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(CNN) -- A nervous new doctor performing a procedure for the first time puts on a pair of Google Glass and scrubs in. From the moment she makes her first incision, a live video feed of the operation is streamed from her glasses to a surgeon outside the operating room who gives live feedback over earbuds.

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Training medical professionals is just one of the many workplace uses Google Glass is experimenting with. Earlier this year, Google launched its Glass at Work certification program, in which it collaborates with businesses interested in using Glass to improve productivity and save money. Ten companies have signed on so far.

Google's head-mounted computer is almost two years old, but the product is still officially in beta. Glass was originally marketed only as a consumer device, but it has had difficulty finding a niche in the consumer market, where it struggled with privacy, etiquette and safety issues.

But then some of Glass' early adopters put the wearable to work, using the device to make their jobs more efficient.

Some of the most exciting potential for wearables is in the health industry, where workers need to keep their hands sterile. The small screen mounted on Glass can be used to display checklists or vital signs. Smart glasses can also let specialists consult on cases far from their hospital. This type of telemedicine has been around for years, but high costs and regulation have made widespread adoption difficult.

"Having the units like Glass or any sort of wearable first-person display that comes in at less than $1,500 really opens things up," said Dr. Warren Wiechmann, who heads up the Glass tests at the University of California at Irvine.

UC Irvine is partnering with app developer Pristine, a Google Glass partner, to experiment with Glass in a number of case studies. In addition to using it as training wheels for medical students, the school is putting Glass on surgeons so they can broadcast operations live to students. Patient actors will wear Glass while medical students learn how to do a basic exam. Later, the students are shown the video to see themselves though a patient's eyes, with the idea of improving bedside manner, empathy and listening skills.

Google is being slow and deliberate with the business partners it certifies. It vets each company to see if its specific use case solves a problem in the real world, and gives them access to technical experts.

For now, the company is focusing on workers who need to use their hands for their jobs, everyone from nurses and surgeons to mechanics, utility workers and chefs. Google says 80% of the global workforce does physical work every day.

"These are people who can't reach into their pocket to pull out a cell phone, they can't type on a laptop," said Chris O'Neill, head of business for Google Glass. "They have every need to access information, every need to use tech to make their jobs that much more safe and productive."

When an expensive printer breaks down, an expert is typically sent to make repairs in person. In another Google Glass test case, HP is experimenting with keeping the experts at home. Instead, a customer puts on a pair of Glass and the repair person walks them through the necessary fixes remotely.

Wearables in the workplace are still in the very early stages. Google and other similar companies are primarily focused on test cases and proving that there is a tangible benefit to the technology. Before smart glasses go mainstream, there are also a number of issues that need to be addressed, including getting old industries up to date with new technology, bringing fast Internet coverage to industrial work locations, and improving device battery life.

And of course, privacy concerns won't disappear once a wearable is worn to work instead of to a bar. Employees might have concerns about being monitored and tracked on the job with wearables.

Google has the time and resources to tackle these issues as they come up. Down the line, wearables like Glass could be commonplace on oil rigs, in the exam room, up telephone towers and even in fast food restaurants.

Taco Bell is considering using Glass to train new employees on the proper cheese-to-bean ratios. Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell and KFC, has worked with Google Glass app developer Interapt on test cases to see if Glass can cut down on the time it takes to train new employees. Glass uses location information and a specific training app to walk them through the steps for preparing food in real time.

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Future Decoded conference in London on Nov. 10. The company hopes to create new social tools to increase productivity in and out of the workplace. Kevin Coombs/Reuters /Landov

 

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itoggle caption Kevin Coombs/Reuters /Landov

Microsoft — a company most associated with Word documents and Excel spreadsheets — is getting a makeover.

Under new leadership, the software developer is analyzing vast troves of data about its users to create social tools for the workplace. They’ve got the goods — just think of all those Office emails that bind us together — but the question is, will customers want to cozy up socially with Microsoft, on and off the job?

Old Data, New Strategy

“Microsoft: the social network” is, at first glance, a strange idea. But it makes a kind of sense. While Facebook may have the best map of our personal relationships, Microsoft has the best map of our work lives.

“What drives me, is for you to be able to get more out of every moment of your life,” says Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO. “You want to be able to create a document, get to a meeting, be productive in the meeting, have your notes taken in the meeting automatically for you.”

