Amit Singhal on Google's 10 biggest search milestones (Google+)

Check the full post for the top-10 list

"Since 2004, Google has of course made a range of big bets: YouTube, Android, Chrome, Google Maps….and recently, many of the amazing long-term projects Google[x] is pursuing.

But the heart of Google is still search. And in the decade since our IPO, Google has made big bets on a range of hugely important areas in search that make today’s Google so much better than the 2004 version (see our homepage from back then below). Larry has described the perfect search engine as understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want. We’ve made a lot of progress on delivering you the right answers, faster. But we know that we have a long way to go -- it’s just the beginning.

I thought it might be fun to share the 10 biggest Google search milestones since 2004 that really stand out in my mind:"

It feels like just yesterday my wife, two kids and I packed all our belongings,…

Intellectual Ventures Layoffs Hit a Fifth of Its Workforce - Businessweek

Check the full article for an Intellectual Ventures snapshot (but no additional details on the dawn of the robo-patent trolls)

"The layoffs, according to Jung, represent part of the company’s evolution. IV was the first company to try to amass so many patents, and it had to hire hundreds of people to invent the processes for buying ideas in bulk. People were needed to sort through patents, acquire them covertly, think up complementary ideas, and deal with the associated paperwork. “We have more data than anybody and have analyzed it over the years,” Jung says. “Our analysis has allowed us to save a lot of needless paperwork and become more efficient. We don’t need as many people to sift through and sort information now.” Much of the work has been simplified and automated."

Intellectual Ventures Layoffs Hit a Fifth of Its Workforce - Businessweek

Apple Hits $100, Closes In on Record - Digits - WSJ

Also see Apple Hits $100, Closes at Record High (also WSJ, published later in the day yesterday; AAPL closed at $100.53)

"With Apple once again poised to reclaim record highs, a long-term look at Apple’s performance shows some staggering results. On a day when Google Inc. celebrates its 10-year anniversary of the day it went public, Apple’s performance has far exceeded the Internet search giant.

Over the past 10 years, Apple’s stock is up 4,419% through Monday’s close (the stock traded at $2.19 on a split-adjusted basis exactly a decade ago). That makes it the fourth best performer in the S&P 500 over the past decade. By comparison, Google is up 1,294% over that time frame.

A $10,000 investment in Apple 10 years ago would be worth $456,347.03 today."

Apple Hits $100, Closes In on Record - Digits - WSJ

HTC One for Windows Phone: Another Great Phone You Probably Won't Buy - WSJ

On a related note, see How Perception Will Kill Windows Phone (Paul Thurott's Supersite for Windows)

"But now, thanks to various software updates released throughout the summer, that once-trailing platform has as much or more functionality than Android or iOS—that is, if you don't consider third-party apps.

And the hardware has caught up, too. Just today, the best-designed Android phone—the HTC One—is being released with Windows Phone 8.1, for now exclusively at Verizon.  So, why don't more people give Windows Phone a go? At this point it has very little to do with how good of a smartphone platform it has become, and everything to do with the rule of the masses: It's hard to go one way when everybody else is going another."

HTC One for Windows Phone: Another Great Phone You Probably Won't Buy - WSJ

Steve Ballmer Quits Microsoft Board, Citing His Outside Duties - NYTimes.com

I expect the "unwinding" will now accelerate (e.g., Surface and Lumia, meet Zune and Kin...)

"Many people had predicted that Mr. Ballmer would leave the board, partly because Mr. Nadella is faced with the challenge of reinvigorating the company, which could involve unwinding some of Mr. Ballmer’s earlier decisions. Mr. Nadella, who also serves on Microsoft’s board, has already made bolder moves than Mr. Ballmer to create services for devices made by Microsoft’s competitors, like the iPad from Apple."

Steve Ballmer Quits Microsoft Board, Citing His Outside Duties - NYTimes.com

Google Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself - The Atlantic

Excerpt from an extensive and insightful Google Now perspective

"Now’s tracking runs headlong into our need to lie—a little! sometimes!—to ourselves. It’s a truism of this era that Facebook statusing and avatar design and Instagram filters have transformed how we self-present: the way we tell other people true and untrue stories about who we are. What’s transformative about Now is how it makes it harder to tell such stories to ourselves. This matters. Small, self-deceptive fictions are a big part of how we operate. Human beings are not totally awesome at distinguishing between the things we’d like to like and do and the things we actually like and do. So while the sexy endgame of “personal digital assistants” and predictive algorithms may lie in science fictive images of perfected machine intelligence and Scarlett Johansson-y singularities, there are some much more prosaic problems to grapple with right now, today: like the accountability and truthfulness that this technology demands of and imposes on us already."

Google Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself - The Atlantic

The anti-Facebook: one in four American neighborhoods are now using this private social network | The Verge

It hosts a village (* ~40,000)

"Founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, Nextdoor is a odd outlier among today’s social networks. Signing up is an onerous process, requiring substantial proof of both your identification and address. People post messages, but they are seen only by others in the immediate area, and there is no share or retweet button to proliferate messages across the network. It feels more like a modern update on a message board or web forum than a social network. But it has struck a chord across the country. When The Verge first reported on Nextdoor back in July of 2012, it was in 3,500 neighborhoods. Today, the company is announcing that its reached 40,000 neighborhoods, or roughly one in four American communities, with 10 or more active users."

The anti-Facebook: one in four American neighborhoods are now using this private social network | The Verge

HP Stream 14 is a $200 Windows 8.1 Chromebook rival- The Inquirer

Perhaps an early part of the wave of $199 Windows laptops expected this year

"As its name suggests, the HP laptop will have a 14in screen witt [sic] 1366x768 resolution, a feature ubiquitous on Chrome OS devices, and will be powered by an AMD processor with 2GB of RAM. The laptop will also come with either 32GB or 64GB of flash storage, according to the leak, along with a slot for an SD card.
In addition, Mobilegeeks reported that Microsoft will chuck in 100GB of Onedrive storage for two years with every purchase of the HP Stream 14 laptop to lure punters away from the similar 100GB of Drive storage that Google offers with every Chromebook."

HP Stream 14 is a $200 Windows 8.1 Chromebook rival- The Inquirer

Hack of Community Health Systems Affects 4.5 Million Patients - NYTimes.com

Unhealthy security

"Community Health Systems, a publicly traded hospital operator based in Franklin, Tenn., said that personal data, including names, Social Security numbers and addresses, for 4.5 million patients had been compromised in a Chinese cyberattack on its systems from April to June.

The company, which operates 206 hospitals in 29 states, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that that the attackers had bypassed its security systems and stolen data that also included birth dates and telephone numbers for the patients, who had been referred to or treated by doctors affiliated with the company over the last five years."

Hack of Community Health Systems Affects 4.5 Million Patients - NYTimes.com

Google’s Big Decade – The Numbers - WSJ

Check the full article for snapshots of Google's progress over the last ten years; also see TECHNOLOGY Loving Google but Not Its Public Offering (NYT) for an overview of Google perspectives shortly before its IPO

"Google went public at $85 a share with a market capitalization of about $23 billion on Aug. 19, 2004, and in the 10 years since, the company has built itself into a behemoth with a market cap of nearly $400 billion. A look at the numbers then and now:"

Google’s Big Decade – The Numbers - WSJ

Does Facebook think users are dumb? “Satire” tag added to Onion articles [Updated] | Ars Technica

Apparently not enough people watch The Colbert Report or read The Onion

"A Facebook representative issued the following statement to Ars Technica: "We are running a small test which shows the text '[Satire]' in front of links to satirical articles in the related articles unit in News Feed. This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units." That test has been ongoing for over a month, and while we were told other satirical sites' links have received the same tags, we were not given a list of those sites. Our question about whether the tag would ever appear in other places on Facebook remained unanswered."

Does Facebook think users are dumb? “Satire” tag added to Onion articles [Updated] | Ars Technica

Reprogramming Government: A Conversation With Mikey Dickerson - NYTimes.com

From the Googleplex to the White House

"Q: Google has great food everywhere, celebrity lecturers and beach volleyball in the courtyard. How do you like your new life in Washington? A.
I still have a cafeteria, free soda and a bowling alley in my building. So I’m right at home."

Reprogramming Government: A Conversation With Mikey Dickerson - NYTimes.com

In Silicon Valley, Mergers Must Meet the Toothbrush Test - NYTimes.com

Acquire different

"When deciding whether Google should spend millions or even billions of dollars in acquiring a new company, its chief executive, Larry Page, asks whether the acquisition passes the toothbrush test: Is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?

