FTC settlement gives Facebook leverage over competitors - The Washington Post

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

Samsung Galaxy Note will be available at AT&T stores Feb. 19 - latimes.com

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

Facebook launches Timeline Movie Maker | ZDNet

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.

Facebook launches Timeline Movie Maker | ZDNet

Google Politics & Elections - Google+ - Presidential hangout now on YouTube Missed today's hangout…

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.

Your Interview with the President - 2012

Google Politics & Elections - Google+ - Presidential hangout now on YouTube Missed today's hangout…

Android Falls Out of Favor as Holiday Buyers Pick Apple’s IPhone - Businessweek

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

Verizon's Tangled Web - WSJ.com

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.

Verizon's Tangled Web - WSJ.com

Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding - NYTimes.com

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

Amazon and Apple: Two Tablet Makers, Two Different Fourth Quarters - Tricia Duryee - Commerce - AllThingsD

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.

Amazon and Apple: Two Tablet Makers, Two Different Fourth Quarters - Tricia Duryee - Commerce - AllThingsD

Windows on an iPad - Technology Review

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

Windows on an iPad - Technology Review

IBM calls time on Symphony OpenOffice fork • The Register

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.

IBM calls time on Symphony OpenOffice fork • The Register

Computer History Museum | Exhibits | This Day in History: January 30

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

Google Reincarnates Dead Paper Mill as Data Center of Future | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

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

Will Google have to start a patent war to get $9bn of value from Motorola? | Technology | guardian.co.uk

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?

Will Google have to start a patent war to get $9bn of value from Motorola? | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Apple, Internet & the constant New Normal [GigaOM]

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/

Email Giants Move to Slash 'Phishing' - WSJ.com

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.

Email Giants Move to Slash 'Phishing' - WSJ.com

New Virtual Helper Challenges Siri - Technology Review

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.

New Virtual Helper Challenges Siri - Technology Review

Apple Post-Quartum Thoughts | Monday Note

Excerpt from another cogent Jean-Louis Gassée Apple reality check

Rev 1.0 of the meme held no hope for Apple: Android will kill iOS just like Windows crushed the Mac. (We’ll deal with the Windows vs. Mac part in a moment.) But where’s the evidence Android is in any way ‘‘killing’’ the iPhone? It’s certainly not happening in the US: The iPhone Accounted for 80 Percent of AT&T Smartphone Sales Last Quarter; for Verizon the portion was closer to 70%. Apple sold 62 million iOS devices last quarter; reports of Apple’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. (The actual numbers might include some statistical double dipping due to activations, but that applies equally to all brands so the picture remains the same.)

In the meantime, an ABI Research study shows that Android is losing market share. As with all such research, we’ll keep the usual caveats in mind…and wait for the next study.

Apple Post-Quartum Thoughts | Monday Note

How Should Facebook Use $10 Billion in IPO Cash? - Forbes

I’d like to see Facebook make the Evernote team an offer it can’t refuse, and to then accelerate Evernote’s mission and momentum

So Facebook, if it wanted, could consider much bigger purchases. Last March, Facebook hired one of Google‘s corporate development specialists, Amin Zoufonoun, to  amp up its own deal-making team. Whatever Zoufonoun’s upper limit is right now on feasible deals, that barrier is about be elevated by a substantial amount.

Once Facebook’s IPO is completed, count on investment bankers to pitch Zoufonoun and Facebook’s top executives (including founder Mark Zuckerberg) on all the possible ways of spending some of that $10 billion. Did you know that Research in Motion Ltd., maker of BlackBerry phones, recently sported a market capitalization of just $8.8 billion — less than Facebook’s imminent cash stash? That doesn’t make RIM a sensible acquisition idea for Facebook. In fact, it’s probably a uniquely foolish one. But that won’t stop Wall Street from imagining deals that Facebook can do.

How Should Facebook Use $10 Billion in IPO Cash? - Forbes

BSR Doesn't Want to Be Dragged Through Apple's Supply Chain Mud - Liz Gannes - News - AllThingsD

Important clarifications to last week’s controversial NYT Apple/China article

Corporate responsibility consultancy BSR isn’t happy that its name got pulled into the New York Times‘ provocative report on Apple and its suppliers’ manufacturing practices (“a consultant at BSR” was the source for a significant section of the piece). The company today asked for the story to be corrected, with BSR CEO Aron Cramer noting he had refuted various claims in a letter to the NYT before the piece was published. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously disputed the claims in an internal email that became public.

BSR Doesn't Want to Be Dragged Through Apple's Supply Chain Mud - Liz Gannes - News - AllThingsD

How and why we communicate with others » THINK OUTSIDE IN

The full second chapter of Grouped, which remains on my recommended-reading list, is available here

We talk to survive

The desire to communicate is hard-wired into all of us. It was an effective survival mechanism for our ancestors, who shared information about food supplies, dangerous animals, and weather patterns, and it continues to help us understand our world, including what behavior is appropriate and how to act in certain situations. People talk because sharing information makes life easier.

How and why we communicate with others » THINK OUTSIDE IN

BlackBerry, Aiming to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants - NYTimes.com

From a stark RIM reality check

RIM has two, maybe three ways forward.

The first — the one that Mr. Heins is clearly aiming for — is a triumphant comeback after a near-death experience. Think Apple and its iMac. RIM is on the verge of upgrading its PlayBook operating system — now with, among other things, e-mail, a feature that the original PlayBook bafflingly lacked — and will release the BlackBerry 10 OS this year.

Behind Door No. 2 is a gradual decline and diminution as rivals like Apple, Google and Microsoft devour most of the market; to some degree, they already have. BlackBerry would keep the scraps — a small but dedicated following of corporate and government customers who want its proprietary messaging and security features.

Then there is the third option: oblivion.

From Ups and downs of RIM’s stock (The Washington Post)

BlackBerry, Aiming to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants - NYTimes.com

Bill Gates: 'I wrote Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying. He kept it by his bed’ - Telegraph

Part of the story that didn’t make it into Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography

The atmosphere changed in 2007 when Gates left Microsoft to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife. “Steve and I did an event together, and he couldn’t have been nicer…I got a fair bit of time with him in his last year. Some months before Jobs died, Gates paid him a long visit. “We spent literally hours reminiscing and talking about the future.” Later, with his old adversary’s death imminent, he wrote to him. “I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know.”

