Can't win 'em all, can you?
The highs were pretty high in the tech world in 2011, as new gadgets, updates and advances delighted the masses. I mean, Facebook made a change that most people (so far) seemed to actually like. What are the odds?
But the lows were lower. For every moment of digital bliss, it seemed, there was a clunker of equal or greater magnitude.
So, who are we to not rub salt in the wounds of those who got it oh-so-wrong this year?
In fairness, some of these "Doh!" moments came from folks who had otherwise good years. And nobody, not even perennial tech darling Apple, is perfect. (One hard-working journalist even had to write this very story twice after he accidentally deleted it and was forced to start over. Sweet, sweet irony.).
Sure, tech successes are nice. But these social-media miscues, foot-in-mouth e-moves and other digital duds gave us more to talk about in 2011.
Here are our 2011 "Tech Fails of the Year." Feel free to jump in the comments and let us know what we missed.
Weiner on Twitter
In a crowded and competitive field, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner grabs our "What Were You Thinking?" award for this one.
The congressman (we're staying away from name jokes because ... well ... too easy) was being talked up as possibly the next mayor of New York City when his Twitter account was apparently hacked by someone who sent lewd photos to some of his female followers. That's the story Weiner gave, anyway.
Except, as it turned out, that someone was him.
Many of us gave Weiner the benefit of the doubt in the scandal's opening hours. I mean, what public official would be dumb enough to get raunchy on a platform like Twitter, where anyone who wants to can follow your every tweet?
Turns out ...
He wasn't alone. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried tweeted jokes about the Japan tsunami and earthquake that killed more than 15,000 people. Actor and Twitter pioneer Ashton Kutcher posted a hasty tweet defending Penn State coach Joe Paterno -- before, he says, learning the full extent of the school's child-sex scandal. The resulting backlash even led him to quit Twitter, at least temporarily.
But for so badly misunderstanding the public nature of Twitter, for the whirlwind of lies that followed before he fessed up and resigned and ... yes ... for thinking women like it when you send them closeup pictures of your crotch on the Internet, Weiner earns this bulging "Fail."
Go Daddy's SOPA misstep
When the vast majority of the Web's most active players are against something, and when your livelihood depends on the Web's most active players, it's probably best to either go along or keep quiet about it, right?
Not so for Go Daddy, the Web registrar and hosting company known for its titillating TV ads. In December, the company made the ill-fated decision to come out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Google, Yahoo and Facebook are just some of the Internet heavyweights that have lined up to stop the proposed federal law, which would penalize websites that host pirated content. The bill has come under fire from Web-freedom advocates, who say it could dampen online expression.
Go Daddy, which had submitted testimony to Congress in support of the bill, issued a public statement supporting it -- even doubling down with a stronger statement when the Web backlash began.
Fast forward 24 hours and the company -- which had already earned ire in some quarters for its racy (some might say sexist) TV commercials and its founder's penchant for elephant hunting -- changed its mind amid a rash of defections.
Tens of thousands of domains, including more than 50 owned by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, were moved from Go Daddy, and that's before a Reddit-organized boycott planned for Friday. Oops.
'Duke Nukem Forever'
When video gamers wait 14 years for a follow-up to one of their favorite titles, they sort of expect it not to suck. In the minds of many, "Duke Nukem Forever" failed that important test.
Longtime gamers waited 14 years for \
Longtime gamers waited 14 years for "Duke Nukem Forever." Many would have been happy to wait longer.
First announced in 1997, "Forever" was to be a follow-up to a game that got lots of love for good-heartedly pushing the boundaries of sex, violence and naughty language in the emerging field of shooter games.
It was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. What finally emerged in June hit with a thud.
"At best, it can look a few years out of date; at worst, it is a blurry, stuttering mess," wrote CNN's Ravi Hiranand, in what actually was one of the kinder reviews of the game "Playing the game feels like being thrown back into the mid-'90s, and not in a happy, nostalgic sense."
In a post-"Grand Theft Auto" world, maybe waiting "forever" would have been a better idea after all.
The other tablets
As 2011 dawned, it appeared that Apple had created a thriving new space in personal computing with its iPad.
Beginning in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, a host of competing companies stepped forward with their rival tablets. The Motorola Xoom. BlackBerry's PlayBook. Samsung Galaxy Tab. The HP TouchPad.
One problem: Nobody bought them.
Most of the new tablets, many running Google's Android operating system, came in at roughly $500 -- about the same price as Apple's new iPad 2. And the public showed that at that price, they were happy going with the industry leader.