The esoteric criterion shuns traditional measures of valuing a company like earnings, discounted cash flow or even sales. Instead, Mr. Page is looking for usefulness above profitability, and long-term potential over near-term financial gain."

In Silicon Valley, Mergers Must Meet the Toothbrush Test - NYTimes.com

For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from an enterprise data management reality check; the article includes an overview of some start-ups seeking to help enterprises address related challenges

"The field known as “big data” offers a contemporary case study. The catchphrase stands for the modern abundance of digital data from many sources — the web, sensors, smartphones and corporate databases — that can be mined with clever software for discoveries and insights. Its promise is smarter, data-driven decision-making in every field. That is why data scientist is the economy’s hot new job.

Yet far too much handcrafted work — what data scientists call “data wrangling,” “data munging” and “data janitor work” — is still required. Data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets."

For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights - NYTimes.com

The Internet's Original Sin - The Atlantic

Final paragraphs from another timely technology + society reality check in The Atlantic

"There is no single “right answer” to the question of how we pay for the tool that lets us share knowledge, opinions, ideas, and photos of cute cats. Whether we embrace micropayments, membership, crowdfunding, or any other model, there are bound to be unintended consequences.

But 20 years in to the ad-supported web, we can see that our current model is bad, broken, and corrosive. It’s time to start paying for privacy, to support services we love, and to abandon those that are free, but sell us—the users and our attention—as the product."

The Internet's Original Sin - The Atlantic

Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet - The Atlantic

Final paragraphs from a long-view email perspective

"Email—yes, email—is one way forward for a less commercial, less centralized web, and the best thing is, this beautiful cockroach of a social network is already living in all of our homes. 

Now, all we have to do is convince the kids that the real rebellion against the pressures of social media isn't to escape to the ephemerality of Snapchat, but to retreat to the private, relaxed confines of their email inboxes."

Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet - The Atlantic

Samsung buys SmartThings in preemptive HomeKit strike - SlashGear

Another successful Kickstarter case study ("... sources said ... about $200 million")

"However Samsung's goal is likely to be preemptively shoring up its home automation strengths ahead of Apple's HomeKit launch, the Cupertino company's own smart home platform which is expected to arrive alongside iOS 8.

In an ideal world, SmartThings will get a bigger budget, broader footprint in appliances and gadgets, and be better able to react to other automation platforms. Only time will tell if that's actually the way the acquisition goes, however."

Samsung buys SmartThings in preemptive HomeKit strike - SlashGear

Microsoft's Surface Pro 3: The Best Tablet a Lot of Money Can Buy - Businessweek

You can buy a 13" MacBook Air and an iPad mini Retina for that same ~$1,400

"The device starts at $799, which might be the right price for a traveling companion supertablet. But things get tricky real fast from there. I got the version with 256 GB of storage instead of the 64 GB base, a speedier chip, and the sold-separately keyboard, and ended up around $1,400. For that price, the machine should walk into my house, punch my laptop in the face, and make me an omelet. It did none of that.

I know the price is messed up because every single person who has shown curiosity about the device and reached out to poke it has—after I told them the grim figure—recoiled and made the “What?” face. You don’t see that face in Microsoft’s ads, and it’s a problem the company will need to resolve to make the Surface a success."

Microsoft's Surface Pro 3: The Best Tablet a Lot of Money Can Buy - Businessweek

Cyberattack Disables County Websites, as Ferguson Protests Spread Online - Digits - WSJ

Signs of the times

"The incident illustrates a new reality for civil unrest during the Internet age. Events that were once confined to a specific locale, whether it be the St. Louis suburbs or Kiev, now can drag in protestors from anywhere with a Web connection.

While the websites were disabled, Twitter suspended an account associated with the hacker collective Anonymous after it posted the name of a man who it said was involved in the shooting of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old whose death sparked the protests. Brown was shot by a police officer Saturday night."

Cyberattack Disables County Websites, as Ferguson Protests Spread Online - Digits - WSJ

Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases - NYTimes.com

Final paragraphs from a stark antisocial behavior reality check

"If there’s one thing the history of the Internet has taught us, it’s that trolls will be difficult to contain because they really reflect base human society in all its ugliness. Trolls find a way.

“It’s not a question of whether or not we’re winning the war on trolling, but whether we’re winning the war on misogyny, or racism, and ableism and all this other stuff,” Dr. Phillips said. “Trolling is just a symptom of those bigger problems.”"

Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases - NYTimes.com

Smartphones Overstate Their Social Intelligence - NYTimes.com

Concluding paragraphs from a timely Farhad Manjoo "smart" device/service reality check

"As our phones merge with our cars, houses and other connected devices, we could well drown in data. There will be more apps, contacts, messages and other digital bits than any sane human has the time or cognitive capacity to make sense of.

As that occurs, the phone will have to morph into an intelligent filter; it will need to be able to figure out who needs you, and why, and decide when to demand your attention. In other words, the smartphone will have to finally start living up to its name."

Smartphones Overstate Their Social Intelligence - NYTimes.com

Highlights From Edward Snowden’s Wired Interview - Digits - WSJ

First and final paragraphs from a summary of Wired's extensive Snowden cover story

"Edward Snowden appears on the cover of the September issue of Wired, clutching an American flag. Writer James Bamford traveled to Russia to interview Mr. Snowden, in a piece called “The Most Wanted Man in the World.”
[...]
The NSA’s response: NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told Wired, “If Mr. Snowden wants to discuss his activities, that conversation should be held with the U.S. Department of Justice. He needs to return to the United States to face the charges against him.”"

Highlights From Edward Snowden’s Wired Interview - Digits - WSJ

Cisco Systems Plans to Cut 6,000 Jobs - WSJ

Big challenges and changes for Cisco

"The moves by the Silicon Valley giant, known for networking hardware, come as Cisco's fourth-quarter financial results topped its projections and showed signs that the worst of a recent slowdown is over.

Nevertheless, the company still hasn't been able to return to growth. Cisco's fourth-quarter profit slid 1% on revenue that edged down 0.5%.

John Chambers, Cisco's chief executive, in an interview said the job reductions are designed to make room for adding different kinds of skills rather than cutting total costs. Shedding employees in declining businesses, he said, will allow the company to add needed skills in units that are growing."

Cisco Systems Plans to Cut 6,000 Jobs - WSJ

Programming Startup Famo.us Gets $25 Million to Make JavaScript More Famous | Re/code

Revisiting the one-programming-language-to-rule-them-all theme

"The San Francisco-based company is aimed at using JavaScript, the sometimes disrespected programming language, to create a product that is easy to use by a range of developers, even non-techies. To help promulgate that, Famo.us also offers a free online “university” where anyone can learn to program using its tools.

As Famo.us wonkishly describes it: “Famo.us is the only JavaScript framework that includes an open source 3-D layout engine fully integrated with a 3-D physics animation engine that can render to DOM, Canvas, or WebGL.”

Translation: Building a platform offering easy-to-use tools to make prettier and faster mobile apps that work across all devices."

Programming Startup Famo.us Gets $25 Million to Make JavaScript More Famous | Re/code

Facebook to track users across devices to study shopping habits - Business - The Boston Globe

The battle for the post-cookie advertising identity model is heating up, with Apple, Facebook, and Google all playing to win; see Measuring Conversions on Facebook, Across Devices and in Mobile Apps (Facebook for Business blog) for more details

"With the new cross-device service announced Wednesday, Facebook is aiming to prove that mobile ads can lead to purchases, even if those purchases are not necessarily made on a smartphone. In a study with Altimeter Group, Facebook found that among people who showed interest in a mobile ad, more than 32 percent took action on desktop computers within 28 days.

Because Facebook’s users must log in to use the service, the company can link their identities with their behavior as they switch among devices throughout the day. That allows Facebook to give more information to marketers than they could glean from other online tracking methods, such as cookies that log activity within a Web browser."

Facebook to track users across devices to study shopping habits - Business - The Boston Globe

A New Kind of E-Commerce Adds a Personal Touch - NYTimes.com

"Personal" via (shopper and product) profiles + manual curation

"“I think there’s way more data science at work here than people may realize,” said Bill Gurley, a general partner at the venture firm Benchmark, an investor in Stitch Fix, who is on the company’s board. “There’s a 15-page profile, there are over 66 characteristics tracked and there’s a predictive heat score for every single item against every single user,” meaning a way to determine the likelihood that a customer will keep an item. Ultimately, though, a human stylist chooses items from the computer-edited list and packages them into a nice little box with a description of each one and a personal note explaining what you have received and how you might wear it."

