After ‘Jeopardy’ - The Boston Globe

A snapshot from the author of a recent book about Watson; also see this article for results of the first round

There’s no guarantee that Watson’s technology will provide the question-answering technology for all the industries IBM has targeted. Maybe competing companies or IBM itself will come up with cheaper, smarter, or more flexible systems. But a new generation of language-savvy machinery will soon be hunting down answers for us. Some will be wrong, some stupid. We human beings, exercising our still-unparalleled brainpower, will be the judges of that. Once you regard this technology as a powerful supplement to human cognition — and not a replacement — Watson suddenly starts to look much friendlier.

After ‘Jeopardy’ - The Boston Globe

Google's Search Gold Mine Could Tap Out - BusinessWeek

Some speculation about Google’s vertical ambitions

Google continues to generate the lion's share of its sales—over 96 percent—in search. Yes, the company has shown glimmers of financial diversity in mobility (Android), video advertising (YouTube), and browser software (Chrome). Each platform could help reduce the company's outsized dependence on search advertising. But search pays for everything Google does: Most of the company's offerings are free, such as YouTube and Chrome, and few generate ad sales. Pretty much nothing Google does other than search, AdWords, and AdSense turns a profit. For now, Google looks well-defended. Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing remains a distant second. Still, only 18 months ago Bing didn't exist. In December, Google served 69.4 percent of U.S. search results while Bing served 24.4 percent.

Google's Search Gold Mine Could Tap Out - BusinessWeek

Nokia’s Ice Castle Melts as ‘Boring’ Phones Force R&D Cuts - Businessweek

Check the link below for more Nokia analysis

At $4 billion a year, it is more than twice Apple Inc.’s entire $1.78 billion R&D budget. At least a third of it goes to Symbian and MeeGo platforms that Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop said last week Nokia is retreating from in favor of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 7. Elop plans “substantial” R&D spending cuts as he struggles to claw back ground lost to Apple’s iPhone and Google Inc.’s Android-based devices.

Nokia’s Ice Castle Melts as ‘Boring’ Phones Force R&D Cuts - Businessweek

Zynga Valuation Rises to Over $7 Billion - WSJ.com

Not just playing games

Social-gaming company Zynga Inc. is holding discussions with potential investors about raising around $250 million in new funding in a deal that could value the three-year-old start-up at between $7 billion and $9 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

In April Zynga filed papers authorizing the issuance of new stock that valued the company at about $4 billion.

Zynga Valuation Rises to Over $7 Billion - WSJ.com

Nokia Says It Will Get 'Billions' From Microsoft | Nick Wingfield | Voices | AllThingsD

That will help to offset the Nokia stock drop following the announcement last week

Nokia Corp. will receive “billions of dollars” in financial support from Microsoft Corp. over the early years of their partnership to help market and develop Nokia phones using Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, according to Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop.

Nokia Says It Will Get 'Billions' From Microsoft | Nick Wingfield | Voices | AllThingsD

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Rushing the net: Nokia’s coming fight to the Finnish - Cringely on technology

Some insightful Cringely speculation.  AT&T is already selling the iPhone 3GS (8 gigabyte) for $49.

Here is the transition we are likely to see. Cheaper smart phones are coming. There was a story just this week about Apple announcing a cheaper smart phone this summer. I can see it now: at the WWDC in June Apple will announce the expected multi-core, 4G, international-ready, whiter-then-white, 1.2-GHz iPhone 5, but the “one more thing” will be a repackaged, smaller form-factor, $29 iPhone 3GS. Nokia has to not only have a response to this move by Apple, they must preempt it with an earlier announcement of their own.

Nokia (and Microsoft’s) survival in the phone market is dependent on staking out the lower end of the market where people buy on price as much as features and brand loyalty is less of an issue. Apple is heading there and Android is there already. Only by rushing the net — by following the time-honored Microsoft technique of throwing bodies and staggering amounts of money at a problem in a market-changing way — can these companies remain relevant in the mobile space.

But they have only one chance to make it work and they’ll have to take that chance before June.

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Rushing the net: Nokia’s coming fight to the Finnish - Cringely on technology

Could Apple Be Your Next Phone Company?: Tech News and Analysis « [GigaOM]

Interesting times ahead for Apple iPhone service provider partners

Apple’s plans to once again change the dynamics of the mobile world are becoming clearer. Bloomberg reported today that the device maker has plans for a universal SIM card that I first reported on in October, and Apple is seeking a way to make it possible for consumers to pay for mobile access from multiple carriers via iTunes. The result of that hardware shift and business model change turns Apple into its own mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) and puts Apple, instead of the carrier, in control of the customer relationship.