Some tablets got pulled. Others never made it off the production line. HP had some luck selling TouchPads -- after throwing up its hands and slashing prices to fire-sale levels.
One exception. Amazon may have cracked the code late in the year with its Kindle Fire, a smaller, simpler tablet that, at $199, is $300 cheaper than the least-expensive iPad 2.
Game off at PlayStation Network
When roughly 70 million users lose access to your gaming and entertainment network, it's a "fail."
In April, a hacker accessed account information for users of Sony's PlayStation Network, ultimately knocking the network offline in late April. It wasn't completely restored until early June and some gamers lacked access for weeks.
While getting hacked was bad, some users were even madder after Sony took a week from the time of the attack to let them know what happened.
Another, much smaller, attack happened in October. In the end, it looks like most of the network's fans stuck around -- a fact no doubt aided by multiple blockbuster game releases this year.
iPhones and bars don't mix
Seriously, Apple employees?
No ... seriously?
In 2010, the tech world was aflutter after an Apple employee, reportedly celebrating his birthday, lost a prototype of the unreleased iPhone 4 in a California beer hall.
Tech blog Gizmodo bought the phone, showcased it on their site, and touched off a firestorm that included everything from police raids to legal threats.
Well, at least we know that after all of that, it could never possibly happen again.
No ... wait. It happened again.
Tech blog CNET reported that an Appler left a prototype of the iPhone 4S in a Mexican bar and restaurant in San Francisco.
As our John Sutter wrote: "Here's a theory: Maybe there's some sort of connection between drinking and losing things?"
Netflix-Qwikster
Netflix, the Web's most popular movie-rental service, first rattled some customers by raising prices in July.
Then, in September, the company announced it was, basically, splitting itself in half. Web-streaming video would still come from Netflix. DVD-by-mail rentals would come from a separate company.
Called ... "Qwikster."
Where to start here? Customers who wanted both services complained about having to set up and maintain two different accounts on two different websites. Then there was the new name, which felt dated (Napster and Friendster, anyone?) and like it was spat out by some zany-misspelled-startup name generator.
Oh yeah ... and there was the fact that the "Qwikster" Twitter handle was already owned by a guy whose avatar was a weed-smoking Elmo muppet.
Chris Taylor, of Mashable, questioned whether Qwikster was "the worst product launch since New Coke."
It didn't even last as long as that syrupy mistake. About three weeks later, Netflix announced that Qwikster was dead.
PayPal plays Scrooge
Shutting down a fund to give presents to children in need at Christmas? Sounds like something one-percenter Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life" would endorse.
But that's essentially what Web-payment titan PayPal was doing before getting popped in the nose by the Internet.
PayPal temporarily shut down Regretsy\'s Christmas drive for kids in need.
PayPal temporarily shut down Regretsy's Christmas drive for kids in need.
Snarky blog Regretsy, when not mocking regrettable craft projects, has long maintained various charity funds. With the holidays approaching, actress and blog runner April Winchell (who writes on the site as "Helen Killer") announced a fund drive to buy toys for 200 children submitted by community members.
It was hugely successful, meeting its fundraising goal in the first 24 hours. Then PayPal, which was processing the donations, stepped in and froze the fund because it said Winchell used a "Donate" button that's supposed to be for nonprofits only.
The Web wasn't pleased.
Winchell used her popular blog to blast PayPal in less-than-friendly terms. Twitter users and other sites amplified the outrage.
A day later, PayPal said it "recognized our error" and even offered to donate to the fund.
God bless us ... every one.
iPhone 4S battery life
OK ... this one never reached the fever pitch that the iPhone 4's antenna problems did last year.
And maybe it's a sign that, when millions of people buy your product in the first few hours it exists, there are bound to be problems.
Despite not being the mythical iPhone 5, the 4S flew out of Apple stores when it was released October 14. But within hours, users started flocking to Apple's support forum to complain their batteries were running out of juice faster than Herman Cain's presidential campaign.
Apple publicly ignored the complaints for a little over two weeks. Then the company issued a statement saying that "a small number of customers" had complained about the battery and that an update to the phone's operating system was on the way.
As with the iPhone 4 "death grip," we'll call this a modest "fail" wrapped inside an epic win. The battery gripes didn't stop Apple from selling an iLoad of the new phones.
Bad year for BlackBerry
BlackBerry customers complained of mail delays and connectivity outages on their devices in October.
BlackBerry customers complained of mail delays and connectivity outages on their devices in October.
Alas, poor BlackBerry.