A New Kind of E-Commerce Adds a Personal Touch - NYTimes.com

Gartner's 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps the Journey to Digital Business [Gartner newsroom]

From Gartner’s annual emerging technology hype cycle summary

"The central theme for this year's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is Digital Business (see Figure 1). As enterprises embark on the journey to becoming digital businesses, they will leverage technologies that today are considered to be "emerging," said Hung LeHong, vice president and Gartner fellow. "Understanding where your enterprise is on this journey and where you need to go will not only determine the amount of change expected for your enterprise, but also map out which combination of technologies support your progression."

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2014

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

Gartner's 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps the Journey to Digital Business

Amazon undercuts Square and PayPal with its own mobile card reader [Engadget]

In other Square news, see Square and OpenTable Eye Each Other's Niches (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

"Square's grand plan to democratize credit card payments has inspired a clutch of imitators, the latest of which is Amazon. The company has just announced Amazon Local Register, a credit card reader and app combination that'll enable small businesses to take payments they wouldn't otherwise get, as long as they have a smartphone or tablet lying around."

Amazon undercuts Square and PayPal with its own mobile card reader

Do You Really Need Microsoft Office Anymore? - WSJ

Final paragraphs from a timely productivity app suite snapshot; I suspect many people will opt to use both Office (now more cost-effective as part of Office 365) and Google Docs/Drive (especially for collaborative endeavors with others who aren't using the latest Office apps)

"Buying Office 365 is like buying an overflowing tool set from Home Depot. You'll get more wrenches, ratchets, screwdrivers and pliers than you ever imagined, but how many will you really use?

At this point, the free options from Google, Apple and even Microsoft do just enough, which means paying only makes sense if you're shopping for cloud storage, too. That's where Office 365 adds up: Not only do you (and your spouse, your kids and maybe even your mom) get a terabyte of online storage but you get all the Office extras. If it's just you, though, a terabyte from Google will cost about the same.

Me, I'll keep bouncing between Google and Microsoft, but when the day comes—and it surely will—that cloud storage is free for everybody, how will Microsoft rationalize the high cost of Office? We'll always have the memories."

Do You Really Need Microsoft Office Anymore? - WSJ

Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now - WSJ

From an e-book subscription service reality check

"But it turns out librarians haven't just been sitting around shushing people while the Internet drove them into irrelevance. More than 90% of American public libraries have amassed e-book collections you can read on your iPad, and often even on a Kindle. You don't have to walk into a branch or risk an overdue fine. And they're totally free. Though you still have to deal with due dates, hold lists and occasionally clumsy software, libraries, at least for now, have one killer feature that the others don't: e-books you actually want to read."

Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now - WSJ

Why BuzzFeed Is Trying to Shift Its Strategy - NYTimes.com

An excerpt from an overview of the seismic search/social shift (and its implications for BuzzFeed)

Why BuzzFeed Is Trying to Shift Its Strategy - NYTimes.com

As Data Overflows Online, Researchers Grapple With Ethics - NYTimes.com

Socially awkward research

"Dr. Gray advocates a simple litmus test for researchers: If you’re afraid to ask your subjects for their permission to conduct the research, there’s probably a deeper ethical issue that must be considered.

For Professor Hancock, solutions could include an opt-in process for projects that involve big changes in an Internet user’s experience, and a debriefing system to inform users about smaller tests after the fact. Companies will not willingly participate in anything that limits their ability to innovate quickly, he said, so any process has to be “effective, lightweight, quick and accountable.”"

As Data Overflows Online, Researchers Grapple With Ethics - NYTimes.com

Forget Siri: This Radical New AI Teaches Itself and Reads Your Mind | Enterprise | WIRED

Excerpt from a Steven Levy profile of Viv

"But Kittlaus points out that all of these services are strictly limited. Cheyer elaborates: “Google Now has a huge knowledge graph—you can ask questions like ‘Where was Abraham Lincoln born?’ And it can name the city. You can also say, ‘What is the population?’ of a city and it’ll bring up a chart and answer. But you cannot say, ‘What is the population of the city where Abraham Lincoln was born?’” The system may have the data for both these components, but it has no ability to put them together, either to answer a query or to make a smart suggestion. Like Siri, it can’t do anything that coders haven’t explicitly programmed it to do.

Viv breaks through those constraints by generating its own code on the fly, no programmers required. Take a complicated command like “Give me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in.” Viv will parse the sentence and then it will perform its best trick: automatically generating a quick, efficient program to link third-party sources of information together—say, Kayak, SeatGuru, and the NBA media guide—so it can identify available flights with lots of legroom. And it can do all of this in a fraction of a second."

Forget Siri: This Radical New AI Teaches Itself and Reads Your Mind | Enterprise | WIRED

Wanna Build Your Own Google? Visit the App Store for Algorithms | Enterprise | WIRED

Check the full article for an algorithm marketplace dynamics snapshot (via @charlesfitz)

"He’s not yet sure whether Algorithmia is the solution he’s been waiting for. “It’s too early to comment on Algorithmia since it is in private beta,” he tells us. But he hopes it can grow into something like a “Yelp” for algorithms, which he thinks will ultimately be more important than the marketplace component itself because it’s really hard for developers to determine which algorithms are the best to use for different applications. Thanks to its ranking and commenting features, Algorithmia may well fill this role."

Wanna Build Your Own Google? Visit the App Store for Algorithms | Enterprise | WIRED

Chromebook Sales to Nearly Triple by 2017 | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

From a Chromebook market momentum snapshot

"Filling the gap between popular mobile devices and the declining traditional PC market, sales of Google's Chromebooks are expected to nearly triple by 2017.
The Chrome OS-powered laptops will account for 5.2 million units sold this year—a 79 percent increase from 2013, according to Gartner. Within three years, sales will reach 14.4 million units.
"Competition in the Chromebook market is intensifying as more vendors launch Chromebooks, with eight models in the market in 2014," Isabelle Durand, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement."

Chromebook Sales to Nearly Triple by 2017 | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

White House launches ‘U.S. Digital Service,’ with HealthCare.gov fixer at the helm - The Washington Post

Check the full article for links and more details

"USDS is launching with a pair of foundational texts: A Digital Services Playbook with "13 key 'plays'" for implementing digital government ("1. Understand what people need," "2. Address the whole experience, from start to finish," and so on) and a TechFAR Handbook to advise agencies on how to take a more agile approach to federal contracting and procurement. Asked earlier this summer how you go about attracting skilled technologists to this sort of work -- the pilot phase, said VanRoekel, pulled in people from Facebook and Google -- the U.S. CIO pointed to a third text: "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us," which argues that what pushes high-performing people is a desire for a sense of agency and mastery that can be put towards bettering the world."

White House launches ‘U.S. Digital Service,’ with HealthCare.gov fixer at the helm - The Washington Post

White House Picks Engineer From Google to Fix Sites - NYTimes.com

A sign of the .gov times

"Faced with the politically devastating collapse of HealthCare.gov last year, President Obama’s White House staff lured Mikey Dickerson away from Google to save the day.
Mr. Dickerson will lead a new government team that is intended to identify and fix the government’s other failing computer systems and websites, officials said Monday.
[...] Initially, he will lead a small team that will try to help the information technology teams at various agencies produce better websites that people actually want to use. Steve VanRoekel, the federal chief information officer for electronic government, noted the happy experiences people often have when they spend their mornings on Facebook, Amazon or Expedia. “They may not have the same experience spending their afternoon on government websites,” he said in the conference call."

White House Picks Engineer From Google to Fix Sites - NYTimes.com

The NSA Is Funding a Project to Roll All Programming Languages Into One [Gizmodo]

Or perhaps JavaScript with seamless support for SQL and XQuery would do the trick...

"The "polyglot" programming language is called Wyvern—the name comes from a a [sic] mythical dragon-like reature with two legs instead of four—and is designed to help unify the way apps and websites are created. The researchers explain:

"Web applications today are written as a poorly-coordinated mishmash of artifacts written in different languages, file formats, and technologies. For example, a web application may consist of JavaScript code on the client, HTML for structure, CSS for presentation, XML for AJAX-style communication, and a mixture of Java, plain text configuration files, and database software on the server. This diversity increases the cost of developers learning these technologies. It also means that ensuring system-wide safety and security properties in this setting is difficult.""

The NSA Is Funding a Project to Roll All Programming Languages Into One

Two Tech Upstarts Plot Each Other's Demise - WSJ

Final paragraphs of a Lyft/Uber competitive snapshot

"But investors who have poured a total of nearly $2 billion into the two companies are betting the apps will have staying power. Millions of people are now used to riding with Uber, and the app is still one of the most popular programs in Apple's App Store.

