Perhaps Mitt Romney could provide some timely tax tips
Mark Zuckerberg faces a tax liability of more than $1.5bn this year, vaulting the Facebook co-founder into the leagues of all-time highest taxpayers and leaving a big question mark over his company’s initial public offering.
The taxes will fall due on a vast profit of nearly $5bn that Mr Zuckerberg, 27, plans to take on stock options he was handed in 2005 for acting as Facebook’s chief executive.
Another timely insight from the author of The Information Diet
This is what I mean when I say that "clicks have consequences": our information diets online have an ethical consequence to our social community. By watching video of the adorable kittens or by reading online that story about the Kardashians, you're not only doing yourself a disservice, you're actually telling editors to write more stuff like that, at the expense of other stuff. The ethical consequences of a poor information diet are more direct and immediate than the environmental consequences of eating meat.
[…]
This isn't something I say to scare you or fear-monger you into behavioral change. Rather, it's good news because the solution is simple. If you want better content and better journalism, you have the ability to make it happen. Consume consciously and deliberately select your information providers, and make the media chase after you.
Sign of the times – and, I’m guessing, an ELIZA 2.0 story (I haven’t read the book)
Blue Rider Press said in a news release that “Siri & Me” chronicles a character named Dave, “a 29-year-old writer and blogger, who falls in love with the mysterious—and often cryptic—woman living inside of his new iPhone.” The publisher added: “Through their trials and tender moments, Dave and Siri both prove that communication is the key to every relationship, but that nothing is more important than holding hands with the one you love.”
Does Siri Speak the Language of Love? A New Book Investigates - NYTimes.com
Check the full post for analysis by Joe Maguire, and stop watching TV “news,” if you haven’t done so already…
For those who follow information responsibility, here’s a story that has a little bit of everything:
- A widespread tolerance of cynical data distortion, all to manipulate ratings and rankings.
- Distortion of category boundaries to exclude unwanted data points.
- Distortion of category boundaries to include desirable data points.
- Manipulation of idiosyncratic metrics.
- Abuse of the news cycle.
- Anemic enforcement of ethical standards.
- An exclusive set of informed consumers who are not hoodwinked.
Information Pleas: Networks Resort to Trickery in an Attempt to Lift Ratings - NYTimes.com
Investing long-term
Facebook has studied mistakes by older rivals, such as Google and Microsoft, and is responding quickly, experts say, by strategically hiring experienced Democratic and Republican operatives. The company has brought on key operatives from the past three administrations.
Last year it hired Marne Levine, who was chief of staff to Obama’s former chief economic adviser Larry Summers, as head of global public policy in Washington. General counsel Theodore Ullyot was deputy assistant to President George W. Bush. Joe Lockhart, Facebook’s vice president of communications, was President Bill Clinton’s press secretary.
Facebook’s new friend request: political insiders - The Washington Post
Another Pew summary
A survey released on Friday shows that people who have used the social networking site over a long period - since its founding in 2004, say - show no sign that they are tired of posting pictures, updating weekend plans or just relaying random thoughts.
[…]
Ahead of the IPO, one concern about Facebook has been that users will simply bore of it after a while, a phenomenon known as "Facebook fatigue." The Pew research suggests those worries may be unfounded.
No "Facebook fatigue" for longtime users: survey - Yahoo! News
A happy halo effect for Zynga
With big expectations for Facebook IPO filing, Zynga’s own stock has soared since the IPO paperwork was filed. In fact, since the Facebook IPO filing Zynga’s market cap has climbed over $1 billion thanks to the increase in stock prices for Zynga. Apparently, Zynga stock was trading at the close of market early this week for $10.96 per share, which is a bit higher than the $10 per share price in December when the company made its IPO. Yesterday, Zynga stock opened at $11.05 and the price went up to $12.81 per share at its peak.
