|
|
|
|
UPDATE 2-Norwegian IT firms EDB, Ergo in merger talks* EDB shares surge as deal could mean Telenor reducing stakeSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 4:01 am Happy Quit Facebook Day! Now what? - InfoWorld
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 31 May 2010 | 4:00 am Asustek joins tablet PC race; launches app store - Reuters
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 31 May 2010 | 3:55 am Asustek joins tablet PC race; launches app store (Reuters)Reuters - Netbook PC pioneer Asustek Computer Inc has become the latest technology company to jump on the tablet PC bandwagon on Monday, joining cross-town rival Acer Inc in jostling with Apple Inc in the nascent sector.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 May 2010 | 3:49 am Is Print Media Doomed Worldwide or Just In The US?
Is the death of print a world-wide certainty or merely an American reality? After all a lot of “old economy” businesses are thriving in emerging markets thanks to Greenfield advantages and rising middle class economics. Spoiler alert: I walked out a few hours later not hugely convinced print is the future but willing to believe that in some places the death-blow of digital might be limited to a mere-crippling. How’s that for bullish? Language difference and a preponderance of statues aside, the Jawa Pos felt like any other newsroom of a large daily. It was almost 9 pm and there was a still a buzzing, frenzied office full of people —some of whom had been there since 5 am, and some of whom would be there until midnight. I sat down with the chief editor, Leak Kustiya (below, second from right), and his deputy at a large, circular table in the middle of the newsroom—the hub of all the department spokes and the spot where the editors make their daily decisions. It could have been a scene out of an Indonesian version of “All the President’s Men.” But when I asked how the paper was responding to the digital age, I was disappointed in the answer: We’re protecting print revenues as long as we can. Wow, I thought. Have you learned nothing from the West? Web revenues will never equal print revenues, per ad. But guess what? Future competitors don’t care. They are happy to build a business off of ads that are 20% of what you charge, because they are building a digital business without printing presses from the ground up. It’s New York Times v. TechCrunch all over again. Or is it? Every local paper claims superior coverage of local news will save it, but that takes having a young, aggressive staff of reporters—and most of those people were the first to leave when newspapers started their inevitable decline in revenues and death in morale by a million small rounds of layoffs. I came away from the Jawa Pos thinking they might have a shot largely because of one factor: Hiring practices. In fact, the US media—including blogs like TechCrunch—could learn something from them. The company’s network of more than 150 publications and television stations is designed to avoid the exact problem that plagues old-school media: An overpaid preponderance of senior staff that doesn’t do much. The Jawa Pos will only hire someone if they are under 25 and you must retire when you hit 50—no matter what your seniority. And those slots are coveted positions. Some 400 people apply twice a year, and 100 get interviews. Fifteen are selected, and they enter a rigorous six month training period where they learn all aspects of the reporting trade and editors get plenty of time to see how they can work a beat, generate story ideas, break news and work under pressure. Typically only five get a permanent slot. The logic here, simply put, is that news is a young person’s business. It’s like American Idol for journalists. In some senses, it’s precisely the opposite of the unions most US newsrooms have.
Dinners three-to-four nights a week, endless 6 a.m. breakfasts with sources, trolling the halls at the largest trade show conferences for a quote or a tip these are all things that give an advantage to younger, hungrier reporters without spouses or families the same way a 20-something entrepreneur has energy and a fresh look on an industry that a grey-haired veteran can’t match. Hell, after spending 40-weeks on planes, lost on back-alley streets and dining on mini-bar Pringles around the world, I’m not even sure I’d sign up to write my current book-in-progress again. Does experience and seniority have advantages in the work place? Of course. That’s why the Jawa Pos lets you work there until you are fifty. Given how many other countries err on the side of being too protective of workers, the somewhat draconian, Logan’s Run approach was a surprise to me. But the Jawa Pos’s policy ensures that only the best reporters are allowed on staff because getting a job isn’t a simple as showing some clips or faking an interview and it ensures that despite clinging to a graying medium of print, the staff itself is always staying young, and hence, in touch with younger readers. It’ll be interesting to watch and see if that’s enough to beat a broader market certainty that print is dead and digital is the future. And if not? At the least the task of righting the ship will be left to younger blood. It may sound cruel, but I’d argue it’s not nearly as cruel as daily papers going out of business en masse and taking good reporters and editors with them. Maybe the Jawa Pos should look more closely at the mistakes our profession made ten years ago, but this is one big fail safe against complacency already in place.      
Source: TechCrunch | 31 May 2010 | 3:32 am Wireless Analyst Predicts Mobile LBS Revenues To Reach €420 Million By 2015 According to a new research report from Sweden-based wireless analyst Berg Insight, mobile location-based service revenues in Europe are forecasted to grow from €220 million in 2009 to €420 million in 2015.
Berg Insight adds that local search, navigation services and social networking are poised to become the top applications in terms of number of users, which is sort of a give-away as those categories have already proven to be the most popular and fastest-growing among smartphone users worldwide.
Berg Insight, which offers business intelligence to the telecom industry and provides analysis to companies such as AT&T, Microsoft, France Telecom, IBM, KPN Mobile, NTT Docomo, Nokia, Telefonica O2, Vodafone Group, Alcatel and Motorola, estimates that one third of all mobile subscribers in Europe will use "some kind of location-enhanced application" on a regular basis by 2015. 
