, Editions du Cercle, were quick to come to his defence on Twitter: “I find the Varoufakis report in Paris Match absolutely wonderful. But there are always idiots who will spit their venom!”

Last week the Syriza daily Avgi warned Varoufakis to step back from toxic “overexposure” after he was widely ridiculed in Greece for his omnipresence on TV.

“Yanis, don’t overdo it,” the paper said. “Because... it’s about being frugal with words too.” 

The Paris Match shoot, apparently done last weekend when Athens was looking its best in spring sunshine, has the finance minister also flicking through one of his own books, and opening his family photo album to show that he was not always the matinee idol that has made him a sex symbol even in Germany.

With no reaction as yet from Varoufakis — his last tweet on March 1 was “dedicated to muck-racking journalists” — another Greek user of the network, versendaal, attempted to predict his reaction. “Tomorrow Varoufakis will claim to have been misled by muckraking Paris Match journos. ‘I thought I was talking to Le Nouvel Observateur’ [the French political weekly].”

SAN FRANCISCO — Amid all the talk of Apple Watch, a new MacBook laptop and a partnership with HBO, a set of Apple tools aimed at promoting medical research didn’t get much attention. The tools, called ResearchKit, promise to help researchers study asthma, Parkinson’s and other diseases by recruiting test subjects through iPhone apps.

These tools could give researchers more data to work with by making it easier for people to offer themselves up to science, but even supporters say the data won’t be appropriate for every study.

Here are key things to know:

Expanding the pool of research candidates

Test subjects are often picked because they happen to see a doctor involved with a study or are lured by ads promising cash. That excludes a lot of people who might otherwise qualify.

With ResearchKit, anyone with an iPhone can potentially participate. Researchers set criteria. One study on how breast cancer survivors cope requires participants to be breast cancer survivors. But a study on Parkinson’s disease wants data from the general population as well for comparison.

“Most researchers will tell you recruiting and sample size are one of their top concerns and challenges,” says Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations. “We see huge opportunities with hundreds of millions of iPhones users, many of whom would gladly participate if it’s just easier to do so.”

Another advantage: Researchers can collect data throughout the day, rather than only during periodic office visits.

How it works

Researchers use Apple’s ResearchKit tools to create an app. An iPhone user who wants to participate downloads that app and fills out a questionnaire to determine eligibility and establish a base line for further comparisons. Users will also learn more about the study so they can give consent.

The app will tell accepted participants what to do. In the Parkinson’s study, subjects will be asked to tap on the screen, speak into the microphone and walk several steps to gauge progression of the disease.

Some research apps will be able to tap data from other apps, such as those for fitness trackers. Apple says participants will be able to decide whether to allow that. The company doesn’t see any of that data.

What if you don’t have an iPhone?

Apple, naturally, designed the tools to work with iPhones. But the company is making ResearchKit’s “secret sauce” open for anyone to see and modify. Someone could adapt ResearchKit for Android.

Potential pitfalls

There’s potential bias whenever people actively choose to participate in a study rather than being asked at a doctor’s office. For instance, if you’re motivated enough to step up, you also might be more motivated than others to follow a fitness regime. Then again, it’s easy to download an app — and many participants might drop out once the novelty wears off.

Ray Dorsey, a University of Rochester neurology professor involved with the Parkinson’s app, also says researchers will have to weigh the benefit of getting more participants and more data against not being able to see participants in person. In many cases, the ResearchKit studies will only supplement more traditional research.

Researchers do have the option of recruiting participants via traditional ways and then using the app to collect data more frequently.

Kathryn Schmitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor involved with the breast-cancer app, says the apps will never be appropriate for some types of research, such as surgical follow-ups. But she says ResearchKit could help with many common ailments involving heart disease, obesity and diabetes, as apps could be used as an objective tracker of lifestyles.

Initial studies and beyond

Apple worked with five groups of researchers prior to Monday’s announcement of ResearchKit and released five apps aimed at studying Parkinson’s disease, asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular issues and breast cancer.