Research in Motion's crack-like gadget was once synonymous with "smartphone," effectively ushering in the era of messaging, e-mail-checking and other Phone 2.0 behavior.
But, 2011 wasn't kind.
It's bad enough that the iPhone and the rise of the Androids continue to muscle BlackBerrys out of the limelight. Then the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM's effort in the burgeoning tablet space, arrived with a thud in April.
The capper, however, was an October outage at a data center that caused users to lose messaging ability in parts of Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, Latin America and North America. (To their credit, RIM ultimately gave away a pile of free apps to the folks affected).
The outage lasted for several days and was the final straw for some users, who abandoned ship for other phones.
The TNS Group is a leading technology services company located in Stamford, CT committed to delivering IT innovation and excellence!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Top 10 Most Bizarre Tech Stories of 2011
In 2011, the tech world saw the release of game-changing gadgets including the iPhone 4s, Kindle Fire and iPad 2. But along with the good (and, yes, sometimes, the bad) came the bizarre.
And by bizarre, we mean the weird gadget creations and unexpected Internet sensations that went viral (cue Rebecca Black's "Friday").
Nonetheless, the strangest of the strange in the tech world made headlines by pushing the limits of technology, and this year it felt like there were more than ever.
Here are some of 2011's most unusual and out of the ordinary tech headlines, stories we never thought could happen -- which baffled us when they did.
1. Implanting organs in the name of art
As if two ears weren't enough, an Australian artist named Stelarc has decided to implant a third beneath the skin of his arm.
This performance artist wants to make his arm an acoustic device by attaching a wireless microphone to the implanted ear. The process took more than a decade and, he says, will take another year for his cells to fully grow on the ear's structure.
Once the ear is fully grown, the organ will be wirelessly linked to the Internet and allow the artist to share what his third ear hears with anyone who cares to tune in.
But, seriously, who wants to listen to an arm?
2. Japanese lab invents Internet kissing machine
Trying to give your partner a smooch through video chat and leaving lipstick smeared on your webcam is less than attractive.
Luckily, Japanese creators at Tokyo's Kajimoto Laboratory have made a "Kiss Transmission Device" for those long-distance lovers who want to share their affection.
Simply wiggle your tongue on a plastic straw, and it will transmit a signal that remotely makes another plastic straw wiggle -- presumably while it is in your lover's mouth.
This takes "keeping in touch" to a new and literal level.
3. This 'robot ostrich' probably will outrun you
Many animals can sprint faster than a human. Now, a "robot ostrich" is among them.
Scientists are trying to imitate the fastest two-legged runner on the planet by creating a robot ostrich that stands almost 5 feet tall, weighs 66 pounds and can run at speeds up to 32 mph. Fittingly, founders call this speedy ostrich FastRunner.
Although it hasn't been said what the robot bird will be used for, speculators assume that it is designed to go to war. To be sure, watching this birdie in motion may creep out those on the battlefield and beyond.
4. German scientists invent brain-powered car
No need to position your hands on the steering wheel to drive. Now, all you have to do is put your mind to it, and the car will execute your brain's commands.
Scientists at Germany's Free University are the innovators behind this brain-powered car.
A high-tech helmet is linked to an onboard computer that displays a cube on the screen. The driver can manipulate this cube with their thoughts. Using biological signals as patterns, the driver can pilot the car to drive in any direction, accelerate or break.
This may be only the beginning of what can evolve in the world of brain-powered computing.
But don't get too giddy just yet. The creators say the invention is only a "proof of concept experiment" and will not be speeding into action any time soon.
Still, the fact is that this creation is an out of the ordinary idea that bewilders us to think it exists at all.
5. Forget planking -- who's up for owling?
Some people stop at nothing and take owling to the extreme.
Some people stop at nothing and take owling to the extreme.
Planking was quite popular this year, as many folks went online to share images of themselves lying stiff as a board in public. But the trend shifted, at least for a brief Web moment, to mimicking everyone's favorite wise and nocturnal feathered friend.
The spinoff became a peculiar addiction for some, and owling has become one of the largest Internet memes.
People have shared images owling atop statues, houses and office desks. Some have even taken this bird's actions below ground level and participated in underwater owling.
It's pretty simple. Squat on an object, press your arms toward the ground, straighten your back and raise your head as you gaze into the distance and sit perched, well, like an owl.
Bellowing a "hoot" or two is optional.
6. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg eats only what he kills
"The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, announced in May.
He calls it a "personal challenge"; we say it's just plain weird. Zuckerberg kills the animals and sends them off to a butcher in Santa Cruz, California, who cuts them into parts. From there, it's left for Zuckerberg to cook and consume.