Source: TechCrunch | 31 May 2010 | 3:31 am Acupuncture Releases Natural PainkillerWhen they get acupuncture, mice release a natural pain-relieving molecule that scientists have never linked with the treatment before.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 3:30 am UPDATE 1-Egypt's OT tells bourse no news to add on MTN talks* Bourse's request followed Sunday's surge in Orascom sharesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 3:24 am UPDATE 3-Battle on for Healthscope, after 2 more takeover offers* Shares rise 5 per cent but below offer price on uncertainty (Adds response from KKR and Tenet, StarMine table; updates share to close)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 3:22 am Where Do You Go When Google Locks You Out?Lobais sends in the cautionary tale of a man who was locked out of Google Groups for three years — losing the ability to administer his own open source project in the process. "After about a year of using Google Groups for the PyChess project, I started [noticing] a problem. When I wrote mails to the list, no one would answer. And when I answered other peoples' post[s], they seamed to ignore them and press for new answers. As I tried to check the online group to see what was happening, I got a 403 Forbidden error. After a short while I realized that this error was given for any page one the groups.google.com subomain. The lockout meant that I was unable to manage the PyChess mailing list. I was unable to fight the, at that time, increasing spam level; and more importantly I couldn't reply anybody in my community. I wasn't even able to visit the Google help fora, which are all on groups.google.com. As the services are free of charge, I never really expected any support options. ... How can we know how often this kind of thing happens? If any admin can lock you all out by a sloppy click, and give you no option to defend yourself, then it is bound to happen once in a while."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 31 May 2010 | 3:11 am Panasonic aims to be Japan No. 1 in solar businessPanasonic Corp. is banking on the solar-panel business that it gained by acquiring domestic rival Sanyo, aiming for top market share of at least 35 percent in Japan by 2012. New solar...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 3:01 am Antimatter Matters: Fermilab Glimpses 'The Toe of God'Did you miss the big news from Fermilab last week? It seems that a bunch of proton-anti-proton collisions exhibit a slight asymmetry in the number of muons produced compared to anti-muons.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 31 May 2010 | 2:46 am Pakistan lifts Facebook ban (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 May 2010 | 2:45 am The Next Apple TV: Apps on the Big Screen? - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 31 May 2010 | 2:32 am Telefonica threatens to push PT bosses out -reportLISBON, May 31 (Reuters) - Spain's Telefonica is considering a proposal to seek a change of management at Portugal Telecom (PT) if the Portuguese company does not agree to sell its stake in Brazilian...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 2:28 am Friends Again: Pakistan Court Lifts Ban On Facebook
On Monday, a Pakistani court ordered authorities to restore access to social networking site Facebook after company officials reportedly apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents. The Lahore High Court imposed the nationwide ban almost two weeks ago amid outrage over the page, which encouraged users to post drawings of Muhammad, as many Muslims consider depictions of Islam’s Prophet to be blasphemous. Earlier today, Justice Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court reversed the 19 May order to the Pakistani authorities to block the site. “Restore Facebook. We don’t want to block access to information,” Justice Chaudhry told the court. He also requested the government to develop a system to find out how countries like Saudi Arabia were blocking access to “blasphemous” content on the internet. According to Bloomberg / BusinessWeek, the ban was lifted after the court was told the company had exchanges with Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Chaudhry Zulfiqar, the lawyer who asked the court to block the popular social networking site on May 19, told a Bloomberg reporter by telephone:
Pakistani authorities had also blocked access to YouTube for containing “un-Islamic content”, but this ban was at least partially lifted last week. Bangladesh also decided to block Facebook this weekend but said it would restore access to the site if the offensive material was removed. More coverage on Reuters, Al Jazeera English, AFP and BBC. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 31 May 2010 | 2:09 am LSI Storage System Integrated With New Cray CX1000 SupercomputerSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 2:00 am UPDATE 2-Parkway up on $835 mln bid; eyes on India Fortis* Shares briefly trade above Khazanah's offer of S$3.78/shareSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 1:52 am Punk Pompadours - Baptiste Giabiconi & Francois Darmigny Team Up for Giabiconi Press Kit (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Up until recently, if Baptiste Giabiconi and Francois Darmigny were working together, it would have involved photographs of Giabiconi modeling clothing. But this set is a little bit...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 1:50 am Asus' New 10- and 12-inch Eee Pad Tablets: First Pics (PC World)PC World - Asustek Computer on Monday unveiled two Eee Pad tablets running Windows software and an e-reader, the Eee Tablet, with a note-taking function.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 May 2010 | 1:30 am Debt stress: How the poll on was conducted (AP)AP - The Associated Press-GfK Poll on debt and stress was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media from May 7-11, 2010. It is based on landline and cell phone telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,002 adults. Interviews were conducted with 702 respondents on landline telephones and 300 on cellular phones.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 May 2010 | 1:28 am Pakistani court lifts ban on FacebookA Pakistani court lifted a ban on Facebook on Monday after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents, said a top...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 1:27 am 42 Innovative Pop Art Installations - From Insensitive Artistic Inspiration to Warhol Celeb Portrait (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) This cluster of innovative pop art installations shows that we will always be inspired by our pop culture icons and commodities. Andy Warhol is arguably the biggest pop artist to...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 1:20 am CrunchGear Week in Review: Gold Record Edition
Music for deaf people – Portable ears
Source: CrunchGear | 31 May 2010 | 1:00 am Cyborg Supercars - Soul-Tech Hybrid Vehicle Contains Biotechnology and Nanotechnology (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Hong Kong-based designer Chik Kin's Soul-Tech Hybrid Vehicle is a car designed for the year 2030, when major global climate change will happen. Designed especially for pioneering young...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 1:00 am Most Widely-Used World University Ranking now on iPhoneSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 12:59 am INTERVIEW-Baidu video unit expects profits in 2013BEIJING, May 31 (Reuters) - Qiyi.com, the video website of leading Chinese search engine Baidu Inc , expects to break even on a quarterly basis in 2012 and become profitable the next year, its top executive...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 May 2010 | 12:56 am Levitating Parks - Rael San Fratello Architects' 'Migrating Floating Garden' Proposes Eco UFOs (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) 'Migrating Floating Gardens' by Rael San Fratello Architects proposes a floating solution for plant life in dense urban environments. The Migrating Floating Gardens are suspended in...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 12:30 am Boost Mobile confirm release date for crazy-tough Motorola i1: June 20th
The device is Boost Mobile’s first Android offering (and arguably their best phone yet), and is also the first Android device to offer iDEN push-to-talk functionality. The biggest selling point of the device, however, is that it conforms to Military standard 810F, making it dust-, shock- and rain-proof. The specs include a 3.1″ 320×480 “tough” touchscreen, WiFi b/g, a 5 MP auto-focus camera with LED flash, a 500Mhz freescale Zeus 2.0 processor, with 256MB RAM and 512MB on-board storage (plus a MicroSD slot, of course). It will also come preloaded with Opera Mini 5, to help speed up browsing. The handset will be sold though Best Buy for $349 on Boost’s $50 unlimited data/web/text plan, which is pretty rad. [via Phone Arena]