Other researchers will be able to start using ResearchKit next month.

It will take time to see scientific results. Some of the early efforts are about gathering preliminary data — and tailoring more specific research from there.

Who hasn’t been through the traumatising experience of transferring contact data from one machine to another? Or has lost all the contact information stored because of a mishap? Or has seen contacts turned completely upside down because of bad synchronisation with an online contact service that wasn’t well understood?

What could be simpler than an application that lets you store and manage names, telephone numbers and addresses? Contact applications, as they are usually called, are everywhere, most notably on smartphones and e-mail software (MS-Outlook, Gmail, etc.), be it online or locally kept on your computer’s hard disk. Despite its simplicity, its importance and its omnipresence, contact software remains to be perfected.

In principle most contact apps (or address books, to use another commonly used term for the same concept) are built on compatible structures and are able to exchange data and to synchronise between themselves. Indeed, the structure is simple. The fact is, however, that shortcomings and incompatibilities are overwhelming, often resulting in frustration and despair.

Problems are many and the consumer is left wondering why, after all these years and countless versions and improvements introduced by the industry, there isn’t today a straightforward, fool proof manner to manage contacts and keep them handy and secure, one that doesn’t require a degree in computer science.

The situation was already complicated because of inherent differences between operating systems. From MS-Windows to Android, and from mobile phones to online services, the road to contacts copying, sharing and exchanging has always been strewn with pitfalls. I still recall when, a couple of years ago, I tried to transfer my address book from a Nokia smartphone using Symbian system to a Samsung device running Android. I managed somehow in the end, but only because I am an IT professional by trade; a stubborn and a patient one what’s more. And even though, there were some imperfections in the resulting process that I had to correct manually.

Today, with the push to store, or at least to synchronise and back up your contacts in the cloud, the road is even a harder one. Not to mention those otherwise great communication apps like Whatsapp and Viber that want to synchronise with your address book in the background. Things can get pretty complicated.

Take an Android smartphone, the most widely used system in the world. IDC (International Data Corporation) figures updated on the fourth quarter of 2014 put Google’s Android at 78 per cent and Apple’s iOS at 20 per cent of the world market share for smartphone operating systems.

Contacts on an Android smartphone can be stored locally on the device, externally in the cloud, be synchronised between both, be linked to Whatsapp, Viber and Skype (welcome Microsoft…), or any combination thereof. Not lost yet? There’s more.

If you use a third party backup app to secure your contacts in case of crash, like for instance the excellent MyBackupPro by RerWare, or try to export the contacts to Excel so as to have an additional copy, you’d be surprised to see that your data isn’t exactly the same when you “bring it back” after a disaster. Of course the names and the numbers will be the same, but the organisation may be somewhat different.

Fields names for that matter may change. For example if you had a custom field named “Old Home Number” you may have something totally different after having restored your address book. If you had a specific ringtone or a nice photo-icon assigned to your best friend contact information in your address book, don’t expect this kind of information to be well preserved after a backup and restore operation.

When the IT world is able to deliver extremely complex, ingenious software applications of all kinds and that work beautifully, one cannot but wonder why there isn’t a contact app that takes proper care of all the aspects of the simplest of all database applications. 

LONDON — Scientists who analysed countless chemicals in spider venom say they have identified seven compounds that block a key step in the body’s ability to pass pain signals to the brain.

In research they said could one day lead to a new class of potent painkillers, the scientists focused on 206 species of spider and searched for molecules in the venom that block nerve activity, particular via so-called “Nav1.7 channels”.

Experts estimate that as many as one in five people worldwide suffer from chronic pain and existing pain treatments often fail to give sufficient or long-term relief. Pain’s economic burden is also huge, with chronic pain estimated to cost $600 billion a year in the United States alone.

People sense pain in a part of their body when nerves from the affected area send signals to the brain through what is called the pain pathway, and it is this pathway scientists seek to disrupt when searching for potential new pain medicines.