While many companies block social media sites in the workplace, companies pay Microsoft to be on the inside, and to store internal documents, calendar items, meeting notes and attendees, contacts and more.

According to a recent quarterly earnings report, more than 1 billion people use Office — that’s 1 out of every 7 people on Earth. With just a bit of Big Data analysis, Microsoft could create social tools to help users decide what and who is important to them.

“In a world of abundance of computing, the only thing scarce is human attention,” Nadella says. “And our job is to be able to help you get more out of those moments of your life.”

And “those moments” don’t have to be just from 9 to 5 — Nadella says he wants users to get as much out of the programs in the personal lives as they do at work.

Microsoft is racing to get its web-based version of Office, which is called Office 365, on every smartphone and tablet — which they recently decided to do for free.

That way, Microsoft’s personal assistant can follow you everywhere and get more personal. For example, it could integrate your GPS location with your to-do list so that when you step inside your home, you get a reminder.

Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall spoke with reporters last week at the company headquarters in Redmond, Wash. He explained how Microsoft would analyze data to figure out a user’s priorities. Brian Smale/Microsoft

itoggle caption Brian Smale/Microsoft

“These are the things that I should be talking to my daughter about or showing her these things,” Nadella says. “That’s the idea — of being able to be contextually aware.”

Smarter Services

Last week, Nadella invited a handful of journalists to company headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to hear the game plan and meet the managers who will make this happen.

Gurdeep Singh Pall explains that as Microsoft mines the data, it can figure out your priorities. Say you’re about to delete an invite to a party, he says. Microsoft might alert you: “Don’t delete it, because this happens to be a company party, and this message was sent to a lot of important people in the company.”

Julie Larson-Green says that if she wanted to meet with two co-workers who were in different locations, “it can do smart suggestions on where would be best place for us to meet given the time of day, the traffic, the distance between our locations.”

Microsoft wants these social features to work inside and outside a company’s walls, so that when you jump into a meeting with outsiders, you’re prepared.

Nadella also says his group is firm on the revenue model for these projects.

“We’re clear that it’s about subscriptions,” he says. “We want to have a subscription offer, which is for every individual and every organization. And it’s not about advertising.”

Which means no pop-up ads inserted into your next PowerPoint presentation.

Business Is Not Personal

But Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC who used to work at Microsoft, says there could be pitfalls if users aren’t given enough control.

“Using Office 365 can’t be like using Facebook,” Hilwa says. “That doesn’t make sense, and that would be a big problem.”

Hilwa says that our professional lives are different from our online identities, and that information on Facebook may typically gets shared with everyone, it can’t work that way in a workplace.

“If users are in charge of controlling what bits and pieces of facts they can let out, as far as their social graph, then maybe I could see how this might work,” Hilwa says.

A key challenge for Microsoft, he says, will be to figure out how to share discretely, without being creepy or irritating.

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This week has been quite interesting in the world of Microsoft. We've covered a lot over the past week and chances are you most likely missed an important piece of news. Let's take a look back at the past seven days in a feature we call "Weekend Recap."

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The biggest news from this past week was the sudden unveiling of Microsoft Band. The fitness band, which is called Microsoft Band, is available for $199 and runs on Microsoft's newest platform called Microsoft Health.

Microsoft Band is not just a fitness band that gives you data on calories you have burned or your heart rate. In fact, the device also lets you keep your phone in your pocket by offering you quick access to your emails and text messages. Taking things a step further, the Microsoft Band offers Cortana and productivity notifications.

For those that did not know, Samsung has been paying Microsoft as part of an Android licensing agreement. In fact, Samsung paid Microsoft $1 billion dollars last year as part of the agreement. Now, Samsung believes the collaboration with Microsoft on the company's Windows Phone platform has ended, since Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's Devices and Services division makes them a 'direct hardware competitor.'
Microsoft's Joe Belfiore firmly believes that Microsoft is nearly closing the 'app gap' that has plagued the image of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system for quite some time now. Belfiore was at the TechEd Europe conference earlier this week, touting the Windows Phone platform as an enterprise mobility solution.

According to new data from Net Marketshare, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 is seeing record improvement in their market share as Windows XP hits new low. In fact, the combined market share of Windows 8 and 8.1 rose above 16 percent, the best figure since the inception of the Windows 8.x operating systems. On the Windows Phone side of things, Windows Phone 8.1 is running on 46.7 percent of Windows Phone devices.