Source: MobileCrunch | 31 May 2010 | 12:24 am Custom GameBoy Arcade Mod Yours For Just $149.99By Andrew Liszewski Every gamer would like to have an arcade in their home full of classic titles, but not everyone has the space, or the money, needed to buy and/or build one. Chinese modder XCKDIY may...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 12:18 am This Cellphone's Biggest Selling Feature? It's Called The McLovinBy Andrew Liszewski It looks like a hybrid between the iPhone and the Nokia N97, and it comes with pretty much every modern smartphone feature you could want including dual SIM card slots, quad-band GSM...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 12:10 am UK Students Build Electric Car With 248-Mile Rangeda_how writes "A group of students and graduates at Imperial College London have built an electric car with a massive range — 248+ miles on a charge at 'reasonable' highway speeds (60 mph). They did this by filling the car to the absolute max with as many lithium iron phosphate batteries as possible — 56 kWh — and designing a very efficient direct drive powertrain, about 90% batteries-to-wheels at highway speeds. The choice of vehicle is an interesting one: it's a converted Radical SR8 — a track racing car with a speed record on the Nurburgring. Not an obvious contender for an endurance vehicle (no windscreen either!) — but then they claim it's lightweight to start with, being constructed of steel space frame and glass fiber. Also, Radical is based in the UK and provided some help and sponsorship. The students plan to drive their 'SRZero' 15,000 miles down the Pan American Highway, beginning July 8 in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and ending up in Tierra Del Fuego three month later. That's about 60 charges."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 31 May 2010 | 12:06 am CTA Digital Milking This Wii Thing For All It's Worth Introduces Inflatable Racing Kart AccessoryBy Andrew Liszewski Continuing in a long line of confusing, awkward and utterly pointless gaming accessories like the Wii Bowling Ball and the Wings for Wii comes CTA Digital’s latest creation, an...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 May 2010 | 12:03 am Blow-Up Gamer Gear - CTA Digital Inflatable Racing Kart for Wii Lets You Race Mario in Style (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) This adorable CTA Digital Inflatable Racing Kart for Wii lets kids (and, let's face it, adults) play Mario Party with their friends in style. The plastic wheel has a spot for your Wii...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 May 2010 | 11:39 pm 24 Furniture Innovations For Foodies - From Edible Furniture to Hamburger Beds (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) This cluster of furniture innovations for foodies provides some great insight into our social relationship with food and how it feeds more than our bodies. The importance food plays...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 May 2010 | 11:09 pm Top 100 Trends in May 2010 - From iPad Clones to Geeky Fashion Editorials (COUNTDOWN)(TrendHunter.com) For the month of May 2010, these are the Top 100 trends, which include iPad Clones, Atypical Relationship Shoots and Violent Finger Art. The rankings are based on millions of views...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 May 2010 | 10:49 pm Hey, You! Pick a Winner in Our Wired Volt ChallengeWe've picked three people who will flog a Chevrolet Volt at Milford Proving Grounds. You get to choose a fourth person to join them. Watch their vids, and vote.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 10:01 pm Cognitive Surplus: The Great Spare-Time RevolutionPut those spare cycles to use! Authors Daniel Pink and Clay Shirky see a revolution in how we use our free time.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 10:00 pm The Human Spectacle That Is Russell BrandForget CGI. Brit comedian Russell Brand proves that people being people is the greatest show on earth.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Flextronics to Open New Power Facility in Ganzhou, Jiangxi ChinaSINGAPORE, May 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Flextronics (Nasdaq: FLEX) held a signing ceremony today in Shenzhen, China to formally announce plans to develop a Power manufacturing and service facility in Ganzhou, Jiangxi.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 30 May 2010 | 9:00 pm Cutting Through the 4G Hypecrimeandpunishment writes "Cell phone companies are about to bombard us with advertising for the next big thing — 4G access. The first 4G phone, Sprint Nextel's EVO, comes out this week. But just how big a deal is 4G? Is it fast enough to warrant the hype, or are consumers better off waiting a while? AP technology writer Peter Svensson looks at the differences between 4G and 3G technologies."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 8:58 pm Magid: Evo 4G is best smartphone — for the moment - San Jose Mercury News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 May 2010 | 8:51 pm Cash in with IdeaWallets, Writer's Studio and other iPad Apps of the Month (Appolicious)Appolicious - May 2010 was a great month for iPad-specific apps. Here’s some of the best.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 May 2010 | 8:00 pm Maggie Thatcher performs the Dead Parrot sketchHere's Margaret Thatcher at the 1990 Conservative Party conference making fun of the Liberal Democrats' new mascot (a parrot), by performing the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch. The ironies are, of course, glorious. First, because the Tories and the LibDems have just formed the government of the UK. But second, because the Tories voted heavily in favour of the Digital Economy Act, which takes as its premise that this sort of cultural use of creative material is theft and should be vigorously punished (except, presumably, when the villainous Ms Thatcher does it). Margaret Thatcher does the Dead Parrot Sketch (Thanks, Ethan!)  Source: Boing Boing | 30 May 2010 | 7:12 pm Battling Bots in Saturn's Biggest RingIn an entertaining effort to communicate why Saturn's outermost ring can only be seen in the infrared, NASA's Spitzer team have released a video of battling robots trying to gain the secrets of this "cloaked" ring.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 7:12 pm Study finds iPads cost most in Europe and UK, cheapest in US - Reuters
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 May 2010 | 6:58 pm Why Apple Is So StickyHugh Pickens writes "'Sticky,' in the social sciences and particularly economics, describes a situation in which a variable is resistant to change. For websites or products it usually means that visitors or customers keep coming back for more. Now Fortune Magazine reports on an analysis by Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore on what makes the (iTunes-based) iPhone-iPod-iPad platform so sticky and why it's going to get harder, not easier, for Apple users to switch, no matter what Google and the rest of Apple's competitors have up their sleeves. Whitmore says the investment Apple's customers have made in content for those devices in terms of apps, videos, and music purchased at the iTunes Store creates Apple's 'stickiness.' Apple has an installed base today of about 150 million iTunes-dependent devices that could grow to more than 200 million by the end of 2011. Whitmore comes up with a cumulative investment in those devices of about $15 billion today, growing to $25 billion by the end of next year. 'This averages to ~$100 of content for each installed device,' Whitmore writes, 'suggesting switching costs are relatively high (not to mention the time required to port). When Apple's best-in-class user experience is combined with these growing switching costs, the resulting customer loyalty is unparalleled.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 6:52 pm 3G Skype Calling Hits Apple's iPhones... for a Future Price - PC Magazine
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 May 2010 | 6:41 pm NSFW: Never Mind The Bollocks – Why Carol Bartz Can’t Say What Yahoo Is Now
Specifically I’m editing a chapter that begins with me being thrown out of a Starbucks in Chicago for swearing on my cellphone. It was a strange – not unhilarious – episode, and one that caused me to consider the contrasting American and British attitudes towards profanity…
And so it was this past week at TechCrunch Disrupt when Yahoo’s Carol Bartz now-infamously told Mike Arrington to “fuck off”. The remark was clearly something Bartz had prepared in advance, and at a British conference it would have been about as notable as a speaker wearing jeans rather than a suit. But in America the idea that a CEO – a female CEO no less – might resort to comedy foul language is headline news. Literally. The swearing had the desired effect of course; becoming the meme of the conference – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing – and distracting from the real story: that the CEO of the third most visited site on the web was unable to concisely describe what her company actually does. Mike highlighted this ridiculousness in a follow up post, putting the swearing controversy into perspective and focussing on the difference between Bartz’ answer to the question “what is Yahoo?” and Tim Armstrong’s much snappier response for AOL. While Bartz rambled, Armstrong simply said “AOL is planning on being the largest high quality content producer for digital media”. In Bartz’s defence, Armstrong’s answer was just as meaningless, skirting what AOL is and instead describing what he hopes it will one day become. Armstrong’s answer was accurate in the same way that I could accurately answer the question “Who is Paul Carr?” by saying “Paul Carr aims to be the multi-millionaire author of a slew of best-selling books, written between bouts of pornographic sex with Scarlet Johansson.” If wishing could make it so, Tim. The truth is, while we may criticise her for her on-stage performance, “what is Yahoo?” is simply not a question that Carol Bartz is able to answer right now. No-one asks Google what it is, even though it does a million different things, because it does one thing – search – better than anyone else in the world. No-one asks Facebook what it does, because it does one thing – connecting friends – better than anyone else in the world. Yahoo doesn’t have that one thing – so while it might be everything, it’s also nothing. So what