Could Apple Be Your Next Phone Company?: Tech News and Analysis «

WikiLeaks Angry About Former Staffer’s Book - NYTimes.com

Apparently “involuntary transparency” isn’t for everybody…

WikiLeaks said it was taking “legal action” over a tell-all book to be released Friday by a former staff member that is critical of its founder, Julian Assange, and says the Web site was disabled by a spate of defections last year.

The former staff member, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, is a German computer scientist who was a prominent spokesman for WikiLeaks before falling out with Mr. Assange last summer. In “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time With Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website,” he writes of tensions between WikiLeaks’ core members and Mr. Assange.

WikiLeaks Angry About Former Staffer’s Book - NYTimes.com

Book Review - 'Virtually You' and 'Reality Is Broken' - NYTimes.com

Lead paragraph from a review of two polarized books

Humanity is migrating to cyberspace. In the past five years, Americans have doubled the hours they spend online, exceeding their television time and more than tripling the time they spend reading newspapers or magazines. Most now play computer or video games regularly, about 13 hours a week on average. By age 21, the average young American has spent at least three times as many hours playing virtual games as reading. It took humankind eight years to spend 100 million hours building Wikipedia. We now spend at least 200 million hours a week playing World of Warcraft.

Book Review - 'Virtually You' and 'Reality Is Broken' - NYTimes.com

Shorter E-Books Show Promise for Mobile Devices - NYTimes.com

More changes in the book business

The Atavist is among the growing number of organizations that are cultivating a certain niche of writing — stories and articles that are longer than a typical magazine article but shorter than a novel — in the hope that they will find a comfortable home on the glassy screens of evermore prevalent mobile devices. “Word counts are getting shorter in most magazines,” said Mr. Ratliff, who is also a contributing editor to Wired magazine. “On a mobile device, we shouldn’t be bound by those constraints.”

The attention spans of readers — many of us, anyway — are actually not getting shorter, Mr. Ratliff says. The problem lies elsewhere, he adds: “It’s the platform.”

Shorter E-Books Show Promise for Mobile Devices - NYTimes.com

RIM Said to Plan PlayBook Software to Run Google Apps - Businessweek

tbd if/how this will work

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company aims to make the PlayBook stand out against Apple Inc.’s iPad and a rising number of competing devices. By offering a tablet with the security and messaging of BlackBerry smartphones and the wide choice of Android apps, RIM may be able to woo customers who would otherwise opt for alternative devices, said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with MKM Partners LLC.

RIM Said to Plan PlayBook Software to Run Google Apps - Businessweek

Nokia to Use Microsoft’s Cellphone Operating System - NYTimes.com

It’ll be interesting to see more financial details of the deal, at some point

“It looks like a good deal for Microsoft, but far riskier for Nokia,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “It’s choosing a new platform and an unproven one in Microsoft’s smartphone software.”

Dropping Symbian, Nokia’s operating system, will be temporarily disruptive to Nokia’s product plans. About 200 million phones around the world use Symbian and the company expects to sell another 150 million more before halting its development and switching to Windows. Investors were skeptical of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership. Nokia shares dropped 14.2 percent in Europe. Microsoft shares closed down 0.9 percent.

Nokia to Use Microsoft’s Cellphone Operating System - NYTimes.com

Apple Is Said to Work on Cheaper, More Versatile IPhone Models - Businessweek

More on the rumored Apple iPhone market expansion plans

While Apple has aimed to unveil the device near mid-year, the introduction may be delayed or scrapped, the person said. Few Apple employees know the details of the project, the person said. Apple often works on products that don’t get released.

The prototype was about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4, and it had no “home” button, said the person, who saw it last year.

Apple would sell it at a low price mainly because the smartphone will use a processor, display and other components similar to those used in the current model, rather than pricier, more advanced parts that will be in the next iPhone, the person said. Component prices typically drop over time.

Apple Is Said to Work on Cheaper, More Versatile IPhone Models - Businessweek

Nokia at the crossroads: Blazing platforms | The Economist

The charts below highlight the real issue for Nokia – and all other Apple competitors

This changed with the emergence of smartphones, in particular Apple’s iPhone, which appeared in 2007. Nokia still ships a third of all handsets, but Apple astonishingly pulls in more than half of the profits, despite having a market share of barely 4% (see charts, below). More Americans now have smartphones than Europeans. As for standards, Verizon, America’s biggest mobile operator, is leading the world in implementing the next wireless technology, called LTE.