“A compound that blocks Nav1.7 channels is of particular interest,” said Glenn King, who led the study at Australia’s University of Queensland.

Genetic mutation

He said previous research has found indifference to pain among people who lack Nav1.7 channels due to a naturally-occurring genetic mutation, so blocking these channels has the potential to turn off pain in people with normal pathways.

Part of the search for new painkilling drugs has focused on the world’s 45,000 species of spiders, many of which kill their prey with venoms that contain hundreds and even thousands of protein molecules, some of which block nerve activity.

“A conservative estimate indicates that there are nine million spider-venom peptides, and only 0.01 per cent of this vast pharmacological landscape has been explored so far,” said Julie Kaae Klint, who worked with King on the study.

The researchers, whose work was published on Thursday in the British Journal of Pharmacology, built a system that could rapidly analyse spider venom compounds. They screened venoms from 206 species and found that 40 per cent contained at least one compound that blocked human Nav1.7 channels.

Of the seven promising compounds they identified, they said one was particularly potent and also had a chemical structure that suggested it would have the kind of chemical, thermal and biological stability needed for making a drug.

“Untapping this natural source of new medicines brings a distinct hope of accelerating the development of a new class of painkillers,” said Klint.

LONDON/FRANKFURT — To observers of the secretive Swiss watch industry, its quiet, seemingly passive response to Apple Inc.’s plan to attack their centuries-old business could be mistaken for submission before an overwhelming adversary.

But luxury and fashion groups Richemont, LVMH, Swatch Group and Guess Inc. have been busy in the past year tinkering with smartwatches of their own, while aiming to preserve their products’ more timeless appeal.

When Apple Watch was first announced last September, some experts dismissed such devices as appealing to a different class of customer — those who prize technology over prestige.

Now analysts and industry executives are starting to think that maybe the Apple Watch juggernaut will stoke sales of luxury timepieces among younger consumers used to telling the time with their phones, rather than on their wrists.

“Apple has the potential to make the watch cool again,” said CCS Insight mobile analyst Ben Wood, a confessed wearable gadget freak. “I think the Swiss watch industry are going to be absolutely delighted.”

Swatch — which has dabbled with smartwatch experiments for more than a decade and already makes components for fitness band wearable devices, has told Swiss newspapers it is gearing up to offer smartwatches of its own in the next few months.

“Apple is not the only company which is about to toss a smartwatch on the market,” Nick Hayek, chief executive of Swatch, the world’s largest watchmaking group, told SonntagsBlick in January. “This is not a threat but a huge opportunity for us and the Swiss watch industry.”

On Monday, Apple revealed that its lineup of watches will go on sale in April. The entry-level Apple Watch Sport will start at $349, the standard version at $549 and the high-end “Edition” watch at $10,000.

The upcoming Swatch Smartwatch will include a chip that allows users to make contactless payments with a swipe of the wrist. It will use long-lasting batteries and work with both Apple and Google-based phones, according to news reports.

While the Apple Watch has drawn rave reviews for many of its features, its limited battery life of no more than 18 hours before re-charging is considered a big drawback.

Luxury of time

The threat of the smartwatch may also be limited due to its short shelf life as a hi-tech, frequently upgraded product.

An iPhone tends to lose half its value within the first year after it is introduced, while Rolex’s flagship Submariner model has risen in value, analysts at Berenberg Bank noted in a recent report.

Montblanc, owned by Richemont, announced in January the launch of the TimeWalker Urban Speed e-strap watch, which combines a traditional mechanical watch with an interchangeable strap containing a Bluetooth connected device.

That offers “the best of both worlds”, according to Berenberg’s luxury goods analyst, Bassel Choughari. He said this is less risky than the strategy of LVMH’s Tag Heuer, which has partnered with an as-yet-undisclosed US tech company to produce a watch outside Switzerland.

“It creates a bit of a grey area between Swiss-made and probably made-in-China products, so that could be a bit difficult to manage over time,” Choughari said of the danger to brands.