should Yahoo’s one thing be? Not search, obviously. That ship sailed long ago. It also shouldn’t be a portal, or a destination, or any other meaningless construction. Yes, a lot of people have Yahoo as their home page, but those people – by and large – simply don’t know any better. Carol can enthuse as much as she likes about her highly-personalised homepage widgets, but the next generation of Internet users won’t care. Facebook – or whatever comes next – will be their homepage; their content destination and everything in between. There’s nothing more personalised than friendships. How about mobile? The company recently announced a partnership with Nokia, which sounds exciting but really only serves to underline how non-core mobile is to Yahoo’s competences. Also ‘mobile’ isn’t a service, or a product – rather it’s a way to deliver services or products. Chat? Flickr? Blogging? Forums? No, no, no. Facebook has won that fight: Flickr might be the photo sharing choice of tool for the technorati, but for the vast majority of Internet users – particularly the young Internet users who Yahoo needs to lock in to guarantee its future – a photo simply doesn’t exist unless it’s uploaded to Facebook. Likewise chat, blogging, forums and all other aspects of user generated content are all ground that Yahoo has already lost, and can’t possibly win back. What does that leave? Ask any commentator, or entrepreneur or Investor and they’ll tell you that the hot business to be in right now is curation. There’s simply too much information – much of it user generated – flooding on to the web, and users are crying out for someone to sift and package it all in an intelligent and trustworthy way. That’s what Gilt Groupe or Groupon do for businesses, that’s what services like Quora do for information, that’s what our Twitter friends do for everything else. But while Gilt and Quora and even Twitter are still veritable newborns, Yahoo has been curating content – using real-life, professional human beings to sift through information – since the antediluvian days when Jerry Yang and David Filo posted their first link on “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web“ The days of employing humans to curate links are over but there remains one area in which Yahoo’s legacy of curation, audience, trusted brand and significant human resources could come together to do something better than anyone else in the world… News. Seriously. Yahoo’s news product is excellent. Like Google, Yahoo offers a first-rate news aggregator – but unlike Google, the company actually has its own journalists contributing reporting to the mix. The result is a hybrid between aggregation, curation and traditional journalism, which makes Yahoo News arguably the most balanced online news source there is. Moreover, the company has spent years perfecting the use of online video for both news reporting and analysis. Take a few minutes to watch Yahoo Finance or Yahoo Sports and you’ll see some of the best (in terms of both production quality and content) programming available online; easily a match for the best that traditional broadcasting can offer. And yet right now news and video languish in Yahoo’s overall portfolio; just one more thing that the company offers. If Yahoo is seriously looking for the one thing that it could be the best in the world at, then news – specifically multi-media news – is a serious contender. CNN might have been the last generation’s “Most Trusted Name In News” but they just don’t have the innate understanding of the web that a company like Yahoo does. For most traditional broadcast or print news outlets, the concept of mixing together original reporting with aggregated content from other sources and the curational wisdom of the online crowds is utterly beyond their comprehension. The closest CNN has got to content aggregation is The Situation Room, while, when it comes to interactivity, even the mighty taxpayer-funded BBC hadn’t got much beyond reading out the occasional viewer email on screen. Yahoo on the other hand understand innately how people use the web – they have billions of users whose behaviour they track; they know curation and aggregation; they’ve proved they know news and they certainly know video. By combining these resources, and then delivering the results through their hugely visible platform (yes, including mobile), they could blow CNN – and everyone else – out of the water. At dinner the other night, I joked with a friend (who happens to work at Yahoo) that we might one day see a Yahoo journalist asking a question in the Whitehouse. That need not be a joke. Yahoo has the resources to hire hundreds of journalists – real journalists, not just the hungry children who churn out posts for Associated Content – and set them to work covering serious stories. Then it can integrate that coverage even more tightly with its news aggregation product, and at the same time expand the company’s flagship finance and sports video programming into politics, global affairs, entertainment and everything else that’s going on in the world. Mix in user-generated curation, courtesy of their billions of annual visitors, and you have the makings of a very large and very trusted online news and content network. Put another way, Tim Armstrong may say that “AOL is planning on being the largest high quality content producer for digital media”, but Yahoo is in a position to actually make that happen. But of course that’s just one idea. There are a dozen other possible roads that Bartz could take Yahoo, and thanks to the company’s sheer size she can still afford to take the time to explore them all. The critical thing is that she stops trying (and failing) to explain the dozens of things Yahoo does now, and instead settles on the one thing that Yahoo is going to do next. If she can do that then Yahoo might still be thriving in three years time. If not then it’s — what’s the word, Carol? Fucked.      
Source: TechCrunch | 30 May 2010 | 5:55 pm Did Amazon Miss The Boat On Social Commerce?
At the conference last week in New York, John Caplan, CEO, OpenSky; Rob Kalin, CEO, Etsy; Susan Lyne, CEO, Gilt Groupe and Dan Porter, CEO, OMGPOP sat down to discuss the idea of social commerce and where the marketplace is going in the future in terms of both monetization and socialization. All of the panelists seemed to agree that Amazon will continue to reign supreme in “commodity commerce” but will not be able to lead social commerce. Kalin stated, “I think Amazon is doing a good job monopolizing boring way of shopping.” Caplan agreed, saying that “Amazon will own commodity commerce. They won’t lead the way to relationship commerce and more and more people are craving relationships in shopping.” These relationships have captured the attention of millions of paying customers, and in turn, the interest of marquee investors from around the globe. Groupon recently raised a massive round valuing the company at $1.35 billion. Meanwhile, Gilt Groupe is expected to triple revenues this year, and fellow flash sale site Vente-Privee itself is on target to €650m in turnover globally this year. Other industry giants are thinking through ways to horizontally integrate into the social commerce space. eBay, for example, is aggressively targeting the flash sales market, having recently launched the Fashion Vault, a flash sales site that offers deep discounts on designer items. Meanwhile Amazon’s interest in blending commerce with social dynamics seems flirtatious at best. It dipped its toes into the group- buying dynamics with a lightening deals feature, which allows a limited number of discounts in a given day for users. But the feature is hard to find, and Amazon doesn’t seem to be taking steps to make it more discoverable. Perhaps they are testing the viability of the product, but the industry is moving too fast to take an overly measured approach. It was also rumored that Amazon was sniffing around Vente-Privee last Fall. Amazon, along with eBay and even Gilt, considered spending $1.5 billion to $4 billion in exchange for a rapid move into the space. And while an acquisition may make perfect sense for a cash-rich company like Amazon (they have $5 billion in cash and securities), some will argue that they should continue to focus on scaling traditional online retail business. After all, revenue continues to rise as they continue to sell ridiculous numbers of Kindles, and other products. And the executive team hasn’t exactly been complacent, particularly with the recent $1.2 billion acquisition of Zappos. And yet a dogged focus on “commodity commerce” may prove to be short-sighted. For over a decade, Amazon and eBay have enjoyed the fruits of a market that required a greater focus on scale than on innovation. But the rise of Groupon, Gilt, LivingSocial, Vente Privee and other social e-commerce sites have taught us an undeniable truth that customers are ready for something different. The question is whether Amazon will disrupt its own model in order to preserve its reign as the king. Photo Credit/Flickr/Frialove
     
Source: TechCrunch | 30 May 2010 | 5:30 pm Ewok song karaokeIt's not a karaoke party until someone sings the Ewok celebration song: yub-nub! May the schwartz be with you: Ewok Karaoke (via Digg) Source: Boing Boing | 30 May 2010 | 5:11 pm MAD publisher William M Gaines on TO TELL THE TRUTHZack sez, "William M. Gaines, publisher of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, WEIRD SCIENCE and MAD appears on the game show TO TELL THE TRUTH. This video links to a number of other classic TO TELL THE TRUTH appearances by some oddballs, including con man Frank Abagnale Jr. (in a scene later recreated for CATCH ME IF YOU CAN)." To Tell the Truth - William M Gaines (Thanks,Zack!)