Zuckerberg has begun his slaughtering challenge and made goats, pigs and chickens his prey.
7. Feeling lonely? Go hug yourself
We all need a hug at times, but it doesn't always happen when someone non-creepy is around to give us one. Instead, you can hug yourself by wearing a vest that hugs you back.
This invention, which was displayed at Japan's 3D and Virtual Reality Expo this year, allows individuals to wear a coded black vest that simulates a hug through programmed air compressions.
The mastermind behind this creation says he was curious as to how it would feel.
We think that if that aforementioned non-creepy person isn't around, it may be better to ask the creep for that hug before putting on this very odd vest.
8. Missing cobra sinks fangs into Twitter
Want to win more than 75,000 followers on Twitter within 24 hours? Morph into an Egyptian cobra and escape from New York's Bronx Zoo.
This venomous snake slid its way out of the zoo back in late March and slithered onto social media, publishing witty tweets of its whereabouts like, "Leaving Wall Street. These guys make my skin crawl."
Since March, the snake has been found, returned to the zoo and amassed more than 200,000 followers. It is still also actively tweeting through its account, @BronxZoosCobra.
And for the skeptics, the serpent published a post saying, "A lot of people are asking how I can tweet with no access to a computer or fingers. Ever heard of an iPhone? Duh."
9. Camera adds makeup to photographs
Cameras -- or at least one in particular -- may replace diamonds as a woman's best friend.
Panasonic's Lumix FX77 camera allows users to add effects to the pictures they take, such as whitening teeth and magnifying eyes, making subjects picture perfect.
For the women who forgot to brush on the blush or add color to the lip, the beauty retouch function allows users to manipulate the settings and glamorize their pictures.
It is an electronic transformation with an automatic alteration tool that makes Photoshop and other photo editing devices eat dust.
10. MC Hammer launches his own search engine
From writing rhymes to selling millions of records, this hip-hop veteran has realized his dreams and now says he's entered the final stages of creating an entire search engine.
MC Hammer said that his newest tech creation, called WireDoo, is built around searching for relationships and not just keywords. He announced the project at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco in mid-October and predicts that WireDoo could outperform Google.
It's hard to decide what's more strange: The fact that MC Hammer is launching his own search engine or that he believes his creation can take on Google on its own turf. It's a tossup.
With all of the uncanny and out of the ordinary news that made headlines in the tech world this year, it bewilders us to think of what could possibly be left to create. But there are undoubtedly more where these ... um ... creative ideas came from.
We will just have to wait and see whether 2012 will beat them for sheer bizarreness.
And by bizarre, we mean the weird gadget creations and unexpected Internet sensations that went viral (cue Rebecca Black's "Friday").
Nonetheless, the strangest of the strange in the tech world made headlines by pushing the limits of technology, and this year it felt like there were more than ever.
Here are some of 2011's most unusual and out of the ordinary tech headlines, stories we never thought could happen -- which baffled us when they did.
1. Implanting organs in the name of art
As if two ears weren't enough, an Australian artist named Stelarc has decided to implant a third beneath the skin of his arm.
This performance artist wants to make his arm an acoustic device by attaching a wireless microphone to the implanted ear. The process took more than a decade and, he says, will take another year for his cells to fully grow on the ear's structure.
Once the ear is fully grown, the organ will be wirelessly linked to the Internet and allow the artist to share what his third ear hears with anyone who cares to tune in.
But, seriously, who wants to listen to an arm?
2. Japanese lab invents Internet kissing machine
Trying to give your partner a smooch through video chat and leaving lipstick smeared on your webcam is less than attractive.
Luckily, Japanese creators at Tokyo's Kajimoto Laboratory have made a "Kiss Transmission Device" for those long-distance lovers who want to share their affection.
Simply wiggle your tongue on a plastic straw, and it will transmit a signal that remotely makes another plastic straw wiggle -- presumably while it is in your lover's mouth.
This takes "keeping in touch" to a new and literal level.
3. This 'robot ostrich' probably will outrun you
Many animals can sprint faster than a human. Now, a "robot ostrich" is among them.
Scientists are trying to imitate the fastest two-legged runner on the planet by creating a robot ostrich that stands almost 5 feet tall, weighs 66 pounds and can run at speeds up to 32 mph. Fittingly, founders call this speedy ostrich FastRunner.
Although it hasn't been said what the robot bird will be used for, speculators assume that it is designed to go to war. To be sure, watching this birdie in motion may creep out those on the battlefield and beyond.