Guess Inc. has also announced plans to launch a smartwatch line called Guess Connect later this year.

The new models, which come in sporty and jewel-encrusted versions, will link wirelessly to a user’s nearby Apple or Google Android smartphone. Guess says these will be compatible with thousands of existing mobile phone apps and can be controlled from the watch using voice activated commands.

Fossil Group, another US-based fashion group, has toyed with smartwatches since 2003. A year ago, it said it would produce a smartwatch based on Google’s Android Wear software, and in September, it said it had partnered with chipmaker Intel Corp.

It too early to know whether the Apple Watch, whose price tags run as high as $17,000 for its yellow or rose gold models, will steal share from the Swiss industry, which sells about 30 million watches a year.

The threat that Apple will cannibalise existing watch demand is most acute for Swatch, analysts say, because it has the highest proportion of products selling for a few hundred dollars, instead of several thousands as high-end names do.

If Apple sells 20 million watches in the first year, as some analysts estimate, and all of those purchases divert buyers from other watch brands, Swatch could suffer a 6 per cent hit to annual revenue, according to a calculation by Barclays analysts.

Watch connoisseur Steve Baktidy says he is interested in the Apple Watch but only as a tech gadget to play with. But he also welcomed efforts by luxury makers to introduce more tech features of their own.

“Absolutely I’ll buy one [from Apple] but it’s not going to replace my everyday watch,” said Baktidy, owner of two auto body repair shops in New York and two dozen watches by luxury brands including Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Breitling and Omega.

AMMAN — A concert featuring classical Indian music was held at the King Hussein Cultural Centre on Tuesday evening for Jordanians to enjoy and get acquainted with India’s cultural heritage.

Varsha Agrawal, who played an ancient musical string instrument called the Santoor, accompanied by her veteran teacher Lalit Mahant on the Tabla, and performer Asit Goswami on the sitar, also an Indian stringed instrument, performed several musical pieces.

Briefing the audience about the performance, India’s Ambassador to Jordan Anil Trigunayat explained that the santoor is one of the earliest stringed instruments of India that originally came from Kashmir. 

Led by Agrawal the Indian musicians performed for one-and-a-half hour non-stop, playing at various tempos to draw the audience’s attention, especially as the musicians were diligently playing their tunes.

Through colourful musical compositions, the tempo was seamlessly increased, making the beats louder and faster, evoking different triumphant feelings and emotions of love, happiness and enthusiasm. 

At the concluding part of the recital, Mahant and his disciple played sawaal-javaab (question-answer) through which the audience felt a real lively conversation or challenge was taking place, especially between Agrawal on her santoor, and her teacher, now 67, on his tabla, in harmony, accompanied by the sweet tunes of the sitar.

While sitting down, as is the case in most performances of classical Indian music, performers tended to move their head, chest and shoulders, as if they were dancing to musical chants.

At the opening and at the closing of the concert, a Jordanian percussionist band, named “Drum Jam” performed, providing the audience with the chance to also enjoy oriental beats at the event. 

Band leader Basher Khries said: “Today we chose to play Indian, oriental and soft Asia colourful compositions to meet various tastes.”

Eight young Jordanian musicians, including two ladies, played a variety of percussion instruments, spreading a joyful atmosphere at the event, which was inaugurated by Amman Mayor Aqel Biltaji, who lit the traditional Indian lamp.

In an interview with The Jordan Times before the concert, Agrawal, an artiste of Sufyana Gharana (school of music), said she started learning music at the age of five and music, especially playing the santoor, became the most important thing for her.

“Santoor music is everything to me. The melodies produced through santoor can be cure for insomnia. They give peace of mind. Also, they evoke feelings of romance, love, peace and tranquility,” Agrawal said. 

“It has a soothing effect,” she added.

The concert, part of several Indian cultural activities to be held in Jordan this year to mark 65 of relations between Jordan and India, was attended by scores of Jordanians, several representatives of diplomatic missions and the Indian community in the country.