"Organizing demand is remarkably hard and extremely powerful," said Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark and a member of Uber's board. "Being installed on someone's iPhone on the home page is a pretty sticky place to be.""

Two Tech Upstarts Plot Each Other's Demise - WSJ

In a Fight With Authors, Amazon Cites Orwell, but Not Quite Correctly - NYTimes.com

Maybe Jeff Bezos should outsource Amazon press release fact-checking to his Washington Post staff

"Amazon’s post gave Orwell a big weekend on the Internet. “Altering Orwell’s words to fit your agenda seems rather ... Orwellian,” Josh Centers, a tech writer, said in a Twitter message. “Only a fool or a businessman would twist that quote so completely,” wrote John Biggs in TechCrunch. Glenn Fleishman, a technology journalist, addressed Amazon directly via Twitter: “He was using irony. It’s a literary device. You sell books. What is wrong with you.”

In a related development, it became widely known over the weekend that Amazon was in a dispute with yet another supplier, this time Disney. Amazon was doing the same thing with the movie studio that it did with Hachette: preventing customers from preordering physical copies of yet-to-be-released content."

In a Fight With Authors, Amazon Cites Orwell, but Not Quite Correctly - NYTimes.com

Media Companies Spin Off Newspapers, to Uncertain Futures - NYTimes.com

Perhaps it's time for the NYT to change its tagline to "All the news that's fit to publish"

"Jeff Bezos, an avatar of digital innovation as the founder of Amazon, came out of nowhere and plunked down $250 million for The Washington Post. His vote of confidence in the future of print and serious news was seen by some — including me — as a sign that an era of “optimism or potential” for the industry was getting underway.

Turns out, not so much — quite the opposite, really. The Washington Post seems fine, but recently, in just over a week, three of the biggest players in American newspapers — Gannett, Tribune Company and E. W. Scripps, companies built on print franchises that expanded into television — dumped those properties like yesterday’s news in a series of spinoffs."

Media Companies Spin Off Newspapers, to Uncertain Futures - NYTimes.com

Hadoop at a Crossroads? | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM

Excerpt from a Michael Stonebraker Hadoop reality check

"It is indeed ironic that Hadoop is picking up support in the general community about five years after Google moved on to better things. Hence, the rest of the world followed Google into Hadoop with a delay of most of a decade. Google has long since abandoned it. I wonder how long it will take the rest of the world to follow Google’s direction and do likewise…

Notice that the Hadoop vendors are now on a collision course with the data warehouse vendors. They are now implementing (or have implemented) the same architecture supported by the data warehouse folks. Once they have a few years to solidify their implementations, they will probably offer competitive performance. Meanwhile most of the data warehouse vendors support HDFS, and many offer features to support semi-structured data. Hence, the data warehouse market and the Hadoop market will quickly converge. May the best systems win in the resulting head-to-head donneybrook!"

Hadoop at a Crossroads? | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM

Hackers Unveil Their Plan to Change Email Forever | TIME

Later in the article: "Ultimately, what the Dark Mail project is aiming for is nothing less than a complete transformation of the way email works on planet Earth."

"Metadata — information like the identity of the sender or the time and date a message was sent — has been a key target of NSA surveillance. “Ironically, we have been protecting the stuff that they’re not collecting,” Callas said.

Dime uses multiple layers of cryptography — think Russian nesting dolls — to protect an email’s content and metadata from beginning to end as an email is passed through the Internet from a sender to a recipient, or recipients. The idea is to create an email system in which no service provider has all the information about a message, so there is no entity (like Lavabit, for example) for federal authorities to come down on."

Hackers Unveil Their Plan to Change Email Forever | TIME

Pivotal puts all its eggs in one basket • The Register

Reflecting some Pivotal assumptions

"Pivotal's core belief is that big data, and cloud-era-and-cloud-scale applications delivered to a variety of devices, both need to be built on rather different foundations to those aimed at other architectures. To that end it has championed several tools, including its own products like SpringIO and its own take on open source tools like the Tomcat server and RabbitMQ.

The company has now bundled together all the software it thinks deserve a place in cloudy devs' tool belts, called it AppSuite 1.0 and given it a per-core price for the whole bunch. Buying the suite means you get to use Pivotal's own products, and get support for the open sourcery."

Pivotal puts all its eggs in one basket • The Register

Vendor Sues Gartner Over Magic Quadrant 'Pay to Play' Model [CMSWire]

Interesting times in the "magic quadrant" domain

"NetScout Systems, based in Westford, Mass., filed the lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court Tuesday under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act for "corporate defamation arising out of Gartner’s information technology research business practices."
"Gartner is not independent, objective or unbiased," NetScout claimed in its lawsuit, "and its business model is extortionate by its very nature. Its substantial success is due to the worst kept secret in the IT industry: Gartner has a 'pay-to-play' business model that by its design rewards Gartner clients who spend substantial sums on its various services by ranking them favorably in its influential Magic Quadrant research reports and punishes technology companies that choose not to spend substantial sums on Gartner services.""

Vendor Sues Gartner Over Magic Quadrant 'Pay to Play' Model

Samsung, Barnes & Noble to hold Nook event Aug. 20 - CNET

On a related note, see Sony gives up on selling e-readers (BBC)

"Samsung and Barnes & Noble unveiled a new partnership in June to develop Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nooks. The devices will feature Samsung's hardware and customized Nook software from Barnes & Noble. The first Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, sporting a 7-inch display, will hit US store shelves in August, the companies said at the time.

Samsung confirmed the first Galaxy Tab 4 Nook will be shown at the event, but it declined to comment further."

Samsung, Barnes & Noble to hold Nook event Aug. 20 - CNET

A look at all of Google’s acquisitions in Boston | BetaBoston

On a related note, see Google shows off new Cambridge campus (Boston Globe)

"Up until nine months ago, Google had acquired just four companies in the Boston area (or five, if you count the company’s “acquisition” of Biz Stone/Genius Labs). One of those was the huge pickup of ITA Software, of course, but little else apparently enthralled Google in Boston during the company’s first decade-and-a-half.

Since late last year, however, Google has been on a modest acquisition spree in the Boston area — buying up three local tech firms, the latest being Boston video app maker Directr on Wednesday."

A look at all of Google’s acquisitions in Boston | BetaBoston

Google’s New User Tracking Bridges Mobile Apps and Mobile Web - Digits - WSJ

Cookies are less tasty in a mobile-first, programmatic advertising-centric world; see this AdvertisingAge article for more details

"This unified approach benefits Google because it allows the company to take credit for leading users from ad clicks to website visits. However, advertisers have their own reasons for wanting to unite mobile app and mobile web activity. The ability to identify a single user’s interactions with any number of apps and web pages allows marketers to fine-tune the display of related ads in separate apps, avoid unintentionally showing a given user the same ads over and over, and identify whether a person who saw a product advertised in an app ultimately made a purchase on the mobile web (and vice versa)."

Google’s New User Tracking Bridges Mobile Apps and Mobile Web - Digits - WSJ

Facebook is now worth about four EMCs - Boston Business Journal

Another snapshot of Facebook's financial momentum

"With a market cap of $191 billion, Facebook is now worth more than 103-year-old tech behemoth IBM($184 billion) and about three times what Hopkinton-based storage firm EMC is worth ($59.2 billion)."

Facebook is now worth about four EMCs - Boston Business Journal

The Most Fascinating Profile You’ll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup | Business | WIRED

From an extensive profile of Slack, which at first glance appears to be a new take on IRC + indexing (the article is more focused on Slack's founder than the product/service, however)

"Not only did Slack make sure the document went to all the right people, but it also indexed the full text of the document, as well as the conversation that took place around it, and attached the conversation to the document in its database. Now: Imagine that weeks pass by. You, sadly, die unexpectedly. Now that you’re gone, your coworkers need to pull up the document, but they have trouble finding it in your disorganized Dropbox folder. So instead they search Slack for “massive thought bomb” and, presto, there it is, along with all your notes and the feedback you received from your team. That’s Slack."

The Most Fascinating Profile You’ll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup | Business | WIRED

AOL still has 2.3 million dialup subscribers—and they’re very profitable - Quartz

A "better living through lowered expectations" case study

"With most expenses long paid, it’s also creating an impressive amount of profit. AOL’s “membership” group—which includes the dialup access business—generated about one-third of the company’s $607 million in sales last quarter, but an oversized amount of its operating profit: $143 million of “adjusted OIBDA” (operating profit from its core business, before accounting adjustments), compared to $122 million total for the company.
+
Expect the subscriber base to continue to shrink, as wireless broadband continues to build. But much like Yahoo’s search business, for now AOL can enjoy its vintage cash machine."