Check the full post for an overview of how Altova tackles a long-standing problem with XML and innovative tools (it’s post-90s “store form in document,” for those who speak Notes…)
Organizations have been forced to adapt many of their internal business processes to accommodate an increasingly mobile workforce. Although there are technological solutions that address many of today’s communication needs, the plethora of different document formats in use – even within the same organization – means that some tasks remain vexing. For example, how does an organization remain flexible enough to facilitate the exchange of data among mobile workers yet retain the ability to bring that data into internal IT systems?
[…]
Better than taking up valuable landfill space, I suppose
Research In Motion plans to give away tablets to Android developers who quickly port their apps to run on the PlayBook device.
RIM developer executive Alec Saunders mentioned the program in a Twitter message on Thursday, with the company offering up a few more details on its Web site.
RIM Offering Free PlayBook Tablets to Android Developers - Ina Fried - Mobile - AllThingsD
See the source article and/or Pew report for more stats and analysis
We receive significantly more likes, messages, tags and friend requests from our Facebook friends than we send out ourselves, according to a new Pew Internet report.
In one month, Pew study participants liked other people’s Facebook content an average of 14 times, and had their own Facebook content liked 20 times. They sent nine personal messages, and received 12. Twelve percent of them tagged friends in photos, and 35 percent were themselves tagged in at least one photo. Forty percent made a friend request and 63 percent received one. Every category showed that same pattern.
Pew Report: On Facebook, We Get More Love Than We Give - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD
More details on Microsoft’s multifaceted bet-the-company strategy on Windows 8; check the full article for more perspectives from Paul Thurrott
Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, will be based on the Windows 8 kernel and not on Windows CE as are current versions. This will not impact app compatibility: Microsoft expects to have over 100,000 Windows Phone 7.5-compatible apps available by the time WP8 launches, and they will all work fine on this new OS.
Windows Phone 8, as its name suggests, will also be tied closely to the desktop version of Windows 8 in other ways. They'll be launched closely to each other, and will share integrated ecosystems, thanks to the shared underlying code, components, and user experiences. Windows Phone 8 is part of the "Windows Reimagined" campaign that Microsoft announced for Windows 8. This makes sense as they're companion products in every sense of the word.
Excerpt from a new blog focused on modeling realities
Let the debunking begin. Last time we said that data modeling is difficult for various reasons, some legitimate and some silly, and that we’d scrutinize some of the silly ones. One reason: People misunderstand the nature of conceptual modeling.
First some basic definitions. […]
- A conceptual data model is a technology-neutral expression of the kinds of data that some person or organization values. To stress the point, I sometimes say “technology-agnostic” or even “technology-apathetic.” When you are building a conceptual data model, you should not care about technology. (Hard to realize in practice, but let’s at least get the definitions right.)
- A logical data model is also an expression of kinds of data, as that data would be represented by a particular technology paradigm such as the relational model.
- A physical data model is also an expression of kinds of data, as that data would be represented in a particular implementation in a particular product, such as a specific version of Oracle Database or Microsoft SQL Server.
Modeling Reality. Really. Conceptual: Huh Wuh Now? | erstudio.com
Planning for the very long-term
Mark Zuckerberg’s majority control over Facebook Inc. puts too much power in the hands of one person and may deter potential investors in the company’s initial public offering, corporate-governance experts said.
The chief executive officer has 56.9 percent of voting power, the Menlo Park, California-based company said yesterday in its prospectus to investors. He also has the ability to designate a successor in the event he still controls the company at the time of his death, Facebook said in the filing.
Zuckerberg Controlling 57% of Facebook Seen as Risk to Investors - Businessweek
Excerpt from an overview of why you can probably retire your home fax machine; some of the scanning apps also integrate with Evernote (which includes optical character recognition for images) and/or Dropbox
[…] For the price you might pay to send a fax from the local copy shop, you can buy an app that scans documents, builds PDF files and exports them without all the hardware headaches.
Free apps like JotNot Scanner are a good entry point for cautious buyers, but on Apple, at least, paid apps like TurboScan ($2), Scanner Pro ($7) and JotNot Scanner Pro ($2) are worth the money.
On Android, CamScanner (free for limited version; $5 for unlimited version) offers similar functions, while Scan to PDF is a good free option.