That last gesture was not, he says, conciliatory. “There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.” After Jobs’s death, Gates received a phone call from his wife, Laurene. “She said; 'Look, this biography really doesn’t paint a picture of the mutual respect you had.’ And she said he’d appreciated my letter and kept it by his bed.”

Bill Gates: 'I wrote Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying. He kept it by his bed’ - Telegraph

Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from a Barnes & Noble snapshot; also see Amazon's Hit Man (BusinessWeek cover story article this week)

Inside the great publishing houses — grand names like Macmillan, Penguin and Random House — there is a sense of unease about the long-term fate of Barnes & Noble, the last major bookstore chain standing. First, the megastores squeezed out the small players. (Think of Tom Hanks’s Fox & Sons Books to Meg Ryan’s Shop Around the Corner in the 1998 comedy, “You’ve Got Mail”.) Then the chains themselves were gobbled up or driven under, as consumers turned to the Web. B. Dalton Bookseller and Crown Books are long gone. Borders collapsed last year.

No one expects Barnes & Noble to disappear overnight. The worry is that it might slowly wither as more readers embrace e-books. What if all those store shelves vanished, and Barnes & Noble became little more than a cafe and a digital connection point? Such fears came to the fore in early January, when the company projected that it would lose even more money this year than Wall Street had expected. Its share price promptly tumbled 17 percent that day.

Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life - NYTimes.com

Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop | TechCrunch

On a related note, also see Look, Ma, No Hands! Operating a Laptop With Eyes Only

But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle a pair of prototypes, which were confirmed to be official, not just one of the many experiments that hide within Microsoft’s various lairs.

Unfortunately the laptops were not ready for their debut and no pictures seem to have been permitted. But they are described as netbook-like, with a number of smaller sensors instead of a webcam, and what could be an IR LED at the bottom of the screen.

Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop | TechCrunch

When Twitter Blocks Tweets, It’s #Outrage - NYTimes.com

A time for big Twitter decisions

Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and author of “The Master Switch,” said the changes could undermine the usefulness of Twitter in authoritarian countries.

“I don’t fault them for wanting to run a normal business,” he said. “It does suggest someone or something else needs to take Twitter’s place as a political tool.”

Professor Wu urged the company to use discretion: “Twitter needs to be careful not to be in a position where it’s no longer helpful to a rebellion against oppressive governments. It needs to remain its old self in some circumstances.”

When Twitter Blocks Tweets, It’s #Outrage - NYTimes.com

Interview: With webOS Transition Under Way, Rubinstein Leaves HP - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

To summarize: he didn’t have any control (as Palm CEO), and it wasn’t his fault…

On the heels of the news of his departure from HP Friday, Apple veteran and onetime Palm head Jon Rubinstein spoke with AllThingsD about the move and the fate of Palm’s webOS.

Why leave Hewlett-Packard now?

Interview: With webOS Transition Under Way, Rubinstein Leaves HP - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

CHART OF THE DAY: The Kindle Fire Is The Most Important Android Tablet For App Makers [Business Insider]

Check the full post for context-setting; tbd why no Nook Color/Tablet share

CHART OF THE DAY: The Kindle Fire Is The Most Important Android Tablet For App Makers

First Look: IBM Docs Takes On Google, Microsoft [CRN]

Not sure this was a deliberate case study in damning with feint praise

While IBM Docs allows for creation of .ODT-based word documents, as well as presentations and spreadsheets, it shouldn’t be looked at in a vacuum. IBM Docs is latest in a string of launches in the IBM-Lotus portfolio of cloud-based communication and productivity applications. They are all new generations of releases from the same people who gave us the IBM Mashup Center at the beginning of the Web 2.0 era.

First Look: IBM Docs Takes On Google, Microsoft

PC Makers Should Fear Amazon's Android Gains - Businessweek

A svelte 9” or 10” Kindle Fire would significantly accelerate market dynamics in this context

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said during his company’s recent earnings call that iPad sales haven’t really been affected by the Kindle Fire from Amazon, which is no doubt contributing heavily to the success of Android tablets. It’s also likely that the Nook Color and Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble are included in the Android figures. Instead, Cook admitted, the iPad has had some cannibalization effect on sales of Macs and he predicted that one day, the tablet market will be larger in volume than the PC market.

PC Makers Should Fear Amazon's Android Gains - Businessweek

Report: Apple Takes Bigger Business Slice - Digits - WSJ

Top-down infiltration

A new report from Forrester has uncovered new numbers on Apple Inc.’s infiltration of business with devices historically marketed to consumers.

According to the report, 21% of the 10,000 information workers surveyed use one or more Apple products at work, with that percentage nearly doubling for those with a title of director or higher. The numbers partly reflect the well documented trend of “bring your own device,” where workers access corporate data via their iPhone or iPad, originally purchased for home use.

Report: Apple Takes Bigger Business Slice - Digits - WSJ

Microsoft's Pays Nokia Millions During Windows Phone Transition - Ina Fried - Mobile - AllThingsD

I suspect Tim Cook finds this amusing

As part of Thursday’s earnings report, Nokia noted it received $250 million from Redmond in the first of many quarterly “platform support payments.” It’s part of what the company says will ultimately be billions of dollars in support of its shift to Windows Phone.

Nokia also notes that it pays Microsoft royalties on each phone and has guaranteed minimum commitments, an amount it also expects to ultimately be measured in the billions of dollars.

Microsoft's Pays Nokia Millions During Windows Phone Transition - Ina Fried - Mobile - AllThingsD

Motorola Sells Significantly Fewer Tablets Than Apple - John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

It’s the patents Google has decided to spend $12.5B on; the products are expendable

Some disappointing numbers in Motorola Mobility’s latest earnings report: A loss of $80 million on revenue of $3.4 billion, and mobile device shipments of 10.5 million versus 11.3 million a year ago. Still, few were as grim as these: 200,000 tablets shipped in the fourth quarter and just 1 million shipped for all of 2011. In other words, it took MoMo a full year to ship 1/15th the number of iPads Apple sold in its most recent quarter.

And this is the company that Google has decided to spend $12.5 billion on.

Motorola Sells Significantly Fewer Tablets Than Apple - John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

Pac-Man Proved NP-Hard By Computational Complexity Theory - Technology Review

Sign of the times

The classic '80s arcade game turns out to be equivalent to the travelling salesman problem, according a new analysis of the computational complexity of video games

Pac-Man Proved NP-Hard By Computational Complexity Theory - Technology Review

Analysis: Wall Street puzzles over Google's new direction - Yahoo! News

Searching for a coherent and compelling Google value proposition

Google does not disclose how much money it has spent on Google+. But analysts believe much of Google's aggressive hiring during the past year -- its headcount swelled to more than 8,000 employees in 2011 alone -- was to feed its social efforts as it seeks to challenge Facebook's 800 million user network.