Nokia at the crossroads: Blazing platforms | The Economist

Nokia to Use Microsoft Software in Smartphones - NYTimes.com

More Nokia/Microsoft details

Mr. Elop described the relationship with Microsoft as a broad strategic alliance that would extend beyond using Microsoft Phone software on Nokia smartphones. Nokia’s mapping software, Nokia Maps, will also be used in the Microsoft Bing search engine, Mr. Elop said. Nokia’s Ovi software services business, a major effort by the company to match Apple, will disappear and become part of Microsoft’s Marketplace application and services platform.

Nokia’s one-year collaboration with the chip maker Intel, called MeeGo, to produce a new generation of Nokia smartphones, will become a long-term open-source project designed to develop new kinds of devices, Mr. Elop said. The collaboration failed to produce a cellphone in its first year. Mr. Elop said Nokia planned to introduce a MeeGo model this year.

In a related development, Mr. Elop announced the departure of Alberto Torres, a Nokia board member and the executive vice president responsible for MeeGo.

Nokia to Use Microsoft Software in Smartphones - NYTimes.com

John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Apple apparently not planning to cede any major mobile Web market segment

Apple is reportedly working on another new iPhone–a smaller device designed to compete with the proliferation of cheaper smartphones running Android. Sources who’ve seen a prototype of this iPhone…Nano tell Bloomberg that it’s about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4 and that Apple is considering selling it for about $200, off contract thanks to a Universal SIM–if it decides to release it at all.

Apple Reportedly Working on Smaller iPhone | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Microsoft's Ballmer and Nokia's Elop Issue Joint Letter on Parnership | Ina Fried | Mobilized | AllThingsD

A big and bold bet – see the article link below for more details

It’s officially official.

Nokia has posted a letter to its Web site from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and its CEO Stephen Elop outlining the partnership between the two companies.

[…]

In the letter, the two CEOs talk about what each brings to the table and promise a tough fight in their uphill battle against the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android.

“There are other mobile ecosystems,” the two wrote. “We will disrupt them. There will be challenges. We will overcome them.”

Microsoft's Ballmer and Nokia's Elop Issue Joint Letter on Parnership | Ina Fried | Mobilized | AllThingsD

Austan Goolsbee Explains Obama's Wireless Plan In Three Minutes | Arik Hesseldahl | NewEnterprise | AllThingsD

I’ve been assuming Google will eventually address this need; also see this article for more details

Austan Goolsbee is the Chairman of The President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and in the video below, part of a regular series called “White House White Board,” he explains the National Wireless Initiative the President Obama outlined in Michigan yesterday. (Has anyone thought to call this thing ObamaNet yet? If not let me be the first.)

Austan Goolsbee Explains Obama's Wireless Plan In Three Minutes | Arik Hesseldahl | NewEnterprise | AllThingsD

App Tells Your Friends What You're Watching - Technology Review

In a word: yikes; this sort of “social” surveillance won’t always be opt-in/user-controlled, and it won’t stop at TV show detection… 

Sitting at home in front of the TV could soon become an altogether more sociable experience. A new iPhone app can identify the show you're watching just by analyzing a few seconds of audio, making it possible to automatically share your TV viewing choices with friends through Facebook and Twitter. It only does this when the app the user presses a button to activate it.

App Tells Your Friends What You're Watching - Technology Review

louisgray.com: Why We Brought my6sense to Twitter.com via Chrome

my6sense moves beyond iPhones and Android phones; see the post link below for more details from my6sense marketing VP Louis Gray (my current “digital intuition level” is merely “excelling,” but I’m working on it…)

If you understand our focus - to implicitly determine your interests based on those items you read and skip, or act on in the Twitter.com interface (such as favorites, retweets, replies, etc.), you know we are trying to reduce the amount of time you spend culling through updates that aren't of interest to you. When people see the difference between the chronologically ordered timeline and the personally ordered timeline from my6sense, the difference is clear. Sometimes the stream may toss up surprises or items that aren't a clear fit, but no software is perfect. The good news is that we're listening to all the feedback, positive and negative, and hoping to make a real impact on the way we all consume and share content.
I hope you'll try our new extension and see how we can improve your Twitter.com experience by bringing the best updates from your friends and brands to the top. You can find the Chrome extension at http://m6s.com/chromeweb.

louisgray.com: Why We Brought my6sense to Twitter.com via Chrome