Microsoft could soon launch a smaller-sized, cheaper Xbox One gaming console. The speculation comes after chip maker AMD developed a smaller, cooler, and cheaper version of the CPU found inside the Xbox One console, as mentioned in a LinkedIn account of AMD’s senior manager of SOC.

Speaking of a price reduction, Microsoft announced this past week that it is slashing $50 off the Xbox One and Kinect-less Xbox One starting November 2nd. This is a limited-time promotional offer, and valid in the United States only.

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The former plant is where Rose Will Monroe and others built B-24 Liberator bombers during World War II.
YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Rosie the Riveter’s old plant in Michigan has officially avoided the wrecking ball.

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Yankee Air Museum board chairman Ray Hunter signed papers Thursday making the aviation museum the owner of a 144,000-square-foot slice of the former Willow Run Bomber Plant, where Rose Will Monroe and other workers built B-24 Liberator bombers during World War II.
The signing ceremony represented the culmination of efforts to raise the $8 million needed to save part of the factory for the nearby Yankee Air Museum’s new home.

The Willow Run factory, which was built by Ford Motor Co. and featured a mile-long assembly line, churned out one B-24 every hour and nearly 9,000 in all.

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A $17 billion windfall for AAPL investors

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Apple's chief executive Tim Cook almost casually noted during the company's earnings call this week that Apple had spent another $17 billion on stock buybacks in the September quarter, over three times as much as it spent in either the previous June quarter or its year-ago September quarter.

"Our strong results continue to generate significant cash and we're extremely happy that this has enabled us to make substantial investments in Apple's future, while retaining — while returning cash to our shareholders," Cook stated. "We had executed aggressively against our share repurchase program, spending $17 billion in the September quarter alone and $45 billion in the last year."

The unexpected windfall for shareholders is not only huge, but was also executed differently: rather than relying mostly on banking partners to execute an "Accelerated Share Repurchase" on its behalf, Apple performed almost half of the buybacks on its own, spending an all-time record $8 billion to buy back shares on the open market while issuing a smaller than usual $9 billion on its fourth ASR.

Curiously, Apple's massive quarterly buyback—involving at least three times the capital that the company is purportedly spending on its years long, massive Campus 2 construction project (below)—was all but ignored by the same members of the media who had earlier found it newsworthy that a large man from Canada could destroy an iPhone 6 Plus using only his hands.
Apple's unexpected stock buyback acceleration


Apple's stock is now hovering around an all time high, having appreciated 37 percent over just the past year. However, for half of the last twelve months (and throughout all of 2013), Apple shares have languished at prices from 60 to 75 percent of their current valuation.

Despite recent gains, Apple's current price is only 3 percent higher than it was two years ago at the launch of iPhone 5, even as the company continues to syphon off the majority of all profits in the PC, mobile phone and tablet markets with a series of blockbuster hits that have crushed struggling rivals' beleaguered efforts to follow its lead, from Microsoft's Surface to Google's Moto X to Amazon's Fire Phone and Samsung's Galaxy lineup.

AAPL vs Wall Street


Since initiating its buyback program two years ago, Apple has worked to aggressively use its capital to take advantage of irrational stock market valuations in what has turned out to be the largest stock repurchase program (setting multiple records both per quarter and in trailing twelve-month buyback activity) since the SEC enhanced the transparency of issue repurchases in 2005, and undoubtedly the most successful.

Some shareholders, including vocal activist investor Carl Icahn, have regularly opined that Apple should do even more to buy back its own shares, estimating that the company's appreciation over the last two years is just the beginning and that it is on a trajectory to again double in value in the near term.

"Apple remains dramatically undervalued," Icahn wrote in an 'open letter' to Apple's executive team, stating, "Our valuation analysis tells us that Apple should trade at $203 per share today, and we believe the disconnect between that price and today's price reflects and undervaluation anomaly that will soon disappear."

Apple's liberal spending on buybacks, and its increasing focus on open market purchases, indicates that the company agrees that its stock remains incredibly undervalued by investors.

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A $17 billion windfall for AAPL investors

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Apple's chief executive Tim Cook almost casually noted during the company's earnings call this week that Apple had spent another $17 billion on stock buybacks in the September quarter, over three times as much as it spent in either the previous June quarter or its year-ago September quarter.