AOL still has 2.3 million dialup subscribers—and they’re very profitable - Quartz

Uberpool: Why Uber Was Smart to Gain Users Before Trying Carpooling - Businessweek

Also see Lyft Hopes to Coax Commuters to Leave Their Cars (NYT), Uber and Lyft Both Debut Cost-Splitting With Strangers (Re/code), and Sidecar says 13,000 passengers share rides, fares with strangers (CNet)

"Uber was smart to wait this long to try cracking the carpooling service. Sharing a hired ride requires a critical mass of sharers before it can work, and the handful of startups that have tried to launch these services from scratch have all struggled to gain traction. Uber, meanwhile, has trained a huge user base to pull out its app every time they need a ride. The company says that using the ride-sharing service will be up to 40 percent cheaper than taking its low-cost UberX cars, which could make people turn to it even more. ”At these price points,” the company crows on its website, “Uber really is cost-competitive with owning a car, which is a game-changer for consumers.”"

Uberpool: Why Uber Was Smart to Gain Users Before Trying Carpooling - Businessweek

Aiming to Be the Netflix of Books - NYTimes.com

"Unlimited" with many caveats

"E-book subscriptions seem like a logical evolution in the world of on-demand digital media. But the full potential simply isn’t realized yet.

In the end, all three services left something to be desired. While consumers might be ready for e-book subscriptions, it seems book publishers are not. Until then, a Kindle, an Amazon Prime subscription and a library card are still the best deal for consumers."

Aiming to Be the Netflix of Books - NYTimes.com

Pointless Windows 8.1 Update 2 shows Microsoft has given up on Windows 8 | Computerworld Blogs

Excerpt from a stark Windows desktop reality check; on a related note, see Microsoft’s Surface Business Has Lost An Estimated $1.7 Billion Since Debut (Business Insider)

"It's clear from all this that Microsoft has given up on Windows 8. And that's the right thing to do. Windows 8's uptake is even slower than the bomb that was Vista. Net Applications figures show that Windows 8 actually lost user share in July. This is an operating system that continues to go nowhere fast.

Microsoft is doing the right thing. There's simply no way to salvage Windows 8, and Microsoft should be devoting all of its resources instead to making the next version of Windows much better. Leaked Windows 9 screenshots show an operating system that PC users can love, including a Start menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, and more. If you care about Windows, that's what you should be waiting for, not any improvements to Windows 8, because you won't see any serious ones."

Pointless Windows 8.1 Update 2 shows Microsoft has given up on Windows 8 | Computerworld Blogs

Google and Barnes & Noble Unite to Take On Amazon - NYTimes.com

On a related note, see Yes, there's a tech bubble: Google Shopping Express proves it (Network World) and Can “Instant” Become a Viable Business? (Re/code)

"Google’s approach differs from that of Amazon and other big retailers. Instead of relying on warehouses full of merchandise, Google is using a fleet of couriers who collect products from local stores, sort and bundle them and deliver them within a three- to four-hour window selected by the customer. Delivery is free for subscribers to Google Shopping Express, and costs $4.99 per delivery, per store for others. Membership is free for the first six months. Google has not announced what the subscription fee will be.

Google has said it plans to expand its delivery service to Brooklyn and Queens."

Google and Barnes & Noble Unite to Take On Amazon - NYTimes.com

Google G Watch latest addition to smartwatch offerings - Business - The Boston Globe

Excerpt from another net-negative Android Wear device review

"But Google Inc. sensibly figures that a standardized software platform will boost demand for the watches and slash their cost. It worked brilliantly for its smartphone operating system, Android. Now comes Android Wear, a version built to run on watches and other wearable devices, and compatible with virtually all late-model Android phones. The LG G Watch is one of the first Android Wear devices to hit retail stores, and Google’s betting its new software will give millions of us a good reason to strap one on.

Afraid not. The G Watch’s steep price and quirky features will not endear it to consumers. And while Google’s new software shows promise, it is not the intuitive, painless experience I was hoping for."

Google G Watch latest addition to smartwatch offerings - Business - The Boston Globe

Lenovo B50-30, First Take: A Windows notebook at a Chromebook price point | ZDNet

That's currently ~$320 (not including VAT)

"Low-cost business notebooks don't get much less expensive than the Lenovo B50-30 which starts at £190.83 (ex. VAT, £229 inc. VAT). Aimed at the small business market, the 15.6-inch B50-30 is a basic but functional Windows notebook that'll handle everyday workloads such as email, web browsing and low-level document/spreadsheet work. The Lenovo B50-30 is powered by Intel's 2.16/2.41GHz dual-core Celeron N2830 processor and is supported by 4GB of RAM (expandable to a maximum of 8GB). It's not an especially speedy combination, and we noticed pauses for applications to open and websites to resolve during the review period. How you perceive the B50-30's performance will depend on how demanding your favourite apps are, how much you multi-task and your patience."

Lenovo B50-30, First Take: A Windows notebook at a Chromebook price point | ZDNet

Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads - The Atlantic

Excerpt from a school technology trends snapshot

"iPads have so far been a gadget of choice at both ends of the economic spectrum: in wealthier schools with ample resources and demand from parents, and in low-income schools that receive federal grants to improve student success rates. Last fall, enthusiasm for the Apple device peaked when Los Angeles Unified Schools, the second largest system in the nation, began a rollout out of iPads to every student.

However, the L.A. district quickly recalled about 2,100 iPads from students. At the end of the school year, leaders announced that schools would instead be allowed to choose from among six different devices, including Chromebooks and hybrid laptop-tablets. L.A. schools weren’t the first to falter: At the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year, Guilford County Schools in North Carolina halted an Amplify tablet program, and Fort Bend, Texas, cancelled its iPad initiative."

Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads - The Atlantic

Apple's September 9 Event Will Showcase New iPhone - Businessweek

Time to fully open the iPhone 6 rumor/speculation floodgates...

"Apple (AAPL) has scheduled a press event for Sept. 9, and a source tells Bloomberg News that this will be the occasion for the release of the next generation of iPhones. This confirms what everyone who follows Apple has known is coming: The company has settled into a predictable pattern of unveiling a smartphone each fall.

This year’s models are expected to have larger screens, keeping pace with other high-end smartphones. And Apple is preparing for its biggest launch ever. Anything less would be a surprise, since Apple hasn’t had an opening weekend during which it sold fewer iPhones than the year before."

Apple's September 9 Event Will Showcase New iPhone - Businessweek

What You Can Do About Facebook Tracking - WSJ

Check the full article for some useful tips

"How should we feel about that? It's classic Mark Zuckerberg, forcing us to accept more tracking of our lives in exchange for some degree of control. Though its Web and app tracking aren't any worse than what we tolerate from other companies like Google, Facebook will end up knowing more about us than ever.

Exasperating as it is, it's a good reminder that Facebook isn't really free. It's an exchange, and you need to know what you're trading. Here are four cold, hard realities of Facebook's privacy policies—and what you can do about them right now:"

What You Can Do About Facebook Tracking - WSJ

Apple buybacks pay most ever as S&P 500 CEOs spend $211 billion - Business - The Boston Globe

Perhaps Apple could become a hedge fund, if the whole product thing doesn't work out...

"Apple’s $18 billion repurchase in the first quarter and the $16 billion it spent between April and June of 2013 are the two biggest buybacks by any company in data compiled by S&P starting in 1998. They came as the stock advanced as much as 77 percent over 15 months after falling to a 16-month low in April 2013.

The return followed the weakest period for Apple shares in the last decade. After vaulting almost 900 percent from the end of 2005 through September 2012 and becoming the world’s largest company by market value, Apple plunged 44 percent in seven months amid concern about new products and competition.

‘‘Their timing was impeccable,’’ Todd Lowenstein, who helps manage $16 billion at Highmark Capital Management in Los Angeles, said in a July 31 phone interview. ‘‘They went in big, and it said to the market that they had confidence in their business plan and thought their stock was grossly undervalued. That’s worked out well for them.’’"

Apple buybacks pay most ever as S&P 500 CEOs spend $211 billion - Business - The Boston Globe

Mohiomap Turns Evernote, Google Drive, And Dropbox Accounts Into Mind Maps | TechCrunch

Check the full post for more details and an intriguing video

"Like many other people, I use Evernote as an information dump. Despite my best efforts to keep things organized with multiple notebooks and tags, my account has become almost as unwieldy as an overstuffed filing cabinet, with stacks of PDFs, web clippings, and notes going back years.