[…]

Google+, which does not currently feature ads, is still in its infancy and the company has yet to outline its monetization plans for the service. But Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter said the benefits of some of Google's other non-search initiatives, such as the vast amount of online video it now streams across the Web on YouTube, are coming into focus.

"The goal at the end of the rainbow is TV advertising," he said. "For years Google has been eating the lunch of print and radio, but TV has held up incredibly well."

Analysis: Wall Street puzzles over Google's new direction - Yahoo! News

Nokia Posts Huge Loss - WSJ.com

On another Apple value transfusion note…

Finland's Nokia Corp., the world's largest mobile-phone maker by volume, Thursday posted its third consecutive quarterly net loss, as handset sales dropped 29% on an annual basis.

The company swung to a crushing €1.07 billion ($1.4 billion) loss for the three months ended Dec. 31, down from a €745 million profit in the same period last year. Group sales dropped 21% to €10 billion from €12.65 billion.

Nokia Posts Huge Loss - WSJ.com

As Streaming Rises, More Americans Cut Cable - TheStreet

As Hiawatha Bray noted in his related Google+ post, “Bad news for Comcast”

A survey from Deloitte shows just how much this trend has begun to take hold among the American public. The company's latest State of the Media Democracy survey asked nearly 2,000 consumers from every age group about their media consumption habits, and included in the survey were several questions pertaining to Internet streaming. Most notably, 9% of surveyed consumers said they had recently canceled their paid cable service in favor of an Internet streaming service, and another 11% were considering cutting cable for the same reason. Young people in particular are leading the way in this trend, with 19% of the 23-28 age group giving serious thought to cutting the cord.

As Streaming Rises, More Americans Cut Cable - TheStreet

Android Reaches 39% Tablet OS Market Share (Standing On Amazon’s Shoulders) | TechCrunch

I suspect the non-Kindle Fire/non-Nook part of the Android tablet market share is a rounding error.  Also see Ha! Your “Limited Function” Kindle Fire Is No Match for My Magical iPad! (AllThingsD) for related Tim Cook commentary.

Apple’s iPad reigns supreme from whatever angle you choose to look at the tablet market (profits, apps, quality, market share, mindshare, you name it), but research firm Strategy Analytics this morning said Android did manage to capture a record 39 percent tablet OS market share in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Apple maintains the lead with 58 percent market share in Q4 2011.

Android Reaches 39% Tablet OS Market Share (Standing On Amazon’s Shoulders) | TechCrunch

Netflix Surges After Subscriber Rebound: Los Angeles Mover - Businessweek

Not dead yet

Netflix Inc., the online and mail- order video-rental service, surged after reporting fourth- quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates and forecasting improving margins in its streaming business.

Netflix signed 610,000 U.S. customers in the period to reach 24.4 million, according to a statement yesterday. Shares of the Los Gatos, California-based company rose 16 percent to $110.12 in extended trading.

Tangentially, from “Piracy is part of the digital ecosystem” (Monday Note), a snapshot of U.S. bandwidth consumption

Netflix Surges After Subscriber Rebound: Los Angeles Mover - Businessweek

Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from a stark globalization snapshot

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China - NYTimes.com

Real Bonding With Family Around the TV Via Skype - Walt Mossberg - Personal Technology - AllThingsD

Check the product Web page and the full Walt Mossberg review for more details

This TV add-on product is a black, horizontal bar less than a foot long and under 3 inches high with a wide-angle lens and multiple built-in microphones. It installs quickly and easily—typically on top of the TV—and is controlled by a remote from across the room that can be used to place and answer calls, and to zoom and pan your image. It can connect to any other Skype-enabled device—including PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets—but some of its advanced features require a telyHD on both sides of the conversation.

[…]

TelyHD isn’t just a webcam. It’s a small computing device, powered by Google’s Android operating system. It contains software and Internet capabilities most TVs lack, some of which go beyond simple video calls. For instance, when contacting other telyHD units, I was able to send and receive video voice mails. And I was able to plug into the telyHD a flash memory card filled with pictures. I could share the pictures with another telyHD user and vice versa. I could even choose to copy a photo from the other party onto my own memory card. You can do the same thing with a USB drive.

Real Bonding With Family Around the TV Via Skype - Walt Mossberg - Personal Technology - AllThingsD

Textbook publishers prep for the e-future - Business - The Boston Globe

Another market domain apparently ready to begin a value transfusion to Apple

Between them, Houghton, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill Cos. in New York command 85 percent of the $3.2 billion core K-12 textbook market - serving 50 million students - in the United States, according to the website paidcontent.org, which covers digital media.

Just 46 cents of every $100 spent on overall K-12 education is spent on digital texts, according to a September federal report from the White House. How fast that share will grow is an open question, said Josef Blumenfeld, senior vice president of corporate affairs at Houghton.

Textbook publishers prep for the e-future - Business - The Boston Globe

Apple's soaraway growth is Google's pain - and here's why • The Register

Steve Jobs would have enjoyed this

Now compare Google's fortunes to Apple's. Apple is today the world's most valuable company, and it hasn't spent one cent on lobbying against intellectual property. Apple makes real money, on real products, which aren't easily replicable. Google, by contrast, is easily substitutable for a Bing or a Baidu. The idea is beginning to circulate that there's no real long-term growth in Google's business.

Apple's soaraway growth is Google's pain - and here's why • The Register

Real Dan Lyons Web Site » Blog Archive » Why Apple deserves every bit of its success » Real Dan Lyons Web Site

Even the former Fake Steve Jobs can’t find much not to like about Apple’s success

Great products. An ecosystem of hardware-software-content. Fantastic customer service. Brilliant marketing. Awesome retail stores. World-beating supply chain and operational expertise. This is a company unlike anything any of us have ever seen. They have earned every bit of their success. And they are only getting stronger. My longer take on today’s phenomenal earnings report is here on the Daily Beast.

Real Dan Lyons Web Site » Blog Archive » Why Apple deserves every bit of its success » Real Dan Lyons Web Site

Business & Technology | Google to merge user data across more services | Seattle Times Newspaper

Meanwhile, via Danny Sullivan (via Facebook…), “Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else”

Google announced a plan Tuesday to link user data across its email, video, social-networking and other services that it says will create a "beautifully simple and intuitive" user experience. But critics raised privacy concerns like those that helped kill the search giant's Buzz social networking service.