Scanner Apps Make Digital Versions of Paper Documents - NYTimes.com
It’s not the TV market; it’s the information and entertainment market, in which TVs are simply one type of input/output device
So Apple’s reportedly been shopping around for parts that might be used in TVs.
Not the hardest of evidence that the company will actually produce one. That said, the signs do appear to be adding up. Over the past few months we’ve heard chatter claiming Apple televisions have been prototyped and that Sharp has been retooling a production line at one of its factories to produce the modified amorphous TFT LCD displays that will grace them.
If that is the case, it’s entirely possible that the TV market will be the next one Apple attempts to reinvent. And if it pulls it off, the rewards could be great. Some say Apple stands to gain an incremental $50 billion to $100 billion in market cap if it produces a compelling HDTV, one that not only trumps the competition but steals market share away from it, as the iPhone has from incumbent smartphone producers.
Apple Spotted Shopping Around for TV Parts - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD
Sign of the times
Apparently, Facebook has a lot of friends.
Clickety-clicking ones, whose massive interest in the just-filed IPO of the Silicon Valley social networking giant seems to have temporarily crashed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR Web site, where anyone can access regulatory documents on companies.
Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Crashes SEC Web Site - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD
Excerpts from an expert summary
Here are the major stats on Facebook’s IPO, which it just filed: 845 million monthly users and 483 million daily users; annual revenue of $3.7 billion; $1.8 billion in annual operating income and $1 billion net income.
[…]
And here are some uh-oh stats:
A full 12 percent of Facebook’s revenue in 2011 was linked to its relationship with online gaming giant Zynga.
And overall growth is slowing too.
On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in IPO - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD
Notes to self: 1) learn to paint; 2) invent time machine; 3) go back in time to early Facebook days and win contract to paint office murals in exchange for Facebook stock
The graffiti artist who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social network’s first headquarters made a smart bet. The shares owned by the artist, David Choe, are expected to be worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly later this year.
The social network company announced its $5 billion public offering Wednesday afternoon, which is expected to value the whole company at $75 billion to $100 billion. Ultimately, that offering will mint a lot of billionaires and millionaires.
Somehow this article, which I ran across via The New Yorker, seems to parallel Neil Young and the Sound of Music (AllThingsD)
The author of Freedom and The Corrections, regarded as one of America’s greatest living novelists, said consumers had been conned into thinking that they need the latest technology.
“The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,” said Franzen, who famously cuts off all connection to the internet when he is writing.
“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.
And “write once, run anywhere” is still going to come to fruition “real soon now”
February 1, 1991: Sun Microsystems Starts JavaTM Technology.
Mike Sheridan, James Gosling, and Patrick Naughton of Sun Microsystems, Inc. start to develop JavaTM technology. It grew out of a Sun project in embedded control called *7 (Star Seven). Naughton focused on Aspen graphics system, Gosling on programming language ideas, Sheridan on business development.
Computer History Museum | Exhibits | This Day in History: February 1
What you’ll find is a lot of information that goes to the core of Oracle’s argument that HP has a lot to lose if the Itanium chip goes end of life, which is exactly what Oracle has said Intel plans to do. As the only major server vendor who sells boxes running Itanium chips, HP makes a lot of money — billions of dollars, according to a newly unredacted statement in the filing — on service-and-support contracts with its Itanium customers. As one HP executive is quoted on page four of the filing, without Itanium, HP would be “strategically screwed.”
Filing: Without Itanium Chip, HP Is "Strategically Screwed" - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD
Just saw this in Chrome (on Windows):
At least I was notified, via the Google+ Notifications Chrome extension, that I will now be notifying Google about more of my Chrome activities (and, in fairness, I could have clicked “Cancel,” in which case I assume I would have seen the warning every few days; I could also uninstall the extension, of course, but I assume Google already has most of the related data anyway…)
Subtitle: The iPad is letting Apple succeed at business without really trying
From the second page of the article:
For companies considering tablets, the main alternatives are devices that run Google Inc.’s Android operating system. Many chief information officers are concerned that Android isn’t as secure as Apple’s iOS software, said Santiago Becerra, CEO of MeLLmo, a corporate app developer.