That’s why I was intrigued by Mohiomap, a web app that turns your Evernote into mind maps. Mohiomap also recently added support for Google Drive and Dropbox accounts."

Mohiomap Turns Evernote, Google Drive, And Dropbox Accounts Into Mind Maps | TechCrunch

HP Luxury Michael Bastian Smartwatch - Business Insider

File under "Future collectors' item"; also see HP’s Gilt-Exclusive Smartwatch Puts Fashion First (TechCrunch)

"Last week, HP took the wraps off its upcoming designer smartwatch.
It partnered with online luxury shopping platform Gilt and designer Michael Bastian to create a watch that looks more like a classy timepeice than a gadget.

Details on the watch are still scarce, but we've learned a bit more about how it works."

HP Luxury Michael Bastian Smartwatch - Business Insider

IBM Said to Have Offered GF Cash to Take Over Chip Unit - Bloomberg

Another IBM disintegration snapshot, via Charles Fitzgerald

"IBM was offering about $1 billion to persuade Globalfoundries to take the unit, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations were private. Globalfoundries wanted to be paid about $2 billion, enough to offset the division’s losses, the person said.

IBM’s willingness to pay underscores the urgency for Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty to get less profitable businesses off the books. Even so, letting the deal unravel shows Rometty wasn’t willing to exit at any cost."

IBM Said to Have Offered GF Cash to Take Over Chip Unit - Bloomberg

Apple tops Samsung in North American mobile Web traffic - CNET

A snapshot of the North American smartphone duopoly

"In new data released Monday, Chitika found that Apple accounted for 52.3 percent of all smartphone traffic seen on the Web in the US and Canada last month, a slight dip from February. Over the same time, Samsung's percentage inched up by 1.2 points to 26.4 percent, about half of Apple's share.

Together, Apple and Samsung virtually own all of the Web traffic seen in North America, just as the two own most of the smartphone market in general. The dominance of these players leaves little room for other vendors to win more market share and capture more customers."

Apple tops Samsung in North American mobile Web traffic - CNET

How Google scans your Gmail for child porn | The Verge

More details on automated child porn detection tools

"Other companies have access to similar photo tagging technology, including Microsoft, whose PhotoDNA software can also detect flagged images of abuse. PhotoDNA can calculate a mathematical hash for an image of child sexual abuse that allows it to recognize photos automatically even if they have been altered. The tech is now used by both Twitter and Facebook, after Microsoft donated it to the NCMEC in 2009. Videos, too, have become the focus of such digital fingerprinting programs. Google has its own Video ID software for detecting footage of child sexual abuse, and British company Friend MTS donated its Expose F1 detection program to the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) earlier this year."

How Google scans your Gmail for child porn | The Verge

Exclusive Google 'Camp' Draws Elite to Sicilian Resort - NYTimes.com

tbd if the participants are staying on a Google barge

"Google’s latest innovation is not computerized eyeglasses or self-driving cars. Its major selling points are the more old-fashioned pleasures of sand, sun and schmoozing.

Google is sponsoring an elite conference this week at a golf resort in Sicily, with a guest list of chief executives, investors and celebrities, all of whom were invited to bring their families. On the agenda are high-minded discussions of global issues — along with relaxation by the Mediterranean Sea.

Call it the Davos of the summer."

Exclusive Google 'Camp' Draws Elite to Sicilian Resort - NYTimes.com

Microsoft's Ireland Data Center Subject to U.S. Search Warrant, Court Rules - Businessweek

Definitely "a question of control..."

"Last year the U.S. applied for a search warrant for e-mails of an unnamed user of Microsoft’s msn.com related to a drug investigation. The contents of the e-mails were stored on a server in Ireland. Microsoft refused to comply on the basis that the U.S. has no authority to issue a search warrant outside its territory, arguing that the government should instead act through its mutual legal assistance treaty with Ireland. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports Microsoft’s position, has a good rundown of events in the case, including various filings.

A magistrate ruled for the government in April, and Microsoft appealed. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska upheld the April decision, endorsing the view that it was a question of control, not location, of the information and Microsoft must turn it over."

Microsoft's Ireland Data Center Subject to U.S. Search Warrant, Court Rules - Businessweek

HBO’s John Oliver Weighs In On The Native Ad Debate - CMO Today - WSJ

A timely (and amusing) native advertising reality check

"“Native advertising”, or marketing content disguised as editorial content on publishers’ Web sites, has been a hot conversation topic among marketing and media executives lately. But on Sunday night, comedian John Oliver took up the topic on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” arguing that “native advertising” is destroying the separation of “church and state” in the media."

HBO’s John Oliver Weighs In On The Native Ad Debate - CMO Today - WSJ

Windows 8 market share stalls, XP at record low • The Register

Check the full post for graphs and additional details

"That Windows XP has fallen below 25 per cent of the market on Netmarketshare's count, and holds just 15.15 per cent of the market according to StatCounter, is good news for all as it means fewer compromised-immune-system boxes are out there to use as platforms to attack the rest of us.

Yet both surveys show that Windows 8 has failed to launch, with its two versions failing to get to even half of Windows 7's market share.

Whatever Satya Nadella says about OneWindows, unified apps, or productivity being Microsoft's great strength, the fact remains that its most recent major launch failed to capture the planet's imagination."

Windows 8 market share stalls, XP at record low • The Register

Square To Acquire Caviar Delivery Startup and Announce it This Week | Re/code

Apparently an attempt to round out Square's strategy

"Square is on a mission to diversify, and it’s turning to the red-hot food delivery industry to do so.

The payments company run by CEO Jack Dorsey plans to announce this week that it has acquired San Francisco-based Caviar, according to a person familiar with the deal. Caviar runs a service that lets consumers order meals to be delivered to their homes or offices from restaurants that don’t normally offer delivery."

Square To Acquire Caviar Delivery Startup and Announce it This Week | Re/code

Google email scan helps police arrest a sex offender [Engadget]

Also see Why Google scans your emails for child porn (The Telegraph)

"The bust is notable in that there were no public clues to the offender's activity, such as a website; besides the people he contacted, only Google would have known what he was doing online. That will undoubtedly raise concerns for some, since it wasn't immediately apparent that Mountain View's servers were checking Gmail images. However, the activity isn't a complete surprise. Google's terms of service already indicate that the company is analyzing Gmail for both targeted ads and security -- while illegal pornography isn't explicitly mentioned in the terms, it only makes sense that this content would be considered as well."

Google email scan helps police arrest a sex offender

Google is stealing away Microsoft’s future corporate customers - Quartz

Excerpt from an email product/service market dynamics overview

"For a snapshot of Google’s progress, Quartz looked up the email-hosting MX records for 150 companies across three general size categories: the “Fortune 50″ largest US companies; a group of mid-size tech and media companies, both public and private; and 50 startups from the last Y Combinator incubator class in Silicon Valley. The results are…exactly what you might expect!

Among the Fortune 50, only one company—Google—had its mail records pointed at Google’s servers. Among the mid-size companies, almost 60% host their email with Google, including corporations like Twitter, Dropbox, Box, Airbnb, Square, Uber, and Etsy. And among the Y Combinator startups—mostly very small companies with some funding, but often tight budgets—92% host their email with Google."

Google is stealing away Microsoft’s future corporate customers - Quartz

Cloud Revenue Jumps, Led by Microsoft and IBM - NYTimes.com

From a cloud market dynamics snapshot

"Yet the Microsoft and IBM numbers include things not in the Amazon estimates. Amazon’s cloud offers computing, storage and basic software tools used by engineers. But Microsoft and IBM add the software delivered to customers over the cloud, from spreadsheets to data-analysis applications. IBM’s revenue total, analysts say, also includes cloud-related services and even hardware used in setting up cloud computing environments that companies own themselves, so-called private clouds.

So comparing Microsoft and IBM’s cloud revenue to Amazon’s is not an apples-to-apples exercise. “For Microsoft, it is apples, oranges and pears,” said Lydia Leong, a Gartner analyst. “For IBM, it’s apples, oranges, pears, and the kitchen sink.”"

Cloud Revenue Jumps, Led by Microsoft and IBM - NYTimes.com

People are actually buying the Amazon Fire phone - Quartz

Check the full post for the graph and additional details

"Quartz has saved a copy of Amazon’s feed of its top-ten best-selling contract phones each hour since midday Monday, graphed below. The basic, 32 GB Fire Phone has been in the top position every hour—except once in the second position. The 64 GB version, which costs $100 more, has mostly been outside the top ten. (At the time of writing, it’s no. 16.) Assorted Samsung and LG phones usually fill the rest of the ten."