The changes, which take effect March 1, will remove some of the legal hurdles Google Inc. faces in trying to link information across services from Gmail to YouTube to the Google Plus social network that replaced Buzz.

Business & Technology | Google to merge user data across more services | Seattle Times Newspaper

Apple’s Profit Doubled on Holiday Customers Snapping Up iPhones - NYTimes.com

More Apple stats

With the 37 million iPhones that customers snapped up over the holidays, Apple has sold 183 million of the devices since the product went on sale in 2007.  Revenue from the iPhone and iPad — neither of which could be bought five years ago — now accounts for 72 percent of Apple’s total revenue, underscoring the transformation of the company.

And although phones based on Google’s Android operating system had been gaining more customers in recent years, Apple has begun to chip away at some of the advantages of these phones, narrowing Android’s lead in the United States over the holidays.

[…]

The rosy results sent Apple shares soaring more than 7 percent in after-hours trading to more than $450 each. The jump increased the total value of Apple’s shares to more than $426 billion, pushing its market value past that of Exxon Mobil and making it the most highly valued company.

Apple’s Profit Doubled on Holiday Customers Snapping Up iPhones - NYTimes.com

Apple Sold More iPads Than HP Sold PCs - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

Sign of the times

Apple sold 15.4 million iPads and 5.2 million Macs in its first quarter. That’s more than 20 million personal computing devices. HP’s PC sales for the fourth quarter were 14.7 million, according to Gartner. Which means Apple’s iPad sales alone surpassed HP’s PC sales, as Apple Insider first noted.

Apple Sold More iPads Than HP Sold PCs - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

Tim Cook Reports on His First Four Months at Apple - Ina Fried - News - AllThingsD

Another incredible Apple quarter – per Business Insider, the iPhone was 53% of sales for Apple’s most recent quarter

Apple’s quarterly iPhone sales, at more than 37 million smartphones, were numbers that its rivals would kill to have for a year, let alone a quarter. And recent data for the U.S. shows Apple alone nearly even with the entire Android world in market share.

Cook said he is focused on remaining the lead horse in the race, but said he doesn’t see Android as the only competitor.

“I wouldn’t say it is a two-horse race,” he said. “There’s a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs.”

[Chart from Business Insider page linked above]

Tim Cook Reports on His First Four Months at Apple - Ina Fried - News - AllThingsD

Facebook Says It Will Now Push Timeline to All Users - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD

Facebook finally rolling out Timeline “over the next few weeks”

This particular Facebook layout change seems to have been less catastrophic than others, in part because the Timeline rollout was delayed, staggered and included the seven-day preview periods. But complaints seem likely to spike once Timeline is no longer an upgrade option but a requirement for everybody.

Just last week, Facebook unleashed 60 new Timeline apps for food, fashion, fitness and travel. Like those for music and other media, the apps automatically post about user activity.

Facebook Says It Will Now Push Timeline to All Users - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD

Subtext iPad App Makes Readers' Thoughts an Open Book - Katherine Boehret - The Digital Solution - AllThingsD

See the full review for more details about a social reading app for Google Books on the iPad

Like Amazon’s Kindle already does, Subtext gives anyone who reads an e-book the ability to make notes, highlight passages and to keep private or share those notes or highlights with other users. But this app goes much further: It also lets readers post questions, polls, quizzes or even Web links that are noted in the margins of the book. Other users respond to these posts and start mini book discussions that can continue indefinitely. Subtext content can be kept private, made visible to all users or made visible only to a user’s friends. Along with comments from fellow readers, Subtext users can see comments marked in blue that are made by a book’s author or other experts.

Subtext iPad App Makes Readers' Thoughts an Open Book - Katherine Boehret - The Digital Solution - AllThingsD

A Healthy Information Diet: The Case for Conscious Consumption - Maria Popova - Health - The Atlantic

Excerpt from a review of The Information Diet, which remains on my recommended reading list

Johnson -- best known for directing Sunlight Labs at government transparency operation Sunlight Foundation -- draws a parallel between the industrialization of food, which at once allowed for ever-greater efficiency and reined in an obesity epidemic, and the industrialization of information, arguing that blaming the abundance of information itself is as absurd as blaming the abundance of food for obesity. Instead, he proposes a solution that lies in engineering a healthy relationship with information by adopting smarter habits and becoming as selective about the information we consume as we are about the food we eat. In the process, he covers the history of information, the science of attention, the healthy economics of media, and a wealth in between.

A Healthy Information Diet: The Case for Conscious Consumption - Maria Popova - Health - The Atlantic

Google pumps up its lobbying effort - The Washington Post

Perhaps Google should plan on hiring Newt Gingrich for lobbying work; he should have some spare time soon

Google’s U.S. lobbying bill more than tripled to $3.76 million in the fourth quarter as the Internet search leader fought proposed changes to online piracy laws and sought to influence a wide range of other issues that could affect its fortunes.

The amount is the company’s largest lobbying tab for any quarter since its Washington office opened in 2005. The company spent $1.24 million on lobbying during the final three months of 2010 and $2.38 million in the third quarter of 2011.

Google pumps up its lobbying effort - The Washington Post

Exclusive: YouTube hits 4 billion daily video views | Reuters

Something to see

The jump in video views comes as Google pushes YouTube beyond the personal computer, with versions of the site that work on smartphones and televisions, and as the company steps up efforts to offer more professional-grade content on the site.

According to the company, roughly 60 hours of video is now uploaded to YouTube every minute, compared with the 48 hours of video uploaded per minute in May.

Exclusive: YouTube hits 4 billion daily video views | Reuters

Facebook Engineers Built A Way Better Version Of Google [Business Insider]

Check the project FAQ for more details

Some engineers at Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace think this is unfair to users – and to demonstrate why, they've created a modified version of Google, which you can access on a site called Focusontheuser.org.

The site reads:

"How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded."

Facebook Engineers Built A Way Better Version Of Google

Not Quite Smart Enough - NYTimes.com

Doesn’t look like a smart investment at this time

The idea is that consumers can control the devices, which can communicate wirelessly, with their smartphones, tablets or televisions. So the owner of a smart refrigerator could check what’s in the refrigerator on a smartphone, and in some instances, send photographs to be displayed on the refrigerator’s LCD screen.