"Our strong results continue to generate significant cash and we're extremely happy that this has enabled us to make substantial investments in Apple's future, while retaining — while returning cash to our shareholders," Cook stated. "We had executed aggressively against our share repurchase program, spending $17 billion in the September quarter alone and $45 billion in the last year."

The unexpected windfall for shareholders is not only huge, but was also executed differently: rather than relying mostly on banking partners to execute an "Accelerated Share Repurchase" on its behalf, Apple performed almost half of the buybacks on its own, spending an all-time record $8 billion to buy back shares on the open market while issuing a smaller than usual $9 billion on its fourth ASR.

Curiously, Apple's massive quarterly buyback—involving at least three times the capital that the company is purportedly spending on its years long, massive Campus 2 construction project (below)—was all but ignored by the same members of the media who had earlier found it newsworthy that a large man from Canada could destroy an iPhone 6 Plus using only his hands.
Apple's unexpected stock buyback acceleration


Apple's stock is now hovering around an all time high, having appreciated 37 percent over just the past year. However, for half of the last twelve months (and throughout all of 2013), Apple shares have languished at prices from 60 to 75 percent of their current valuation.

Despite recent gains, Apple's current price is only 3 percent higher than it was two years ago at the launch of iPhone 5, even as the company continues to syphon off the majority of all profits in the PC, mobile phone and tablet markets with a series of blockbuster hits that have crushed struggling rivals' beleaguered efforts to follow its lead, from Microsoft's Surface to Google's Moto X to Amazon's Fire Phone and Samsung's Galaxy lineup.

AAPL vs Wall Street


Since initiating its buyback program two years ago, Apple has worked to aggressively use its capital to take advantage of irrational stock market valuations in what has turned out to be the largest stock repurchase program (setting multiple records both per quarter and in trailing twelve-month buyback activity) since the SEC enhanced the transparency of issue repurchases in 2005, and undoubtedly the most successful.

Some shareholders, including vocal activist investor Carl Icahn, have regularly opined that Apple should do even more to buy back its own shares, estimating that the company's appreciation over the last two years is just the beginning and that it is on a trajectory to again double in value in the near term.

"Apple remains dramatically undervalued," Icahn wrote in an 'open letter' to Apple's executive team, stating, "Our valuation analysis tells us that Apple should trade at $203 per share today, and we believe the disconnect between that price and today's price reflects and undervaluation anomaly that will soon disappear."

Apple's liberal spending on buybacks, and its increasing focus on open market purchases, indicates that the company agrees that its stock remains incredibly undervalued by investors.

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Apple's iPad Mini 3, which hit store shelves this week, is so close in design and internal components to its predecessor that not much has changed in the eyes of gadget-repair site iFixit.

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Apple announced the iPad Mini 3, as well as the iPad Air 2, at a launch event on October 16. The tiny tablet comes with an A7 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, matching the specs of the second-generation iPad Mini. While much is the same, Apple did add in support for its fingerprint sensor Touch ID and offers varied storage capacity options. There's also now a gold option.

In a teardown published on Friday by iFixit, those three differences were about all the company could find between the iPad Mini 3 and the iPad Mini 2. iFixit, which regularly takes apart and examines gadgets, gave the iPad Mini 3 a repairability score of 2 out of 10 -- the same score it gave to the iPad Mini 2. iFixit said the iPad Mini 3, like its predecessor, is difficult to take apart and any attempts to replace the screen could result in losing Touch ID functionality.

The iPad Mini 3 that iFixit tested used hot glue to hold the home button bracket to the front panel of the device. The site said if the screen becomes cracked, it would be exceedingly difficult to transfer that bracket, and thus, the programmed Touch ID, to replacement glass. iFixit went so far as to say that the "Touch ID-equipped home button [is] hastily glued in place."
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple used several component makers for its iPad Mini 3, including NXP Semiconductors for its M7 motion coprocessor and SK Hynix for its NAND Flash and DRAM, according to iFixit.

The iFixit teardown comes just a few days after the company also broke open an iPad Air 2. That report revealed that Apple's new iPad comes with a 15 percent smaller battery.

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 Fear not, true believers in the idea of different operating systems for different types of devices: Even though Chrome's engineering head has taken over Android's technical aspects, Google isn't likely to forcibly combine Chrome OS and Android into a Windows 8-style Frankenstein’s monster any time soon. That said, Chrome OS and Android have been forging closer ties over the past months, evolving into two highly complementary operating systems.