Rupa Gupta, a young lady whose father is Indian and mother is Jordanian, said she liked the concert, saying it represented “an opportunity for cultural exchange”.

Also, Nabil Al Sharif, a former minister of information, who attended the concert, commended the performance of the Indian troupe. 

“You can’t help but have a great deal of respect for the talents of the musicians,” he said.

Agreeing with him, Manal Abu Eisha said the concert brought a different type of music for Jordanians to enjoy, noting that the performance was really difficult as performers have to keep moving their fingers and handle many strings on their musical instruments.

At the beginning of the event, Trigunayat highlighted Drum Jam’s participation in the World Percussion Festival that was held in New Delhi in November 2014. 

According to Khreis, eight countries took part and Jordan was the only Arab country. 

“It was really a good and enriching experience for us. It was an experience that benefited us plenty. Being there with bands from different places allowed us to learn a lot about percussion instruments and beats,” Khreis noted. 

The event was hosted by the Indian embassy in Amman, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and Greater Amman Municipality.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple aims to have its smart watch on wrists in China, the US and beyond in April, and ignite its first new gadget category since the debut of the iPad.

The Apple Watch will be available in nine countries from April 24, at a starting price of $349. A limited edition gold Apple Watch will be available with a price topping $10,000.

"Apple Watch begins a new chapter in the way we relate to technology," said chief executive Tim Cook, who starred at an Apple Watch media event in San Francisco on Monday.

Cook said "the most personal device we have ever created" can display a variety of displays ranging from a classic watch face to an animated Mickey Mouse.

Connecting wirelessly to a user's iPhone, the watch is designed as a wrist device for messaging, calls and a cornucopia of apps, especially those geared toward health or fitness.

Users can send a reAl time display of their heartbeat to another Apple Watch to "let someone know you are thinking about them".

"I hope someone sends me one of those," quipped Cook.

Float all boats

Apple enters a market that has a number of players, ranging from South Korean giants Samsung and LG, to Japan's Sony and startups such as Pebble.

But analysts expect Apple to invigorate the market by integrating the watch with the iPhone and its mighty software ecosystem.

"Apple will outsell all the rest of them combined in 2015," said Forrester analyst James McQuivey.

"But in so doing, Apple will bring very valuable attention to the market, essentially releasing a rising tide that will float all their boats."

Apple Watch offers a range of communication apps and can be used as a sort of wrist-radio from the Dick Tracy comics.

"With the built in speaker and microphone, you can receive calls on your watch. I have been wanting to do this since I was five years old," Cook said.

Pay from the wrist

The watch is integrated with Apple Pay's mobile wallet and can be used to view pictures, monitor news and connect to social media.

Apple said that the ranks of businesses accepting Apple Pay is booming, and that it recently sold its 700 millionth iPhone.

"Now it's on your wrist, not in your pocket or your pocketbook," Cook said.

Apple demonstrated using the watch to find out lyrics to songs being heard, remotely opening home doors and displaying barcodes that act as airline boarding passes.

But a key focus was health and fitness applications.

The watch has an accelerometre, a heart rate sensor and sensors for "a comprehensive picture of your all-day activity and workouts".

It will prompt a user to get up and walk if sedentary too long.

All-day battery

Cook boasted that the device will have "all-day battery life" — or some 18 hours.

Entry price will be $349 in the United States, with the price climbing through three style categories, the top being the luxury gold model.

Initially, it will be available in Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. Pre-orders will be taken from April 10.

Moor Insights and Strategy founder Patrick Moorhead, who attended the event, said "the secret weapon here is the ability to message each other by tapping on the watch, I think people, particularly kids, are going to go nuts over that".

"Apple has a big chance of success, and what that is going to do is set the bar for the [smartwatch] experience," he added.

Jan Dawson at Jackdaw Research said he expects Apple to sell around 20 million of the devices this year, which will "catalyze the overall smartwatch market and help other vendors even as Apple comes to enjoy levels of market share it hasn't had since the iPod".