But the smart refrigerators being offered these days aren’t smart enough to keep track of the food inside; consumers still need to do that themselves with a touch screen. And while smart washers allow remote changing of the settings, some question how many consumers would be willing to pay for that perk.

Not Quite Smart Enough - NYTimes.com

Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections - Technology Review

On Twitter, nobody knows you’re a bot; also see Twitter Acquires Malware Protection Company

You might have encountered a "Twitter bot" before: an automated program that perhaps retweeted something you wrote because it had particular keywords. Or maybe you received a message from an unfamiliar, seemingly human-controlled account, only to click on an accompanying link and realize you'd been fooled by a spambot.

Now a group of freelance Web researchers has created more sophisticated Twitter bots, dubbed "socialbots," that can not only fool people into thinking they are real people, but also serve as virtual social connectors, speeding up the natural rate of human-to-human communication.

Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections - Technology Review

Your State of the Union Interview with President Obama | The White House

Presidential treatment for Google+ Hangouts

The President is committed to creating a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. That’s why President Obama and more than twenty-five members of his administration will be responding to your questions about the speech all week and talking about the issues that matter most to you (check out the full schedule here).

And, in the first completely-virtual interview from the White House, President Obama will answer questions that have been submitted by Americans from across the country via YouTube. The virtual event with the President will happen through Google+ Hangouts, a live multi-person video chat.

Your State of the Union Interview with President Obama | The White House

Apple vs. Android: War Without End? - The Daily Beast

Excerpt from an Apple IP snapshot by Dan Lyons

“They’re losing momentum. They’re at the point where the walls start to crumble a little bit,” says Kevin Rivette, a patent attorney and managing partner at 3LP Advisors, a consulting firm that specializes in intellectual property. Apple, he says, should be “looking long and hard at how to cut deals.”

Apple’s strong market position means it could still demand favorable terms from Android players—especially after a robust fourth quarter in which iPhone sales blossomed while Android sales wilted. The company could license its patents and collect royalties on every Android handset sold, as Microsoft has done with top Android phone makers. “The problem is, what happens when you start losing in court? It gets a lot harder to do licensing deals,” Rivette says.

Apple vs. Android: War Without End? - The Daily Beast

New E-Books Land in Bargain Bin - WSJ.com

U.S. residents can sign up to be informed of the Kindle Daily Deal here.  There are also lots of short-term no-cost book promotions; see this page for an example of an index.

So far there is no doubt that pricing a book at 99 cents can boost sales. "We had two Kurt Vonnegut novels priced at 99 cents last November in separate Daily Deals—his 'Breakfast of Champions' and 'Mother Night,'" said Arthur Klebanoff, chief executive of RosettaBooks LLC, an e-book publisher. "Each title sold in one day the number of copies comparable to what we might have sold in a year."

The question is whether the increase in volume can offset the lost revenue from the lower price—a risk for both publisher and author.

New E-Books Land in Bargain Bin - WSJ.com

Tablet and E-Reader Sales Soar - NYTimes.com

This trend, along with the decline of the netbook market, helps to explain why Windows sales were soft in Microsoft’s most recent quarter

There was no must-have toy of Christmas 2011 — for youngsters, anyway.

For adults, tablet computers and e-readers were the gifts of choice, judging by a new report that indicates the number of adults in the United States who own tablets and e-readers nearly doubled from mid-December to early January.

[…]

The increased ownership of tablets was especially pronounced among highly educated people with household incomes of more than $75,000. Almost one-third of people with college degrees now own tablet computers, the report said.

Tablet and E-Reader Sales Soar - NYTimes.com

RIM’s Balsillie and Lazaridis Step Aside - NYTimes.com

This is likely to please at least RIM’s competitors

But while Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis, who have become the targets of some disgruntled shareholders, are stepping aside, investors and others looking for changes in the company’s strategy may be disappointed.

The company named Thorsten Heins, currently one of RIM’s two chief operating officers, as chief executive. He pledged during an interview on Sunday to follow the strategy Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis set in place.

RIM’s Balsillie and Lazaridis Step Aside - NYTimes.com

Samsung's Smart Window - Technology Review

See the full article for a video overview and additional details

Samsung’s concept of a smart window is very different: basically, it would turn your window into something a lot more like an iPad. If windows and touchscreens had offspring, Samsung’s product would be it. The inevitable references to Minority Report abound.

The device is really a transparent touchscreen LCD that can be fitted to any window, so long as it’s no longer than some 46 inches. Resolution is 1366 x 768 pixels, reportedly. During the day, illumination is provided from outside. At night, built-in lights kick in.

Samsung's Smart Window - Technology Review

Apple's iBooks Author EULA Restriction is Dumb, Not Evil | TechPinions

Another iBooks Author license perspective

In fact, that EULA language is merely stupid not evil. Apple is not asserting any sort of control over the contents of your book, just the formatted output of iBooks Author. That output can only be used to create an iBook and iBooks can only be sold through iTunes, so the language doesn’t actually create any restriction that isn’t already inherent in the software. Besides, no one has to use iTunes Author; there are other tools for creating iBooks.

Apple's iBooks Author EULA Restriction is Dumb, Not Evil | TechPinions

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from an extensive manufacturing globalization reality check

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost every electronics designer relies upon to build their wares.

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com

Should NoSQL startups be afraid of DynamoDB? [GigaOM]

Back to the differentiation drawing board, for NoSQL start-ups

However, there are plenty of reasons for NoSQL-based startups to fear these new big-name competitors. When competing against Oracle, the challenge will be to convince large enterprises that third-party NoSQL databases are a better fit with existing Oracle ecosystems than is Oracle’s custom-built offering. Nobody ever got fired for buying Oracle, and if it’s offering NoSQL as part of an integrated data environment that also includes a relational database, data warehouse and Hadoop, there might be a natural inclination to just go with Oracle.

With AWS and DynamoDB, however, NoSQL companies find themselves fighting for the websites and other web-based customers that are now their bread and butter. Sid Anand, who helped transition Netflix from Oracle to AWS’s SimpleDB to Cassandra and who now is on the LinkedIn infrastructure team, wrote on his blog earlier this week that “[i]f [your NoSQL database] is not hosted (e.g. by AWS), be prepared to hire a fleet of ops folks to support it yourself. If you don’t have the manpower, I recommend AWS’[s] DynamoDB.”

http://gigaom.com/cloud/should-nosql-startups-be-afraid-of-dynamodb/

Facebook’s new social apps are anti-social | FT Tech Hub | FTtechhub - Industry analysis – FT.com

Excerpt from a Facebook timeline app reality check

The apps, plus Facebook’s opening of its platform to any developer that wants to build on it, are clearly aimed at diversifying the experiences people can have on the site – to stem boredom, and to keep people participating. That’s a sensible business move ahead of the company’s IPO, as it keeps engagement rates up, and that keeps marketers optimistic and spending money.