Source: Boing Boing | 30 May 2010 | 5:09 pm Hon Hai Repercussions Grow - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 May 2010 | 5:06 pm History of piracy, reviewed by EFF's senior copyright lawyerFred von Lohmann, senior copyright attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has just posted a review of Adrian John's monumental, 500-page Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, a thoroughgoing and well-researched history that draws compelling conclusions about the need to view piracy as a business-model crisis, not a moral one. I'm about halfway through Piracy myself, and really enjoying it:
Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (Thanks, Fred!)
Source: Boing Boing | 30 May 2010 | 5:06 pm Bangladesh Blocks Facebook Over Muhammad Cartoonslbalbalba writes with a BBC story about Bangladesh following Pakistan in censoring Facebook. "Bangladesh has blocked access to Facebook after satirical images of the prophet Muhammad and the country's leaders were uploaded. One man has been arrested and charged with 'spreading malice and insulting the country's leaders' with the images. Officials said the ban was temporary and access to the site would be restored once the images were removed. It comes after Pakistan invoked a similar ban over 'blasphemous content.' ... Thousands of people joined anti-Facebook protests in Bangladesh on Friday demanding the site be blocked over the contest. A telecomm regulator there said, "Facebook will be re-opened once we erase the pages that contain the obnoxious images." And how do they propose to do that?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 4:45 pm Appletell reviews the Moshi TeraGlove screen cleaning kitFROM APPLETELL - The TeraGlove microfiber screen cleaning kit neatly avoids the usual cleaning cloth issues by providing a thick, sturdy pad and a handy flap that fits over your fingers. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 4:00 pm Students Show a Dramatic Drop In EmpathyMotorMachineMercenar writes "Several news sources report that today's college students show a precipitous drop in empathy (here's MSNBC's take). The study of 14,000 students shows that students since the year 2000 had 40% less empathy than those 20 and 30 years before them. The article lays out a laundry list of culprits, from child-rearing practices and the self-help movement, to video games and social media, to a free-market economy and income inequality. There's also a link so you can test your very own level of narcissism. Let's hope the Slashdot crowd doesn't break the empathy counter on the downside."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 3:33 pm Rumor: New August Kindle from Amazon Won't Have Touchscreen, Color - PC Magazine
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 May 2010 | 2:43 pm German Publishers Want Censorship Talks With AppleAn anonymous reader writes "The association of German magazine publishers has sent a letter to Steve Jobs (Google translation; German original here) demanding talks about censorship by Apple. The move draws attention to growing concerns about freedom of the press when a single unelected commercial entity has worldwide control over what gets published for iPhone and, especially, iPad." While the magazine publishers may rightly be concerned about private control of a platform that many of them are counting on for their long-term salvation, the German state is at the very least ambivalent about the subject of censorship. This is the country that has banned Wikileaks, sought a ban on violent games, and voted to censor child porn (only to have the president kill the ban as unconstituitonal).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 2:24 pm How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs [Voices]By Ben Horowitz, Co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
No position in a company is more important than the CEO and, as a result, no job gets more scrutiny. Sadly, little of this analysis benefits CEOs as most of the discussions happen behind their backs. This post is a step in the opposite direction. By describing how Andreessen Horowitz evaluates CEOs, I am at the same time describing what I think the job of the CEO is. Here are the key questions we ask: Does the CEO know what to do? 1. Does the CEO know what to do? One should interpret this question as broadly as possible. Does the CEO know what to do in all matters all of the time? This includes matters of personnel, matters of financing, matters of product strategy, matters of goal sizing, matters of marketing. At a macro level, does the CEO set the right strategy for the company and know its implications in every detail of the company? I evaluate two distinct facets of knowing what to do: Strategy — At Andreessen Horowitz, we like to say that in good companies, the story and the strategy are the same thing. As a result, the proper output of all the strategic work is the story. Decision making — At the detailed level, the output of knowing what to do is the speed and quality of the CEO’s decisions. The Strategy and the Story The CEO must set the context that every employee operates within. This context gives meaning to the specific work that people do, aligns interests, enables decision-making and provides motivation. Well-structured goals and objectives contribute to the context, but they do not provide the whole story. More to the point, goals and objectives are not the story. The story of the company goes beyond quarterly or annual goals and gets to the hardcore question of why? Why should I join this company? Why should I be excited to work here? Why should I buy your product? Why should I invest in the company? Why is the world better off as a result of this company’s existence? When a company clearly articulates its story, the context for everyone—employees, partners, customers, investors, and the press—becomes clear: When a company fails to tell its story, you hear phrases like: “These reporters don’t get it.” The CEO doesn’t have to be the creator of the vision. Nor does she have to be the creator of the story. But she must be the keeper of the vision and the story. As such, the CEO ensures that the company story is clear and compelling. The story is not the mission statement; the story does not have to be succinct. It is the story. Companies can take as long as they need to tell it, but they must tell it and it must be compelling. A company without a story is a usually a company without a strategy. Want to see a great company story? Read Jeff Bezos’ 3-page letter he wrote to shareholders in 1997. In telling Amazon’s story in this extended from—not as mission statement, not as a tagline—Jeff got all the people who mattered on the same page about what Amazon was about. Decision Making Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions. Great decisions come from CEOs who display an elite combination of intelligence, logic, and courage. Courage is particularly important, because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. In fact, at the time of the decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10% of the information typically present in the ensuing Harvard Business School case study. As a result, the CEO must have the courage to bet the company on a direction even though she does not know if the direction is right. The most difficult decisions (and often the most important) are difficult precisely because they will be deeply unpopular with the CEO’s most important constituencies (employees, investors, and customers). In my personal experience, the best decision that I made in my career—the decision to sell the Loudcloud business to EDS and become Opsware the software company—would have lost by landslide had I put it to vote with my employees, my investors, or my customers. As CEO, there is never enough time to gather all information needed to make a decision. The CEO must make hundreds of decisions big and small in the course of a typical week. The CEO cannot simply stop all other activities to gather comprehensive data and do exhaustive analysis make that single decision. Knowing this, the CEO must be continuously and systematically gathering knowledge in their day-to-day activities so that they will have as much information as possible when the decision point presents itself. In order to prepare to make any decision, the CEO must systematically acquire the knowledge of everything that might impact any decision that she might make. Questions such as: What are the competitors likely to do? Great CEOs build exceptional strategies for gathering the required information continuously. They embed their quest for intelligence into all of their daily actions from staff meetings to customer meetings to 1:1s. Winning strategies are built on comprehensive knowledge gathered in every interaction the CEO has with an employee, a customer, a partner, an investor, and so on. 2. Can the CEO get the company to do what she knows? If the CEO paints a compelling vision and makes fast, high quality decisions, can she then get the company to execute on her vision and decisions? The first ingredient in being able to do this is leadership as I outlined in a previous post Notes on Leadership. In addition, executing well requires a broad set of operational skills. The larger the organization, the more elaborate the requisite skill set. In order for a company to execute a broad set of decisions and initiatives, it must: Have the capacity to do so – In other words, the company must contain the necessary talent in the right positions to execute the strategy. Is the CEO building a world-class team? The CEO is responsible for the executive team plus the fundamental interview and hiring processes for all employees. She must make sure that the company sources the best candidates and that