Game of Thrones

At the event, Apple unveiled a new Macbook laptop computer that weighs less than one kilogramme (two pounds).

The new MacBook starting at $1,299 is 0.5 inches (13.1 millimetres) at its thickest point, and its features include all-day battery life, a high-resolution 12-inch (30-centimetre) edge-to-edge screen and greatly-enhanced keyboard and trackpad.

Apple also announced that it cut the price of its Apple TV set-top box to $69 and that the service will next month handle the exclusive launch of an HBO Now streaming movie service.

Known for shows like "Game of Thrones" and "Boardwalk Empire", HBO enters the streaming-only video market dominated by Netflix as part of a partnership with the California tech giant.

The service called HBO Now will cost $14.99 per month and launch in April.

BARCELONA — Using your smartphone to make payments in shops or public transport should become more widespread this year, but its supremacy will depend on how successful retailers are in enticing people to keep their cards or cash in their pockets.

The stakes are high for phone manufacturers and operators, not to mention banks, as the success of contactless systems where consumers sweep their smartphone over a reader could shake up the lucrative retail payments market.

But the chief executive of Ingenico, a leading manufacturer of payment card terminals as well as new contactless systems, doesn’t see people as ready to give up their debit cards just yet.

“Smartphones will be a small part of the market but the main payment mechanism will remain the traditional [card] terminal which will continue to see growth,” said Philippe Lazare, whose company manufactures more than one in three payment terminals in use worldwide.

That view didn’t stop Ingenico from announcing this past week at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona a contactless payments system compatible with Apple Pay.

Apple of retailer’s eye?

Apple’s adoption last year of NFC, or the near field communication standard, was a major step towards this becoming the dominant technology.

Google has had a similar service, Google Wallet, available for a couple years.

NFC allows smartphones or other devices to communicate with one another within a distance of several centimetres.

This means consumers can quickly sweep their phones over readers rather than having to pull out a card, insert it into a terminal and wait to punch in a code.

“It was a decisive step towards the creation of an ecosystem but that may not be sufficient as several solutions are available,” said Anne Bouverot, head of the GSMA trade association for mobile operators that organises the Barcelona event.

She said that it is also important to get people accustomed to using their phones for making payments by using them elsewhere, such as with public transportation systems that have adopted contactless technology like in London or Paris.

In launching Apple Pay, the US tech giant was again demonstrating its longstanding role as a trendsetter, rather than responding to consumer demand. It has yet to be rolled out anywhere except in the United States.

But Apple’s initiative has pushed its competitors to also move forward.

All high-end smartphones are now coming equipped with NFC. Some are coming with added security features, like the new Samsung Galaxy S6 unveiled at Barcelona that has a fingerprint scanner.

Google last month bought Softcard, a rival to its Google Wallet co-founded by US mobile operators AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon in 2011.

And Samsung recently acquired LoopPay, whose technology links up with the magnetic strip readers in existing payment terminals instead of NFC.

This system transmits card details via secure magnetic signals to the reader when held up against it.

It has the advantage over the Apple and Google systems of being immediately compatible with more than 30 million payment terminals in use in the United States.

Cash still king

US banks are watching nervously as the emergence of contactless payment systems comes just as they are investing to upgrade payment cards and terminals from magnetic strips to chip cards.

US banks lost out in the Internet payments market to Paypal, which announced during the Mobile World Congress that it was getting into the contactless payments game with the purchase of Paydiant.

This US company works with merchants to develop loyalty and incentive programmes as part of mobile payment systems to help them boost sales.

Many experts see retailers offering discounts and promotions tailored to each client as an important element in encouraging consumers to make the switch to contactless payments with their smartphones.

Not everyone is expecting a boom in the use of smartphones for making payments.

“For several years now an explosion of that of kind of payment has been expected but one should not forget that 85 per cent of all the transactions in the world are still made via cash,” said MasterCard’s chief executive, Ajay Banga.

He expects adoption of contactless payment systems to instead grow steadily over several years.