But is seamlessly sharing the most minute details of daily life truly a way to stay connected with people, even within the limited confines of the internet?

Facebook’s new social apps are anti-social | FT Tech Hub | FTtechhub - Industry analysis – FT.com

Blogs vs. Term Papers - NYTimes.com

Not one instance of the word “hypertext” in this article

The debate about academic writing has given rise to new terminology: “old literacy” refers to more traditional forms of discourse and training; “new literacy” stretches from the blog and tweet to multimedia presentation with PowerPoint and audio essay.

“We’re at a crux right now of where we have to figure out as teachers what part of the old literacy is worth preserving,” says Andrea A. Lunsford, a professor of English at Stanford. “We’re trying to figure out how to preserve sustained, logical, carefully articulated arguments while engaging with the most exciting and promising new literacies.”

Blogs vs. Term Papers - NYTimes.com

At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece - Jan. 19, 2012 [CNN]

Signs of the times

Apple's market cap is higher than the gross domestic product of Greece, Austria, Argentina, or South Africa. (For more comparisons, check out this excellent blog: Things Apple is Worth More Than.)

Despite its size, Apple is still one of the fastest growing technology companies. The company will report its finances for the past quarter next week, and analysts expect Apple to announce that its sales grew by 45% compared to last year, according to a survey conducted by Thomson Reuters.

At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece - Jan. 19, 2012

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement | ZDNet

A critical assessment of Apple’s textbook-focused tool license agreement

Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement | ZDNet

Microsoft Leads ‘Old Dogs’ in Topping Estimates; Google Dips - Businessweek

Happier times for IBM and MSFT shareholders

The results were a relief for many investors after Oracle Corp. reported weaker-than-anticipated earnings last month, fueling speculation that businesses were holding off on technology spending, said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland.

“The results of these three companies suggest that was an Oracle-specific event,” Barnicle said.

The positive outlook also contrasted with the earnings of Google Inc., which delivered its report yesterday. The Mountain View, California-based company missed analysts’ sales and profit estimates, dragged down by the European crisis and a push into mobile technology, which yields lower ad revenue. Google shares tumbled as much as 10 percent in late trading and were down as much as 9.1 percent in German trading today.

Microsoft Leads ‘Old Dogs’ in Topping Estimates; Google Dips - Businessweek

Google’s Strong Results Less Than Expected - NYTimes.com

A bad day for GOOG shareholders

Google’s net revenue and earnings, though strong, failed to meet analysts’ expectations. Financial results were hurt by unfavorable foreign exchange rates, increased spending by Google, changes the company made to ad formats and the sale of more mobile ads, which cost less.

Those factors added to analysts’ longer-term concerns that 2012 could be a difficult year for Google as it navigates antitrust investigations, intellectual property litigation over Android, competition from Facebook and the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the struggling handset maker.

Google’s Strong Results Less Than Expected - NYTimes.com

Google Mixes Google+ Active User Count Into the Rest of Its Products - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD

Check the full post for additional Google+ subscriber stat scrutiny

As part of its earnings call today, Google announced that it had registered more than 90 million users for its new social network, Google+. But registered user counts are generally a cop-out, since they’re prone to be inflated by abandoned accounts. So Google also took its first crack at giving an active Google+ user count. Kind of.

Google Mixes Google+ Active User Count Into the Rest of Its Products - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now? • The Register

A failure to constructively communicate

Former Mozilla CEO John Lilly captured this best, arguing, "What’s extremely discouraging to me right now is that I don’t really see how we [the tech world and the US Congress] can have a nuanced, technically-informed, respectful discussion/debate/conversation/working relationship."

Instead all we get is the media industries engaging in back room lobbying to get bad bills passed while the tech world shotguns abuse until Congress capitulates. Talk about a dysfunctional relationship.

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now? • The Register

New Apps Let Facebook Record Your Personal History - Technology Review

Personal data analysis with Facebook; see this Facebook overview for more details

Facebook won the loyalty of more than 800 million users largely by getting them into the habit of visiting again and again to see the latest updates, comments, and photos posted by friends. Now the site will also let outside apps provide even more content, and it will encourage people to spend time looking back over activity from months or even years ago. New features introduced at an event in San Francisco last night will enable users to automatically record their eating, reading, exercise, and other habits over time, share them with friends, and review their previous actions.

New Apps Let Facebook Record Your Personal History - Technology Review

Amazon Launches New Service To Make Huge Web Sites Faster And Cheaper [Business Insider]

A major NoSQL milestone

Enter Amazon's new service. It can make NoSQL implementations easier and cheaper for startups and software developers because they won't have to worry about servers and storage needed to run it.

"DynamoDB is the result of 15 years of learning in the areas of large scale non-relational databases and cloud services," writes Amazon CTO Werner Vogels in his All Things Distributed blog. "Today’s web-based applications often encounter database scaling challenges when faced with growth in users, traffic, and data. With Amazon DynamoDB, developers scaling cloud-based applications can start small with just the capacity they need and then increase the request capacity of a given table as their app grows in popularity.

Amazon Launches New Service To Make Huge Web Sites Faster And Cheaper

18 New Senators Oppose PIPA After Yesterday's Protests [Business Insider]

Stimulus-response

PIPA support is crumbling after yesterday's widespread Internet protests as 26 new senators oppose the bill, seven of which were former co-sponsors, reports Ars Technica.

18 New Senators Oppose PIPA After Yesterday's Protests

SOPA Boycotts and the False Ideals of the Web - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from a Jaron Lanier reality check

The legislation has indeed included draconian remedies in various drafts, so I join my colleagues in criticizing the bills. But our opposition has become so extreme that we are doing more harm than good to our own cause. Those rare tech companies that have come out in support of SOPA are not merely criticized but barred from industry events and subject to boycotts. We, the keepers of the flame of free speech, are banishing people for their speech. The result is a chilling atmosphere, with people afraid to speak their minds.

Our melodrama is driven by a vision of an open Internet that has already been distorted, though not by the old industries that fear piracy.