Companies also have to go through a lengthy testing phase before letting a device access its networks, and it’s easier to qualify the iPad than each of the many Android tablets on the market. For now, MeLLmo only makes apps for the iPad.
“There are so few CIOs looking at Android that it’s not worth it for us right now,” Becerra said.
Read the WSJ article and then revisit FTC settlement gives Facebook leverage over competitors (Washington Post), for an interesting juxtaposition; also see Google Targets Rival Facebook With Tough New Privacy Policies (Daily Beast/Dan Lyons)
Google said the changes could improve people's experience using some of its services. But the company has also indicated to outsiders that the changes may help boost its online-advertising business, which generated nearly $40 billion in revenue last year.
Google said that it isn't collecting new kinds of information about people and that the policy essentially consolidates dozens of policies that were already in effect for individual Google services. But it added that if users are signed into their Google accounts, data about their Web-search history and the videos they watched on YouTube may now be used in combination with other services.
Tangentially, also see Why Did We Look The Other Way on Competition, Gamification? (Forbes)
Videogames have long been assailed for their violent themes and gruesome imagery. But a small slice of players has embraced a new strategy: not killing. They are imparting real-world morals on their virtual-world characters and completing entire games on a "pacifist run"—the term for beating a blood-and-guts adventure without drawing any blood.
The cool restraint of pacifism can bring bragging rights and even a taste of online fame. Videogame enthusiasts routinely post videos of their accomplishments on YouTube.
It’s easy to succeed in business; every company simply needs to be more like Apple…
“With the valuation Amazon is carrying, you got to perform,” said Colin Gillis, senior technology analyst for BGC Financial. “You’ve got to be like Apple — smash through the numbers people are afraid even to whisper. Instead, they’re only making slightly over a penny on every dollar in revenue. That’s pathetic in any industry.”
Other analysts were more optimistic.
“The long-term story is very much intact,” said Scott Devitt of Morgan Stanley, although he noted that investors might not be buying the stock for the next six months or so.
From an overview of Facebook, the social data management company
At the moment, the battle is on between those two models of making money from online advertising. If Google’s search engine cast the Internet as an instrument of solitary exploration, Facebook requires its users to share what they do with their Facebook “friends.” In some ways, the Facebook offering is a test of how valuable the social model of the Internet could be.
According to comScore, a market research firm, Facebook has become the largest platform for display advertising on the Web in the United States; 28 percent of all display ads come to Facebook, followed by Yahoo, which gets less than half that share.
While advertising is its bread and butter, Facebook has sought new sources of income by becoming a place where goods and services are bought and sold, whether it is virtual farm animals or real concert tickets.
Personal Data’s Value? Facebook Is Set to Find Out - NYTimes.com
Check the full article for a Facebook IPO snapshot
Can an initial public offering from Facebook reverse the Wall Street curse on social media companies?
Facebook IPO could redefine the social media market - Business - The Boston Globe
Some insightful research done in collaboration with Albert-László Barabási and Robin Dunbar
The pattern of calls and texts between humans reveals how women invest more heavily in their main relationship than men; and how this changes as they age.
Mobile Phone Data Reveals Human Reproductive Strategies - Technology Review
Also see Sandberg: Star Face for Facebook (Bloomberg Businessweek) for more on Facebook’s strategy
Now, as Facebook is preparing to file papers for a massive stock offering this week, its recent agreement with the FTC may help protect its dominance by discouraging competitors from launching social networks of their own, analysts say.
Anyone starting such a site, be it a big Silicon Valley firm or a college student in a dorm, will now have to wrestle with federal enforcement officials who are more carefully watching how personal information is shared on social networks, these experts say.
FTC settlement gives Facebook leverage over competitors - The Washington Post
Sandpaper not included
Samsung's much-anticipated Galaxy Note will be available at AT&T on Feb. 19 for $300 with a two-year contract.
The 4G LTE smartphone can be pre-ordered online or in stores beginning Sunday for delivery by Feb. 17, the company said.