the screening processes yield the candidates with the right combination of talent and skills. Ensuring the quality of the team is a core part of running the company. Great CEOs constantly assess whether or not they are building the best team. The output of this capability is the quality of the team. It’s important to note that team quality is tightly tied to the specific needs of the company in the challenges that it faces at the point in time that it faces them. As a result, it’s quite possible that the executive team changes several times, but the team a) is high quality the entire way and b) there is no attrition problem. Is it is easy for employees to contribute to the mission? The second part of the evaluation determines whether or not the CEO can effectively run the company. To test this, I like to ask this question: “how easy is it for any given individual contributor to get their job done?” In well-run organizations, people can focus on their work (as opposed to politics and bureaucratic procedures) and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. By contrast, in a poor organization, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries and broken processes. While quite easy to describe, building a well-run organization requires a high level of skill. The skills required range from organizational design to performance management. They involve the incentive structure and the communication architecture that drives and enables every individual employee. When a CEO “fails to scale,” it’s usually along this dimension. In practice, very few CEOs get an “A” on this particular test. Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings put great effort into designing a system that enables employees to be maximally effective. His presentation on this design is called Reference Guide on our Freedom and Responsibility Culture. It walks through what Netflix values in their employees, how they screen for those values during the interview process, how they reinforce those values, and how they scale this system as the number of employees grows. 3. Results against objectives When measuring results against objectives, start by making sure the objectives are correct. CEOs who excel at board management can “succeed” by setting objectives artificially low. Great CEOs who fail to pay attention to board management can “fail” by setting objectives too high. Early in a company’s development, objectives can be particularly misleading as nobody really knows the true size of the opportunity. Therefore, the first task in accurately measuring results is setting objectives correctly. We also try to keep in mind that the size and nature of the opportunity varies quite a bit across companies. Hoping that VMWare can be as capital light as SolarWinds or trying to get Yelp to grow as fast as Twitter doesn’t make sense and can be quite destructive. CEOs should be evaluated against their company’s opportunity – not somebody else’s company. Let me share a funny story which illustrates a CEO really owning delivering against results. This story is from Robin Li, CEO of Baidu. He shares that on the day of Baidu’s IPO—usually one of an entrepreneur’s most exhilirating days of his entire life—he sat at his desk terrified. Why? Listen to how Robin owned delivering results: In 2004, we raised our last round of VC money led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson…and Google, one of our great colleagues. Then a year later, in 2005, the company went public. The ideal price was $27 [the stock's initial offer price] and it closed on the first day at $122. It was great with us for many of the Baidu employees and for all of the Baidu investors. It was a very miserable thing for me because when I decided to take the company public, I was only prepared to deliver financial results that match the price of $27 or maybe a little higher, $30, $40. But I was really shocked to see that the price went to $122 on the first day. So that meant I needed to deliver real results that matches an expectation much, much higher than what I had prepared to do. But in any case, I thought I had no choice. So I put my head down and focused on operation, focused on technology, focused on the user’s experience, and I delivered. Once we’ve taken all of this into account, we see that black box results are a lagging indicator. And as they say in the mutual fund prospectuses, “past performance is no guarantee of future performance.” The white box CEO evaluation criteria—”does the CEO know what to do?” and “can the CEO get the company to do it?”—will do a much better job of predicting the future. Closing Thought CEO evaluation need not be a byzantine, unstated art. All people, including CEOs, will perform better on a test if they know the questions ahead of time. Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit. Source: All Things Digital | 30 May 2010 | 2:22 pm Creators of Hurt Locker sue 5,000 BitTorrent usersSection: Web
The creators of Hurt Locker have teamed up with the U.S. Copyright Group’s money making scheme entitled ‘pay up or else’ to reclaim losses due to piracy. 5,000 BitTorrent users have officially been reported to court for their illegal downloads with an option to pay substantially lower charges out of court. A formal complaint was filed against these users in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Depending on the courts decision, the users’ ISP may be forced to give out personal information associated with IP addresses. As it turns out, the rights holders see 30 percent of the money from the scheme while the U.S. Copyright Group claims the other 70. So this is a great scheme to cover up for some losses, but what will the courts think when these types of cases start showing up left and right? A kid getting charged 50K for downloading a Greenday song isn’t something I’d imagine courtrooms would want to focus too heavily on. It’s like the prisoner in jail for possession of marijuana; time and resources could be spent on tackling much bigger fish. As it turns out, about 75 percent of ISP’s are cooperating with the Copyright Group while other larger companies such as Time Warner that are openly against such accusations. Either way, stay tuned for more of the latest news in the world of piracy as we’re sure this isn’t the last we’ll hear from the U.S. Via [TorrentFreak] Full Story » | Written by Tarun Kunwar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 2:00 pm Skype App Updated, Allows 3G Calling On the iPhonesilverpig sends this excerpt from the Wifitalk.ca blog: "Skype has just announced that an updated version of its iPhone app has been released to the App Store and now allows calling over 3G. While this functionality has been available on the iPhone since a January update to the SDK, and while other apps such as Fring have enabled 3G VOIP calling through their apps, Skype has been noticeably absent from the VOIP-over-3G landscape. Until today." A reader adds: "Included in the app update are some UI tweaks and a call quality indicator to help you predict what your VOIP-over-3G call quality will be like. Most interesting in the announcement is the suggestion that while Skype-to-Skype over 3G will be free for 2010, Skype is investigating pricing options and may charge for it in 2011. This could lead to smartphones being sold with data only + Skype plans."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 1:15 pm Meg Whitman rebounds in California governor race: poll (Reuters)Reuters - Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman recovered a wide lead over her rival for the Republican nomination in California's governor race after the pair stepped up their costly television campaigns accusing each other of being too liberal, a poll showed on Sunday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 May 2010 | 12:35 pm BP Knew of Deepwater Horizon Problems 11 Months Agojkinney3 was one of several readers to send in news of recently discovered internal documents from BP which indicate the company knew "there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week." According to the New York Times, "The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of 'well control.' And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer." Reader bezenek points out this troubling quote about BP's inconsistent risk assessments: "In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was 'unlikely to be a successful cement job,' according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well. The document also says that the plan for casing the well is 'unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,' referring to the Minerals Management Service. A second version of the same document says 'It is possible to obtain a successful cement job' and 'It is possible to fulfill M.M.S. regulations.