SOPA Boycotts and the False Ideals of the Web - NYTimes.com

Talk Is Cheap and Reliable on Nokia's $50 Phone - Walt Mossberg - Personal Technology - AllThingsD

From another Lumia 710 review

After a week of testing the Lumia 710, my verdict is that it’s a good value for the money, and a good choice for people moving up to their first smartphone, or those looking for an alternative to Android and Apple. It has some notable weaknesses and drawbacks, and it doesn’t compare with the iPhone 4S or elite Android models like the Samsung Galaxy S II. But it’s a decent phone that gets the most common smartphone tasks done.

Talk Is Cheap and Reliable on Nokia's $50 Phone - Walt Mossberg - Personal Technology - AllThingsD

Nokia’s cut-rate Windows phone is just right - Business - The Boston Globe

Excerpt from a Windows Phone/Nokia Lumia 710 snapshot

Windows Phone 7 ought to have a better shot. It’s not merely an adequate substitute for Apple’s iPhone software or the industry-leading Android phone software from Google Inc. It is first-rate, a worthy rival to the iPhone and decisively better than Android.

And yet, people refuse to buy it. In the past three months, only 1.4 percent of Americans who bought a smartphone picked one that runs Windows Phone.

Nokia’s cut-rate Windows phone is just right - Business - The Boston Globe

Journalism Warning Labels « Tom Scott

It’d be nice to see a consistent approach for this type of labeling in comments for digital information items (check the full post for the full warning label set; via The New Yorker)

It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there's no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.

I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I've been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well.

[…]

Journalism Warning Labels « Tom Scott

A GarageBand for ebooks: Simplifying publishing could mean a flood of new content » Nieman Journalism Lab

Excerpt from a thoughtful review of Apple textbook strategy implications

Will there be an iBooks for Android? The Kindle and Nook platforms have the advantage of living on multiple types of devices: both on their own e-ink and tablet devices and on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Apple’s iBooks thus far lives only on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. If they’re aiming at widespread adoption in schools, sticking to Apple-only devices could be a hindrance. Apple’s bitten this bullet before, putting out a version of iTunes for Windows when it became clear keeping music purchasing Mac-only was a recipe for irrelevance. An iBooks for Mac seems like an obvious next move, but are sales of non-iOS smartphones and tablets sufficient to also spread the platform in new directions?

A GarageBand for ebooks: Simplifying publishing could mean a flood of new content » Nieman Journalism Lab

Facebook Integration May Be Coming To iOS 5 [Business Insider]

I’m not expecting to see Google+ support in iOS anytime soon

After finally bringing Twitter to iOS 5, it looks like Apple is considering integrating other social networks as well.

This weekend, iMore discovered references to Facebook integration in the latest developer beta of iOS 5.

Facebook Integration May Be Coming To iOS 5

Web Site Will Shut Down to Protest Antipiracy Bills - NYTimes.com

Stimulus-response

Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said that the technology industry, which has birthed large businesses like Google, Facebook and eBay, is much more powerful than it used to be.

“This is the first real test of the political strength of the Web, and regardless of how things go, they are no longer a pushover,” said Professor Wu, who is the author of “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.” He added, “The Web taking a stand against one of the most powerful lobbyers and seeming to get somewhere is definitely a first.”

Web Site Will Shut Down to Protest Antipiracy Bills - NYTimes.com

Jerry Yang's Decision to Leave Yahoo Was His Own - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD

A major transition for Yahoo, with more changes expected

With a new CEO in place and the possible chance that its Asian problems were moving in the right direction, it had to have sunk in for Yang that it had finally become time to make peace with the present by abandoning his future at Yahoo.

Thus, he wanted to leave on his own terms, even if — in the end — the man who is most definitely one of the Internet’s most important pioneers did not have much of a choice.

Jerry Yang's Decision to Leave Yahoo Was His Own - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD

‘Open Science’ Challenges Journal Tradition With Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com

More research and education business-as-usual disruption ahead

The system is hidebound, expensive and elitist, they say. Peer review can take months, journal subscriptions can be prohibitively costly, and a handful of gatekeepers limit the flow of information. It is an ideal system for sharing knowledge, said the quantum physicist Michael Nielsen, only “if you’re stuck with 17th-century technology.”

Dr. Nielsen and other advocates for “open science” say science can accomplish much more, much faster, in an environment of friction-free collaboration over the Internet. And despite a host of obstacles, including the skepticism of many established scientists, their ideas are gaining traction.

‘Open Science’ Challenges Journal Tradition With Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com

Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing [ars technica]

More speculation about Apple’s Thursday event

Don't expect that content to come directly from Apple, however. "Practically speaking, Apple does not want to get into the content publishing business," MacInnis said. Like the music and movie industries, Apple has instead built a distribution platform as well as hardware to consume it—but Apple isn't a record label or production studio.

But what Apple does provide is industry-leading tools for content production, such as Logic or Final Cut Pro, to help create content. The company also produces tools like GarageBand or iMovie that make such production accessible to a much wider audience.

Will Apple launch a sort of GarageBand for e-books? "That's what we believe you're about to see," MacInnis told Ars (and our other sources agree). "Publishing something to ePub is very similar to publishing web content. Remember iWeb? That iWeb code didn't just get flushed down the toilet—I think you'll see some of [that code] repurposed."

Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing

Uh-oh, PC: Half of computing device sales are mobile [GigaOM]

A timely device dynamics reality check

[…] For some time to come, especially in certain industries or specific use cases, the PC will be important. For most folks, however, the PC is losing relevance as we’re morphing from a local / desktop user base to one of mobile / cloud.

A rather timely graph illustrates this. Horace Dediu, who tracks market data on his Asymco blog, tweeted an image showing a “brief history of personal computing platforms” on Saturday, going back from present day to 1975. Notice anything interesting?

http://gigaom.com/mobile/uh-oh-pc-half-of-computing-device-sales-are-mobile/

Apple to Teach a Few Things About Textbooks - WSJ.com

Apple is apparently heading back to school

Apple already has made a push into book publishing, launching its iBookstore. And the company has long been active in the education market, with its products used in many classrooms and by offering discounts to teachers and students. It also provides lectures, lessons and other educational content through its iTunes U.

The announcement Thursday could have a broad impact. Dr. Rob Reynolds, director of MBS Direct Digital, estimates only about 6% of education-textbook sales will be digital this year, up from 3% in 2011. But by 2020, digital textbooks and learning content will represent more than 50% of the overall textbook market, he said.