Samsung has been hyping the Galaxy Note as a new device category geared toward the creative-minded set, although most consumers will likely view it as a combination of a smartphone and tablet. The device features a large 5.3-inch touchscreen -- one of the largest on a phone -- and a stylus, called the S Pen.
Samsung Galaxy Note will be available at AT&T stores Feb. 19 - latimes.com
On the remote chance that you don’t feel your Facebook Timeline already represents over-sharing…
Your video only takes a few minutes to create (during the process you’ll see a few photos from your Timeline in the background). It works by evaluating the content you have shared with the public and with friends, and then identifies the most engaging and relevant life moments to build a chronological story for your customized mini-movie.
Once the app is done, you can watch the movie, as well as choose accompanying music (five soundtracks to choose from) and/or change photos, videos, check-ins, and so on. When you’re satisfied, you can share your Timeline movie with your Facebook friends. Unsurprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be an option to share it elsewhere, such as on YouTube.
An impressive use of technology to facilitate constructive political discourse
Missed today's hangout with President +Barack Obama? Watch the full video below and let us know what you think.
Google Politics & Elections - Google+ - Presidential hangout now on YouTube Missed today's hangout…
tbd if this will turn out to be a one-time pop for Apple, from the combination of the iPhone 4s release and having multiple service providers offering iPhones, but Samsung is clearly refuting the recent Android-in-crisis meme; it’s Apple and Samsung smartphone competitors that appear to be in crisis mode
Samsung Electronics Co. was the only smartphone maker partnering with Google Inc. that found holiday cheer competing against Apple Inc.’s iPhone.
Apple led the smartphone market in the fourth quarter after unveiling the iPhone 4S in October. Of the 9.4 million devices activated by AT&T Inc., the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier, 7.6 million were iPhones. Verizon Wireless, the largest provider, said 56 percent of its 7.7 million smartphones were iPhones. Samsung was No. 2 in shipments.
Android Falls Out of Favor as Holiday Buyers Pick Apple’s IPhone - Businessweek
Interesting times for Verizon customers and employees
As Verizon Communications Inc. pushes for more cable-television and high-speed Internet subscribers, a new competitor is emerging: its own subsidiary, Verizon Wireless.
This month, Verizon Wireless stores in Seattle and Portland, Ore., began offering home Internet, cable and telephone service from Comcast Corp. as part of a new joint marketing deal between the cellphone provider and several cable companies.
[…]
The relationship between Verizon's landline and wireless businesses is complicated by Verizon's ownership structure—Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group PLC of the U.K.—and by the fact that many of Verizon's landline workers are union members, while their wireless counterparts aren't. To Verizon's union workers—thousands of whom went on strike last summer as contract talks foundered—the deal with the cable companies represents a move away from Verizon's unionized landline labor, some of their leaders say.
For flexible field fleecing
On Monday, President Obama’s re-election campaign announced that it would immediately begin using Square, a mobile payments start-up company based in San Francisco, with campaign staffers and some approved volunteers. “Squares are being sent to our campaign offices across the country,” said Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign.
The announcement is just the first part of the strategy the Obama campaign plans to employ for mobile donations over the coming months.
Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding - NYTimes.com
Excerpt from an Amazon snapshot; also see Tablet Sales Will Increase Fivefold Over Next Five Years
While revenue growth is impressive, the company’s profitability is being weighed down by losses from the $199 Kindle (which is not quite a break-even proposition), the construction of more warehouses across the globe (17 were added in 2011 for a total of 69) and other investments in infrastructure, like its cloud-computing services and media services, like video, music and e-books.
In contrast, Apple has a rich markup on its iDevices and doesn’t have much of the same overhead as Amazon.
Still, the number of consumers Amazon touches in just one quarter is staggering, and it continues to take share from brick and mortar retailers.