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 12:01 pm Hot gaming news for the week of 5-23-2010Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 12:00 pm This week in search 5/30/10This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.Safety, security and privacy are important parts of the search equation for us at Google, particularly as we continue to bring you the best possible search experience on the web. Security in particular can be an important part to your interaction with the Google search box, so we're always looking for ways to make changes and enhancements to that interaction secure. Especially as we all spend more time online, the importance of security has taken center stage. So in addition to this week's secure search enhancement, you can read our latest news and insights at our Online Security Blog. More secure searches Years ago we added Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to products ranging from Gmail to Google Docs, as part of our effort to advance the safety and security of our products for you. Now you have a new choice to search more securely using https://www.google.com. When you use this https address, an encrypted session is established between your browser and Google that uses an SSL connection. Just like on an online banking page, the "https" confirms that you are using a more secure connection that will help protect your search terms and your search results from being intercepted by a third party. For more information on this security enhancement, read our announcement. Example of encrypted search: [flowers] Whether you're planning a trip by train or scouring the real-time web, this week's roundup also includes two search enhancements that should greatly improve the richness of yor search results -- no matter what you're looking for. Images in real-time search updates Ten blue links on a search results page can provide you with a lot of really helpful information, but sometimes you're searching for content that is richer than a textual web page. For instance, what are people saying about Lady Gaga's latest garb? Until now, it's been hard to get this kind of rich visual detail that's really fresh. So this week we began rolling out a feature for images in real-time search. When searching for the latest content across the real-time web, you'll be able to quickly see the images people are talking about right now (based on URLs of those images in their public updates.) To view this new feature, click on "Updates" in the lefthand panel when you complete a search. Then click on "Updates with images." Example search: [pac-man doodle] Transit search enhanced Often when we search, it's to get from point A to point B, such as when the best route is by train. Then it's important to know the specific details of the train station near you, like which lines it serves. Now you can easily get this information in the lefthand panel on Google Maps by searching for the transit station. The lines are colored and grouped by transit type to make it easier to find the line you're looking for. For rail trains, you can see the departure time directly. For other types of transit like subways, buses and commuter trains, you can click on the line name to get the next departure time of each direction—all without having to leave the current page. Example search: [Broadway-Lafayette St Station] Thanks for reading, and stay tuned next week for more search news. Search on! Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search    
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 30 May 2010 | 11:42 am 4G wireless: It's fast, but outstripped by hype (AP)AP - Cell phone companies are about to barrage consumers with advertising for the next advance in wireless network technology: "4G" access. The companies are promising faster speeds and the thrill of being the first on the block to use a new acronym.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 May 2010 | 11:01 am IRS Wants a Cut of Sales On eBay and CraigslistPonca City, We love you writes "In 2009, $60 billion worth of items were sold on eBay, meaning 'extra' money for many sellers, whose activities may provide them with taxable income. Now the Washington Post reports that beginning next year, a new law will require 'the gross amount of payment card and third-party network transactions to be reported annually to participating merchants and the IRS.' Also, for 2011 tax returns, 'taxpayers who annually sell more than $20,000 worth of goods and have more than 200 electronic transactions' will receive a new IRS form, known as 1099-K, for reporting the proceeds. The new tax issues shouldn't be a concern for people who sell just a few small items online for less than they paid for them, because as the IRS points out, income from auctions that resemble a garage or yard sale 'generally' isn't required to be reported. But if an online garage sale turns into a business with recurring sales and purchases of items for resale, it may be considered an online auction business. 'Generally, transactions resulting in a gain are reportable, regardless of whether the taxpayer is conducting a business,' says Gil Charney, principal tax researcher at The Tax Institute at H&R Block. The real reason behind the law is simple: Research shows taxpayers do a much better job of reporting taxable income when they know the IRS is receiving information about their transactions."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 May 2010 | 10:54 am Apple Needs Big iPhone 4G Announcement at WWDC, Expert Says - eWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 May 2010 | 10:34 am Qik clarifies video service on the HTC EVO 4GSection: Video, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones  Since the HTC EVO 4G will boast two cameras (one front facing and the other rear facing), the idea of video communication becomes a reality. Of course, the hardware is there but now all that remains necessary is a compatible software component. Fring has already introduced a service that can handle two way video communications and has received positive feedback. When the Sprint HTC EVO 4G launches on June 4, it will contain the video app service Qik. There were a few rumors circulating that it would cost $4.99 a month just to take advantage of video chat, but Qik came out with a statement today debunking that rumor. Basically, the core feature of the Qik video app is, obviously, two way video chat. That feature will be offered for free to all users; this comes as good news for Android enthusiasts, especially ones considering purchasing the Sprint HTC EVO 4G. Now, in order to take advantage of some “advanced premium features” users will have to pay the monthly subscription fee of $4.99. No word on what exactly those premium features are, but a complete set of features will be announced on June 4. Depending on the nature of the unannounced features, the $4.99 fee may be reasonable or excessive. Read [Qik] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 10:00 am The Age of the Mobile Mash-Up A guest post by researcher Lars Erik Holmquist of the Mobile Life Centre, Kista, Sweden
The rate of innovation in mobile services is just about to take a quantum leap. We are going from a divergent and messy ecosystem, where every new concept has to be made into a specialized ”app” that works only on a small sub-set of mobile handsets (even the mighty iPhone only has around 3% of the global mobile phone market), to an environment much more like the web. Today, new services can easily be composed out of existing components and run on a common platform - the browser. We are entering an age where the creation of a new mobile service - taking advantage of such features as the user’s location, social network, personal data, and even phone-specific functions such as the camera and accelerometer - can be mashed-up and put on-line just as easily as Web 2.0 services have been for several years already.
At the Mobile Life research centre in Kista, Sweden, partners from academia and industry are working together to imagine this future of abundant mobile services. Fortunately, we are not working in the dark - we can build on a foundation of several decades of research. Some 20 years ago, Mark Weiser, a research scientist at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, had a vision of the future: he called it ubiquitous computing. He imagined that dozens, even hundred of small computers would be available everywhere, and seamlessly support us in our everyday tasks. Unlike the personal computers at the time, these devices would be un-tethered, user-friendly, aware of their surroundings, and conducive to communication and collaboration in the real world rather than through a screen. To explore this vision, he and his team built a number of computing devices in different sizes - they called them Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Each was connected to a wireless network and aware of its location and other factors in the environment, the so-called context.
Source: TechCrunch | 30 May 2010 | 9:57 am Android Fanboys Have Arrived. And That’s A Good Thing By now, just about everyone on the planet has heard the term "Apple Fanboy." If you've ever said anything good about an Apple product, you've likely been called one. But a new class of fanboy has emerged -- one that, amazingly, may be be equally as passionate. The Android Fanboy. And it's actually a good thing.
In case you missed my review of the new HTC EVO 4G phone yesterday, be sure to read some of the comments. As stated, I was coming at it from the perspective of a dedicated iPhone user. Long story short, I don't really like the device. To the Android lovers, I might as well have killed Bambi.
Source: CrunchGear | 30 May 2010 | 9:55 am An iPhone Lover’s Take On The HTC EVO 4G Back in January, I wrote a post entitled An iPhone Lover's Take On The Nexus One. At the time, the Nexus One was soon to be released as the latest and greatest Android phone, and a number of iPhone users were wondering whether it was worth it to switch for the benefits of Android (and perhaps more importantly, another network besides AT&T). My take: it was the best Android phone yet, but it wasn't better than the iPhone. Now I'm going to do the same type of review for the new HTC EVO 4G phone, which Sprint is launching next week.
At Google I/O, the search giant gave the phone away to every attendee complete with one month of service to try it out. Just as with the Nexus One, I've decided to use it as my primary phone for the past week or so to get a real sense of the pluses and minuses of the device. Just as with my Nexus One review, this isn't meant to be an all-encompassing review or roundup (for that, see here or here or here). Instead, this is just my reaction to the device as an iPhone user.