People are actually buying the Amazon Fire phone - Quartz

Macintel: The End Is Nigh | Monday Note

Excerpt from another insightful Jean-Louis Gassée Apple reality check

"The Mac business is “only” $20B a year, while iPhones and iPad generate more than 5 times that. Still, $20B isn’t chump change (HP’s Personal Systems Group generates about $30B in revenue), and unit sales are up 18% in last June’s numbers vs. a year ago. Actually, Mac revenue ($5.5B) approaches the iPad’s flagging sales ($5.9B). Today, a 11” MacBook Air costs $899 while a 128Gb iPad Air goes for $799. What would happen to the cost, battery life, and size of an A10-powered MacBook Air? And so on for the rest of the Mac line.

By moving to ARM, Apple could continue to increase its PC market share and scoop much of the profits – it currently rakes in about half of the money made by PC makers. And it could do this while catering to its customers in the Affordable Luxury segment who like owning both an iPad and a Mac."

Macintel: The End Is Nigh | Monday Note

How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil - NYTimes.com

From an extensive snapshot of Facebook's advertising modus operandi

"Ever since it began selling ads 10 years ago, Facebook has been combating doubts about its value to marketers. Search engines like Google offer advertisers a direct link to people seeking out particular products, while television remains the dominant way to reach a mass audience. Now, Facebook claims, it can provide the best of both."

How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil - NYTimes.com

The Hero Returns: Steve Jobs’ real genius — Medium

Tangentially, also see The Power of Two ("Despite the mythology around the idea of the lone genius, the famous partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney demonstrates the brilliance of creative pairs"; The Atlantic)

"As the three-year anniversary of Steve Jobs’ passing approaches in October, complete lessons from his life and legacy are still far from written or understood. Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs, published soon after Jobs’ death in 2011, provided a formidable starting point, yet we still have a great deal to learn and understand about what made Jobs such a unique innovator and leader.

In studying Jobs closely over the past several years, I’ve become convinced that the common narratives we’ve heard neglect a central aspect of Jobs’ of genius and success. And, it’s something that we can all learn from, which is this: Steve Jobs was a superb collaborator with the people who he respected and trusted."

The Hero Returns: Steve Jobs’ real genius — Medium

Scrap the mystery: High-tech vision for Google barge crumbles in a heap - The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

The rest of the Google mystery barge story

"When finished, the barge in Portland was to be towed to New York City and opened for an invitation-only crowd of hip and affluent urbanites.

Never mind.

On Wednesday, a tugboat towed the barge from Rickers Wharf Marine Facility in Portland and deposited it at Turner’s Island Cargo Terminal in South Portland. Roger Hale, owner of the terminal, said the structure had been purchased by an unnamed “international barging company” and was being prepared to leave Portland for an ocean voyage to an undisclosed location.

The containers, though, will be disassembled at Turner’s Island and scrapped, said Lance Hanna, deputy harbor master for Portland Harbor."

Scrap the mystery: High-tech vision for Google barge crumbles in a heap - The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

Amazon quickens push into tough local services market | Reuters

Mechanical Turk + trucks and tools

"Eventually, Amazon plans to build an online marketplace for services from plumbing to babysitting. For now, it's focused on assembly, installation and repair in Seattle, New York and Los Angeles, such as installing toilets or adding speakers to a car, according to its website.

Building a local services marketplace has been Chief Executive Jeff Bezos' vision for over a decade, three people familiar with the matter said. The Amazon founder was an early admirer of the OpenTable model of dinner reservations, according to one of the sources.

Amazon's efforts are aided by the ubiquity of the smartphone, which allows service providers to field calls and book appointments on the go."

Amazon quickens push into tough local services market | Reuters

Samsung, Apple, Corning and the Deeply Troubled Tablet Market - Businessweek

Tablet trials and tribulations

"It wasn’t that long ago that tablets were supposed to change everything. So what’s going on? Samsung executives told investors that its tablets haven’t caught on in emerging markets the way smartphones did. And people who have already purchased the devices are happy enough, with no need to go back to stores to buy newer models.

Best Buy Chief Executive Officer Hubert Joly echoed this sentiment in an interview with Re/code, warning that tablet sales at the retail chain are crashing. “The level of innovation in the past year has not been as great as it had been in the previous two years,” he said. “So, there again, the jury’s out in terms of what’s going to happen, because it’s going to depend on what innovation comes to market. But you need a reason to replace.”"

Samsung, Apple, Corning and the Deeply Troubled Tablet Market - Businessweek

Oracle Nabs Cloud Software Company TOA | Re/code

The article concludes with a handy summary of recent big cloud app acquisitions by SAP, Salesforce, IBM, and Oracle; also see Oracle Buys TOA Technologies To Pull The Rug Out From Salesforce.com (Business Insider)

"Business software giant Oracle today said it would acquire TOA Technologies, a privately held cloud software company that specializes in handling the dispatching of field service workers.

Financial terms aren’t being disclosed, but handling the on-the-ground management of people who make service calls is a surprisingly big business. TOA handles 120 million service requests every year in 20 countries around the world. Its customers include Dish Network, Home Depot and Ricoh."

Oracle Nabs Cloud Software Company TOA | Re/code

Wearable Technology Will Let Companies Monitor Worker Productivity - Businessweek

Sign of the times

"Wearable technologies such as Google Glass, which lets you take photos with a wink, or the Fitbit, which tracks your steps, have so far been mostly geared toward consumers looking for new toys. Soon, the same tech could be helping employers track and improve worker productivity.

Workplace-management company Kronos says it is building products with tracking and communication capabilities for manufacturing and retail companies to use this year. The devices could have huge benefits for productivity and safety, says Bill Bartow, the company’s vice president of global product management. Nurses, for instance, could wear a sensor on their clothing that detects heart rate and helps them fight off fatigue on long shifts."

Wearable Technology Will Let Companies Monitor Worker Productivity - Businessweek

Kim Kardashian, an Unlikely Mobile Video Game Hit - NYTimes.com

Check Stephen Colbert's perspective on this meme-of-the-week

"On Wednesday, during its second-quarter earnings call with investors, Glu Mobile, the company that developed the game, said the game generated $1.6 million in revenue during its first five days on the market, in late June. And the hot sales have continued. The game is now the fifth highest-grossing game on Apple’s App Store. The company said it expected tens of millions of people around the world to download the game on their iPhone or Android phones, even through the game is available only in English."

Kim Kardashian, an Unlikely Mobile Video Game Hit - NYTimes.com

Facebook Offers App With Free Access in Zambia - Digits - WSJ

Advancing Facebook's mission to "give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected"; see Introducing the Internet.org App (Facebook newsroom) for more details

"Facebook’s newest mobile app doesn’t compete with other apps, like Snapchat. It competes with being offline.

The social network said Thursday it had launched an Internet.org app in Zambia to provide free access to Facebook and other online services to people who might otherwise have no Internet access. The app is a partnership with India’s Bharti Airtel, and available only to Bharti subscribers in Zambia."

Facebook Offers App With Free Access in Zambia - Digits - WSJ

Palantir Acquires Social Analytics Specialist Poptip - Digits - WSJ

A sign of the social surveillance times; tangentially, see To keep growth going, Twitter wants to be everywhere — and a little more intimate (BetaBoston)

"Poptip, a two-year-old company that analyzes data from Twitter, is being acquired by Palantir Technologies Inc., one of the most valuable and secretive privately-held startups in Silicon Valley, Poptip announced in a company blog post Tuesday afternoon. The acquisition price has not been disclosed.

The acquisition by Palantir, which specializes in large-scale data mining for the FBI, the CIA, and Wall Street firms, reflects the growing value of Twitter’s data as an indicator of social trends. Palantir is known sniffing out money trails, but the acquisition suggests that it’s seeking better ways to understand unstructured data (such as the language in a Twitter post) and to boost its profile among a more mainstream sort of potential clients."

Palantir Acquires Social Analytics Specialist Poptip - Digits - WSJ

Speech recognition’s not my type - Business - The Boston Globe

Excerpt from a speech recognition software state-of-the-art reality check

"After all, similar software has been around for quite a while now, and you can get plenty of it for free. A simple version of speech recognition is built into Microsoft Windows software and Mac OS X. If you use the Chrome browser from Google Inc., you can do Google searches with your voice instead of a keyboard. Just say “OK, Google” and ask your question. (Microphone not included.) But speech controls for personal computers have been popular mainly with people with disabilities or specialized technical users such as doctors dictating the results of medical tests. And despite its excellence, Dragon NaturallySpeaking isn’t likely to change this."