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Chrome OS can run Android apps, and Android can run Chrome apps. But it doesn’t end there: New features will make a Chromebook and Android phone or tablet complement each other much more nicely. Here are eight notable ways the lines are beginning to blur.
Easy Unlock

Chromebooks will be getting an “Easy Unlock” feature that can automatically unlock them when an associated Android phone is nearby. As long as you have your Android phone in your pocket, you can just open up your Chromebook and use it without entering your password. It might sound like magic, but the feature actually just uses Bluetooth and your Google account.
Android notifications on your Chromebook

At Google I/O 2014, Google demonstrated Android notifications appearing on your Chromebook. When you receive a phone call or text message, you’ll get a pop-up notification on your Chromebook so you can see who’s calling or skim the text message. You’ll also get low-battery notifications so you’ll know when to start charging your phone.
 It’s unclear just how many notifications will appear on your Chromebook, but those are the notifications Google showed off. If you really want Android notifications in Chrome, you can set up the PushBullet app to sync all (or some) of your Android device’s notifications to your Chromebook (or any device with a Chrome browser) today.
Android apps on your Chromebook

Google recently brought four Android apps to Chrome OS, but that’s only the beginning. The Android app runtime for Chrome will improve over time, and more apps will be added to the Chrome Web Store for easy installation.

In the meantime, you can already install any Android app in Chrome with a hack, giving a Chromebook access to a whole new universe of software. The apps will sync back and forth with your Android devices, assuming they support cloud sync, like a modern app should.
Chrome apps on Android
chromeapps

Google's Chrome app Topeka running on Android 4.4.2, KitKat.

Google wants Chrome apps to run on Android, too. If you’re a developer, you can create a Chrome web app and then package that app so it runs on Android. Google loves web apps, so this may even be the future—with web apps one day replacing those Java-based Android apps. The HTML5 app craze of years past sort of fizzled out in favor of native apps, however, so we’ll have to see.
USB file transfer

Modern Android devices use MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) for transferring files back and forth when you connect them to a computer via a USB cable. Chrome OS recently gained MTP support, so you can connect your Android phone or tablet directly to your Chromebook and copy files from it.

This is currently read-only, so you can only transfer files off your Android device to your Chromebook. Google wants to add MTP write support, so you could transfer files from your Chromebook to your phone. For example, you could download video files on your Chromebook and then transfer them to your phone over a USB cable, so you have something to watch offline without wasting your precious mobile data. This is also useful for airplanes!
Chrome tabs in Android’s app switcher

Android Lollipop has a redesigned multitasking interface that shows Chrome browser tabs alongside your recent apps. You dont’ have to pull up the multitasking menu and go into Chrome, then pull up Chrome’s tab list and select the recent tab anymore. Google is trying to make web pages more integrated on Android so they can be just as convenient as standard Android apps, merging offline apps and online apps.
Material Design

Google’s new “Material Design” style guidelines apply to everything the company does. (The previous Holo design was just for Android, while Google had a different design for its web apps.) Going forward, Android apps and web apps—for example, the Gmail Android app and Gmail website in your browser—will look much more similar. This also applies to Google’s applications on other platforms, like the Google apps for iPhone and iPad.
 Project Athena is a revamped interface—or “user experience”— Google is working on for Chrome OS, which integrates the company’s Material Design ethos. We don’t know much about this, but some information is available in Chromium’s bug tracker. One bug report says Athena will have an MRU (Most Recently Used) list that will “steer users away from closing content.” Another bug says “tabbed content... does not exist anymore for Athena.”

This sounds an awful lot like the application switcher on Android, so Chrome OS may be getting a more Android-like interface. We’ve seen one (very early and very ugly) screenshot that shows off this stacked multitasking interface. It’s possible the simplified interface might be used on potential Chrome OS tablets or hybrids, while Chromebooks would stick with the more traditional desktop interface.
The future?

Chrome and Android are distinctly separate, but growing more intertwined by the day, powered by society’s increasing reliance on the cloud. Google’s even working on adding a feature that will let you remotely locate and wipe a Chromebook, just like you can an Android device. But unlike Microsoft, Google isn’t trying to force it—or at least, it hasn't yet. And that’s a big relief.

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