Source: CrunchGear | 30 May 2010 | 9:54 am World Science Festival Explores 'Humans as Holograms'Brian Greene and other "string theorists" are exploring a possible scenario in which people, and the entire world in which we live, are actually a 3-D holographic projection of two-dimensional data that exists outside the accessible universe.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 May 2010 | 9:42 am Android Fanboys Have Arrived. And That’s A Good Thing
In case you missed my review of the new HTC EVO 4G phone yesterday, be sure to read some of the comments. As stated, I was coming at it from the perspective of a dedicated iPhone user. Long story short, I don’t really like the device. To the Android lovers, I might as well have killed Bambi. Never mind the good things I said about the phone, or Android in particular. Never mind that I said that if you’re looking for an Android phone, try the Nexus One or Droid Incredible, because they’re both better devices. Never mind that almost none of the commenters had actually ever used the EVO (it’s not out yet), and plenty of them even admitted that. None of that matters. All that matters is that I said something bad about an Android device. RAGE! In the Android Fanboys’ minds, I had just slandered the latest reincarnation of their savior. They had to respond. And they did. Hundreds of them. It was quite impressive. So why is such zealotry a good thing? Because passion is important. If people actually care about Android that much, Google is clearly doing something right. Windows Mobile has never instilled this type of passion in anyone. Nor has Symbian. For a while, it seemed like the Palm Pre might. But it never did. But Android is. As I described at length last week, the rivalry between Apple and Google is going to be a good thing for us all. Part of that is because the companies are largely equals, so the fight will be fair. But don’t underestimate the importance of fanboys in this equation. For too long, Apple has gotten a massive amount of free fanboy publicity while many of their rivals have gotten none. Android is now starting to get that kind of free publicity too. All of this plays into the idea that the two companies will push one another to make better products, because again, they’re on equal footing. And Android Fanboys will make the Internet more balanced because they almost exactly counter the ideals (and now passion) of Apple Fanboys. Android Fanboys care about openness and choice. iPhone Fanboys care about presentation and experience. The iPhone will likely never be able to match Android phones in their integration with Google products such as Gmail and Google Voice. Simply put, the integration is stellar and in my mind, the number one reason to use an Android phone. Something like Google Voice integration is powerful because you feel in control of your device in a way that you’ll never be able to with an iPhone. But Android phones will likely never be able to match iPhones in seamless user experience because Apple, unlike Google, controls the entire ecosystem from the hardware to the software. As an iPhone user, when I switch to Android, something just feels off. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is it because it’s dozens of little, subtle things that Apple is able to do because they have the luxury of knowing you’re going to be using their software on the one iPhone form factor (which, again, they also make). Again, it’s a great rivalry because the two sides offer two completely different executions of the same idea. And they have legions of fans who are positive that each way is the right way. This balance is good for us all — even if individual fanboy comments read like they’re from bat-shit crazy zealots. [image from AndroidGuys - You Might Be An Android Fanboy If...]      
Source: TechCrunch | 30 May 2010 | 9:07 am Bee Stripes May Not Deter PredatorsScientists say that bumblebees' distinctive bright yellow and black stripes may not be what is keeping them safe from their enemies. A U.K. study has discovered that other aspects of bees' behavior may matter more than the classic bee color to keep predators away.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 May 2010 | 8:30 am Millions Face Starvation From African DroughtThe Gadabeji Reserve's grass is paltry after a drought killed off last year's crops, leaving cattle too weak to stand and too skinny to sell. This threatens families in the area because they do not have any way to buy grain and feed themselves.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 May 2010 | 8:05 am BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 5-23-2010Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 8:00 am Alaska Sues US Fish and Wildlife ServiceThe state of Alaska is suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because of a controversial predator control program.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 May 2010 | 8:00 am Signs point to an App Store for your TVSection: Video, Content, HDTV, Video Providers, Web, Web Apps
Is Apple readying an app assault on your TV? A new rumor purporting a new Apple TV suggest Apple very may well be. From the hardware to the software to the price, this could be an interesting hobby Apple’s got going. The hardware rumor suggests Apple TV will become a basically a screen-less iPhone. Engadget, who posted on the rumor, says the internals are very similar as well, featuring the very same Apple CPU: A4 . It looks like Apple is seeking a volume purchase on the A4. For software, the rumor suggests all content will stream via the cloud. Some have suggested Lala was bought for this reason to assist with the streaming and to present a big music section of Apple TV. What’s more, Apple could build on how much consumers seem to love apps. An app for your TV isn’t that far fetched, is it? I can easily see a weather app, Twitter apps, or a Netflix app. And don’t forget all the gaming. Now think of niche news (from local to lacrosse), too small to gain a cable channel- now in app form for the latest news, video, even full length shows. In fact, one could see an app version of TV changing content programming forever. Sure that’s down the line, but could it be where Apple is headed? Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 7:26 am Music for deaf people – Portable ears
Source: CrunchGear | 30 May 2010 | 6:31 am Bing booting Google on iPhone search or just an option?Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
From Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, “Microsoft Bing will replace Google in the next version of the iPhone operating system to be released in June, we’ve heard from mulitple sources, including a high level source who claims to have been briefed on the matter.” The post was later updated to reflect other rumors, like this one from Kara Swisher over at All Things D, “Microsoft and Apple are in long-term talks about adding the Bing search service as a prominent option on the iPhone and not as a replacement of Google.” Still, it looks like the door is open for Bing to make some headway and give Apple the chance to downgrade Google in the process. Sound irrational to anyone? Read: [TechCrunch] and [All Things D] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 30 May 2010 | 6:10 am BP to Try New Way to Cap Oil LeakBP will now attempt to place a box over the seafloor pipe to capture the oil and pump it to the surface.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 May 2010 | 5:25 am Bangladesh blocks Facebook over prophet drawings (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 May 2010 | 4:57 am
|
As I walked in the headquarters of the 
Weehee! The missing piece of the Motorola i1 puzzle has now been placed, courtesy of an ad shown during the Indianapolis 500: the device will be released June 20th.
It’s Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, and while my American friends are out in the sun, celebrating some holiday or other – is this one Memorial Day or Labor Day or Arbor Day? – I’m confined to my hotel room, finishing the final edits of my book manuscript.
Few will dispute Amazon’s role as 
Along the way, you'll be reminded that today's debates have historical roots in controversies over computer hacking, phone phreaking, home taping, and ultimately the 1920s patent-law rebellions against AT&T. This is history every interested copy-fighter, patent reformer, and netizen needs to know. Prof. Johns ends his book by describing the unique thing about our current historical moment: the rise of what he calls an "intellectual property defense industry":
By now, just about everyone on the planet has heard the term “Apple Fanboy.” If you’ve ever said anything good about an Apple product, you’ve likely been called one. But a new class of fanboy has emerged — one that, amazingly, may be be equally as passionate. The Android Fanboy. And it’s actually a good thing.
Sources have reported that a search deal is on the table between Apple and Microsoft to put Bing as either an option or the default or the only search option on the iPhone. About the only thing that is clear is Apple is becoming increasingly wary of one-time partner Google and following the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic - putting Microsoft oddly in the friend column. Google still remains popular for many services, Apple has to balance keeping users happy vs wanting to give Google a backseat role.