Check the source for an overview of Steve Perlman’s latest adventure
By downloading a free application to an iPad, users get two gigabytes of storage and access to popular Office software
I suspect Microsoft is pleased to see this sort of OpenOffice dissipation; meanwhile, IBM would probably prefer you focus on IBM Docs, which is not based on OpenOffice.org or Symphony
IBM is instead putting its "energy" into the Apache OpenOffice project, having contributed the Symphony code base to the Apache Software Foundation.
Ed Brill, director of messaging and collaboration for Lotus software, has blogged here: "We expect to distribute an 'IBM edition' of Apache OpenOffice in the future."
The decision sees IBM lining up against Google, Ubuntu-shop Canonical Red Hat, Novell and others who've thrown their hats in with The Document Foundation.
Happy birthday to Doug Engelbart
Douglas Engelbart
January 30, 1925
Douglas Engelbart is Born
Doug Engelbart, best known for inventing the mouse, is born. Engelbart publically demonstrated the mouse at a computer conference in 1968, where he also showed off work his group had done in hypermedia and on-screen video teleconferencing. The founder of the Bootstrap Institute, Engelbart has 20 patents to his name.
Computer History Museum | Exhibits | This Day in History: January 30
Sign of the times
Google's Finland data center is the ultimate metaphor for the Internet Age (Photos: Google)
Joe Kava found himself on the southern coast of Finland, sending robotic cameras down an underground tunnel that stretched into the Baltic Sea. It’s not quite what he expected when he joined Google to run its data centers.
In February of 2009, Google paid about $52 million for an abandoned paper mill in Hamina, Finland, after deciding that the 56-year-old building was the ideal place to build one of the massive computing facilities that serve up its myriad online services. Part of the appeal was that the Hamina mill included an underground tunnel once used to pull water from the Gulf of Finland. Originally, that frigid Baltic water cooled a steam generation plant at the mill, but Google saw it as a way to cool its servers.
Google Reincarnates Dead Paper Mill as Data Center of Future | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com
From a GOOG/MMI reality check
The really profitable bit of the business is the "Home" division, which makes set-top boxes, but has been bumping along at around $900m revenues for the past year. It actually makes money - only around $60m per quarter, but at least it's profit, compared to the consistent losses in the mobile business, which has only made a profit in two of the past nine quarters. Even so, it would take 75 years for the Home business's profit to make back the money Google paid for the business.
In other words, in purely financial terms, MMI is a dog.
Faced with all that, it looks increasingly likely that Google will instead use Motorola's patents aggressively - as Müller suggests in the provocatively-titled Will Google break or save the internet?
Excerpt from an Om Malik big-picture snapshot
Earlier this month, web measurement and analytics company, comScore reported that Pinterest, a tiny little company based in Silicon Valley is now the 10th largest social platform with billions of page views.
It propelled itself into a group that included Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Amazing isn’t it — considering that the service is still at an invite-only stage.
But it shouldn’t be surprising. Remember, with every passing year, the metabolism of the technology industry has increased. It took Yahoo more than a decade to blow past 500 million users. Facebook will hit the billion mark in six years.
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/29/apple-internet-the-constant-new-normal/
Glad to see this
Email-service providers Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL Inc. are backing a new effort intended to dramatically reduce "phishing" emails—which attempt to trick recipients into thinking they come from a legitimate source.
The companies—along with others such as financial-service companies Bank of America Corp., FMR LLC's Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.'s PayPal—are hoping to create an environment that allows the recipient of an email from, say, a bank, to feel secure that it isn't a trick.
tbd if it has a full set of pod bay door jokes
Created by True Knowledge, a Cambridge, U.K.-based semantic technology startup, Evi, like Siri, can answer questions posed aloud in a conversational manner. But unlike Siri, which is only loaded on the latest iPhone, Evi is available as an app for the iPhone and phones running Google's Android software.
[…]
Evi's availability and promise as an artificial intelligence app, coupled with its low price (99 cents on the iPhone and free on Android phones), caused its popularity to skyrocket following its Monday release, and made it difficult for those downloading it to try it out. Evi isn't the only Siri competitor—and in fact its capabilities are somewhat different from Siri's offerings—but plenty of smart-phone users, it seems, are eager for Evi's help in particular.