Speech recognition’s not my type - Business - The Boston Globe

Twitter acquires deep learning startup Madbits — Tech News and Analysis [GigaOm]

Deeply nested Facebook/Twitter competition

"Twitter has acquired Madbits, a deep-learning-based computer vision startup founded by proteges of Facebook AI director Yann LeCun. It’s the latest in a spate of deep learning and computer vision acquisitions that also includes Google, Yahoo, Dropbox and Pinterest. [...]
Details of the acquisition weren’t announced, but one can assume Madbits was able to demand a not-insignificant amount of money. Deep learning is such a hot technology, and good talent is so rare, that Microsoft Research director Peter Lee told Businessweek, “Last year, the cost of a top, world-class deep learning expert was about the same as a top NFL quarterback prospect.” Earlier this year, Google paid $400 million for another deep learning startup called DeepMind."

Twitter acquires deep learning startup Madbits — Tech News and Analysis

Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Update re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

Excerpt from an Amazon post on its Hachette negotiation

"Keep in mind that books don't just compete against books. Books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.

So, at $9.99, the total pie is bigger - how does Amazon propose to share that revenue pie? We believe 35% should go to the author, 35% to the publisher and 30% to Amazon. Is 30% reasonable? Yes. In fact, the 30% share of total revenue is what Hachette forced us to take in 2010 when they illegally colluded with their competitors to raise e-book prices. We had no problem with the 30% -- we did have a big problem with the price increases."

Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Update re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

Twitter Reveals Its Master Plan For Growing As Big As Facebook [Forbes]

Twitter's strategy: like Facebook, but without the profits

"It’s also willing to tinker with the core of what makes Twitter Twitter: its strict reverse-chronological organization. Right now, every user’s timeline consists of every tweet (plus or minus replies, depending on one’s toggle setting) by every user he or she follows. Asked whether Twitter would consider a version of timeline that uses an algorithm, a la Facebook’s Newsfeed, to determine which tweets get promoted and which get suppressed, Costolo said, “It’s fair to say we’re not ruling out any changes in product in service to bridging the gap between signing up for the service and receiving immediate value.”

In other words, to overtake Facebook, Twitter is even willing to become Facebook."

Twitter Reveals Its Master Plan For Growing As Big As Facebook

Seattle Takes Oracle's Cloud - NYTimes.com

Oracle goes north to participate in Seattle's cloudy future; still tbd if its strategic focus will be to compete with and/or complement AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud (e.g., directly support Oracle apps on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft IaaS)

"Amazon, of course, is based in Seattle, and has the headquarters of Amazon Web Services there. Across Lake Washington, Microsoft’s cloud business, Azure, is a centerpiece of chief executive Satya Nadella’s plans to spur Microsoft’s growth. Google has also located its cloud business in Seattle, and Century Link [sic -- CenturyLink] increased its cloud presence there when it purchased Tier 3 last year.

These businesses, for Seattle the result of a combination of luck (Amazon and Microsoft were already there) and cooperation with local universities to build skills in areas like distributed computing, are for the most part about infrastructure, the management of lots of computer servers and networks. What Oracle is doing is more about building up the next level: software applications in the cloud."

Seattle Takes Oracle's Cloud - NYTimes.com

Amazon to Invest $2 Billion in India - WSJ

Also see The New Bazaar: Online Shopping Catches On in India With Buyers and Global Investors (NYT)

"Amazon.com Inc. said Wednesday that it will invest $2 billion to expand in India as competition for customers heats up in the fast-growing, South Asian e-commerce market.

"We see huge potential in the Indian economy and for the growth of e-commerce in India," Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon said in a statement.

Investors have been pouring money into India's online retail market as e-commerce seems to at last be taking off in the country. Brokerage Nomura expects online retailing in India to grow 11-fold to $23 billion in the next four years."

Amazon to Invest $2 Billion in India - WSJ

World Cup Gave Twitter a Big Burst in Traffic - NYTimes.com

tbd if the World Cup Twitter traffic bump will last longer than the average U.S. resident's interest in soccer

"The World Cup illustrated Twitter’s greatest strength and its biggest weakness: As with the cable news networks, its traffic is dependent on surges of public interest around real-time events. Twitter said its users sent more than 672 million tweets during the entire tournament — more than during any other event in its history. But the company’s chief financial officer, Anthony Noto, attributed the drop in usage by Americans during the quarter to the lack of galvanizing events like the Super Bowl that occurred in the first quarter."

World Cup Gave Twitter a Big Burst in Traffic - NYTimes.com

LG’s Snappy G3 Phone Is Poised to Test Rivals - NYTimes.com

Part of a wave of new smartphone challengers, especially to Samsung; also see, e.g., OnePlus One review: a $300 smartphone has never looked so good (Engadget)

"But will enough people notice? Smartphone headlines are dominated by Apple and Samsung, and few customers in the United States think of LG as a maker of high-end phones.

They should. Last year’s LG G2 was a good phone that got people’s attention, and the LG G3 could make the company a serious challenger. It features the same top-of-the-line processor found in the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One (M8), its top Android competitors, and it does not skimp on any specifications."

LG’s Snappy G3 Phone Is Poised to Test Rivals - NYTimes.com

Zillow-Trulia Merger: Will It Change How We Buy and Sell Real Estate - Businessweek

(location, location, location) * (data, data, data)

"What’s remarkable about both sites is how little they’ve actually changed the selling and buying of homes. That’s mostly by design. Both were founded nearly a decade ago with a healthy respect for the intractability of the real estate market, with its unique dual-agent process (one representing the buyer, and one the seller) and with its multiple listing services (MLS), which has a stranglehold on home listings.

Zillow founder Rich Barton had helped destroy the travel agent business with his previous company, Expedia, but he understood that the real estate market was unique: Buyers and sellers liked getting professional advice on such a large transaction. Instead of trying to revolutionize real estate in one stroke, as local Seattle company Redfin was attempting at the time, Barton set out to change it from within, slowly building an audience by unlocking new kinds of information for buyers and sellers."

Zillow-Trulia Merger: Will It Change How We Buy and Sell Real Estate - Businessweek

Apple Looks to More Content Acquisitions - Digits - WSJ

Read and listen (to podcasts) different

"Apple acquired BookLamp, a reading recommendation app, with its standard response last week confirming the deal by saying it “occasionally buys smaller technology companies but doesn’t discuss its plans.”

BookLamp scans the text of books and recommends to readers books that they may enjoy based on factors such as genre and pacing. TechCrunch, which reported the acquisition, said Apple paid between $10 million and $15 million for the Idaho-based start-up.

Separately, Apple will acquire Concept.io Inc. and discontinue the startup’s mobile streaming-content app Swell, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. The purchase price for the two-year-old startup was around $30 million, the person said."

Apple Looks to More Content Acquisitions - Digits - WSJ

CIOs Benefit as Amazon Faces Rivals in the Cloud - Digits - WSJ

A snapshot of a rapidly evolving and relentlessly competitive market domain

"The increased competition gave Amazon the impetus for series of ‘race to the bottom’ price cuts, the main factor behind AWS’s slower revenue growth last quarter, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said Thursday.

The price cuts hitting the cloud market, combined with new services from rivals, benefit CIOs who say they need more control and customization over their cloud services. Chico’s FAS CIO Eric Singleton said the retailer is shifting to Contegix from Amazon Web Services because the startup will allow the retailer to pick and choose its servers and storage, enabling the software to perform at an optimum level.

Nonetheless, AWS is growing and working well for many CIOs."

CIOs Benefit as Amazon Faces Rivals in the Cloud - Digits - WSJ

OKCupid Publishes Findings of User Experiments - NYTimes.com

A stark reality check on "how websites work"

"“If you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site,” Christian Rudder, president of OKCupid, wrote on the company’s blog. “That’s how websites work.” [...]  The test also illustrates how easy it is for a website to manipulate users without their knowing. The small number of users who received changed compatibility scores, some to 90 percent from 30 percent, were not told about the change before the experiment began. After the test ended, OKCupid sent emails revealing the true compatibility scores."

OKCupid Publishes Findings of User Experiments - NYTimes.com

With Microsoft in Sights, China Starts to Squeeze U.S. Tech Companies - NYTimes.com

Placing some very big bets

"China is still one of the largest and most promising markets for United States tech companies, as well as home to the factories that make devices as varied as iPhones and Xboxes. But tensions between the United States and China have escalated over spying concerns by both sides. And in recent months Chinese authorities have increased their scrutiny of foreign tech companies.

At the same time, they appear to be stepping up their use of laws to help bolster the fortunes of native technology companies."

With Microsoft in Sights, China Starts to Squeeze U.S. Tech Companies - NYTimes.com