Apple to Teach a Few Things About Textbooks - WSJ.com

Will Microsoft buy RIM or Nokia? | Monday Note

Excerpt from a Jean-Louis Gassée perspective

With RIM’s market share dropping precipitously, and no sign of a rebound with spanking new models until the second half of 2012, who would want to risk billions in a market that’s controlled by competitors who manage to be both huge and fast-growing? Sure, RIM is still in the black, but its cash reserves are dwindling: the Cash and cash equivalents line went from $2.7B last February to $1.1B in November 2011. What’s left will evaporate quickly if revenue and profits keep dropping, as they’re likely to do for the foreseeable future.

Will Microsoft buy RIM or Nokia? | Monday Note

Information Diet | Better Activism Day: January 18

Check the full post for more details

On January 18th, the plan for some sites is to go dark in protest for SOPA/PIPA. The blackout is important -- it raises awareness and helps people get motivated to act on this bill -- and while it's on its last legs, I think the important thing in the long term isn't the particular defeat of this bill, but rather: how do we make Congress listen to citizens better.

Now part of that is stuff you've heard before: better advocacy, transparency reforms, even campaign finance and money-in-politics solutions. But another part of that isn't so familiar: getting acquainted with how Congress works, and upping our own expertise to become better advocates. So in honor of the blackouts on the 18th, I'm holding a "Better Activism Day" with my friends at O'Reilly and PopVox. -- a livestream of experts, most of the day, who will talk about how to improve your power in Washington from people who've been successful at moving it. It's time we started getting some of the inside-the-beltway expertise outside of Washington.

Information Diet | Better Activism Day: January 18

What I Use: Evernote and Microsoft Word for Writing [Supersite for Windows]

The prolific Paul Thurrott explains how he writes with Evernote.  I’m surprised Evernote hasn’t yet been acquired by Apple or Google.

According to the Evernote web site, I first joined the service in March 2008, almost four years ago. But it wasn't until last month that it finally clicked for me, and I've since begun using Evernote extensively, replacing a surprising number of software programs and services in the process. My use of Evernote is part of a wider strategy to be more efficient and simplify my computing setup, using only the hardware, software, and services that make the most sense for my needs. This change required a serious recalibration, and a deep rethinking, of how I get work done.

What I Use: Evernote and Microsoft Word for Writing

I.B.M. Makes Its Social Computing Strategy Smarter - NYTimes.com

Not a single instance of “Lotus” to be found in this Lotusphere/Connect 2012 snapshot

I.B.M. is benefiting from its seal-of-approval status as it seeks to build a big business in selling Web-based social networking, collaboration and decision-support software to corporations. The unit selling social business software, Connections, was founded in 2007, and it has tens of thousands of customers, I.B.M. says. About 5,000 people, mostly customers and partners, are expected to attend the company’s Connect 2012 conference in Orlando, Fla., on Monday and Tuesday.

I.B.M. Makes Its Social Computing Strategy Smarter - NYTimes.com

Obama: Don't Worry Internet, I Got Your Back on That SOPA Thing - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

Glad to see this

Today it became clear that SOPA, at least in its current form, will never get that far. Word came from the White House today that the administration, while sympathetic to the cause of curbing online piracy, will support neither the SOPA bill nor its companion bill — known as PIPA — in the Senate.

Responding to a petition, the White House announced in a blog post today that Obama will not “support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Obama: Don't Worry Internet, I Got Your Back on That SOPA Thing - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

Google Attempts to Take Down Facebook With ‘Search Plus Your World’ Feature - The Daily Beast

Excerpt from a timely Dan Lyons snapshot

The people running Facebook aren’t as easily gulled as newspaper companies—if only because some of them, such as COO Sheryl Sandberg, were the ones running Google when it ran roughshod over the newspapers.

Sandberg and her colleagues know what Google did to media companies, and they do not intend to suffer the same fate. They’ve told Google: thanks very much, but we’ll keep our precious data to ourselves and do with it as we please.

Who can blame them? Facebook put in years of hard work and spent huge amounts of money building the world’s biggest network of people. Why should Google be allowed to just walk in and start digging through that data?

Google Attempts to Take Down Facebook With ‘Search Plus Your World’ Feature - The Daily Beast

Ringing Finally Ended, but There’s No Button to Stop Shame - NYTimes.com

Moral of the story: if somebody gives you a new iPhone, check to make sure no alarms have been set

The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring interrupted the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 at the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday night. The conductor, Alan Gilbert, did something almost unheard-of in a concert hall: He stopped the performance. But the ringing kept on going, prompting increasingly angry shouts in the audience directed at the malefactor.

[…]

Before that, the disruption became the marimba ring tone heard round the world, prompting feverish commentary on blogs and comment forums about performance interruptions.

In a Twitter message, the composer Daniel Dorff said, “Changed my ringtone to play #Mahler 9 just in case.” A YouTube poster superimposed a marimba sound over a performance of the piece by Leonard Bernstein.

Ringing Finally Ended, but There’s No Button to Stop Shame - NYTimes.com

Is Too Much Plus is a Minus for Google? « StevenLevy.com

A timely Google reality check from Steven Levy

Search, in short, should appear to be like Caesar’s wife, above reproach. When using its algorithmic wizardry to deeply integrate social information into its search experience, it behooves Google to avoid even a whiff of bias. With SPYW, though, the odor is unmistakable. No matter how you cut it, the search engine now increases the value of participating in Google+. It may be Google’s right to do this. But it also may turn off a lot of users. And it also provides ammo for Google’s detractors, including those in Washington.

In fact, some people are saying that Google’s move may trigger an antitrust action, and there’s already talk that the FTC is on the case. But you don’t have to get into legal issues to see why Google’s new product as it appears now takes the company into dangerous territory.

Is Too Much Plus is a Minus for Google? « StevenLevy.com

Microsoft execs jab at Google after signing Android patent-licensing deal - San Jose Mercury News

Interesting times

In a series of tweets after the agreement was announced, some with the hashtag #anotherandroidlicense and making reference to the Occupy movement's catchphrases, Microsoft execs teased Google and chided Apple for its penchant to sue instead of sign licensing agreements.

"Hey Google -- we are the 70%," Frank Shaw, Microsoft's vice president of corporate communications tweeted, referencing Microsoft's assertion that it now has deals on 70 percent or more of the Android smartphones sold. Shaw later posted on Twitter, "Can we just agree to drop the patents-as-weapons meme? When effective licensing enables companies to share IP, the metaphor falls apart."

Microsoft execs jab at Google after signing Android patent-licensing deal - San Jose Mercury News