4. German scientists invent brain-powered car
No need to position your hands on the steering wheel to drive. Now, all you have to do is put your mind to it, and the car will execute your brain's commands.
Scientists at Germany's Free University are the innovators behind this brain-powered car.
A high-tech helmet is linked to an onboard computer that displays a cube on the screen. The driver can manipulate this cube with their thoughts. Using biological signals as patterns, the driver can pilot the car to drive in any direction, accelerate or break.
This may be only the beginning of what can evolve in the world of brain-powered computing.
But don't get too giddy just yet. The creators say the invention is only a "proof of concept experiment" and will not be speeding into action any time soon.
Still, the fact is that this creation is an out of the ordinary idea that bewilders us to think it exists at all.
5. Forget planking -- who's up for owling?
Some people stop at nothing and take owling to the extreme.
Some people stop at nothing and take owling to the extreme.
Planking was quite popular this year, as many folks went online to share images of themselves lying stiff as a board in public. But the trend shifted, at least for a brief Web moment, to mimicking everyone's favorite wise and nocturnal feathered friend.
The spinoff became a peculiar addiction for some, and owling has become one of the largest Internet memes.
People have shared images owling atop statues, houses and office desks. Some have even taken this bird's actions below ground level and participated in underwater owling.
It's pretty simple. Squat on an object, press your arms toward the ground, straighten your back and raise your head as you gaze into the distance and sit perched, well, like an owl.
Bellowing a "hoot" or two is optional.
6. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg eats only what he kills
"The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, announced in May.
He calls it a "personal challenge"; we say it's just plain weird. Zuckerberg kills the animals and sends them off to a butcher in Santa Cruz, California, who cuts them into parts. From there, it's left for Zuckerberg to cook and consume.
Zuckerberg has begun his slaughtering challenge and made goats, pigs and chickens his prey.
7. Feeling lonely? Go hug yourself
We all need a hug at times, but it doesn't always happen when someone non-creepy is around to give us one. Instead, you can hug yourself by wearing a vest that hugs you back.
This invention, which was displayed at Japan's 3D and Virtual Reality Expo this year, allows individuals to wear a coded black vest that simulates a hug through programmed air compressions.
The mastermind behind this creation says he was curious as to how it would feel.
We think that if that aforementioned non-creepy person isn't around, it may be better to ask the creep for that hug before putting on this very odd vest.
8. Missing cobra sinks fangs into Twitter
Want to win more than 75,000 followers on Twitter within 24 hours? Morph into an Egyptian cobra and escape from New York's Bronx Zoo.
This venomous snake slid its way out of the zoo back in late March and slithered onto social media, publishing witty tweets of its whereabouts like, "Leaving Wall Street. These guys make my skin crawl."
Since March, the snake has been found, returned to the zoo and amassed more than 200,000 followers. It is still also actively tweeting through its account, @BronxZoosCobra.
And for the skeptics, the serpent published a post saying, "A lot of people are asking how I can tweet with no access to a computer or fingers. Ever heard of an iPhone? Duh."
9. Camera adds makeup to photographs
Cameras -- or at least one in particular -- may replace diamonds as a woman's best friend.
Panasonic's Lumix FX77 camera allows users to add effects to the pictures they take, such as whitening teeth and magnifying eyes, making subjects picture perfect.
For the women who forgot to brush on the blush or add color to the lip, the beauty retouch function allows users to manipulate the settings and glamorize their pictures.
It is an electronic transformation with an automatic alteration tool that makes Photoshop and other photo editing devices eat dust.
10. MC Hammer launches his own search engine
From writing rhymes to selling millions of records, this hip-hop veteran has realized his dreams and now says he's entered the final stages of creating an entire search engine.
MC Hammer said that his newest tech creation, called WireDoo, is built around searching for relationships and not just keywords. He announced the project at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco in mid-October and predicts that WireDoo could outperform Google.
It's hard to decide what's more strange: The fact that MC Hammer is launching his own search engine or that he believes his creation can take on Google on its own turf. It's a tossup.
With all of the uncanny and out of the ordinary news that made headlines in the tech world this year, it bewilders us to think of what could possibly be left to create. But there are undoubtedly more where these ... um ... creative ideas came from.
We will just have to wait and see whether 2012 will beat them for sheer bizarreness.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Changing the Guard at RIM
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- When she stepped down as CEO of eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) in early 2008 after a decade, Meg Whitman said it was time for a new voice at the ecommerce.
"I have repeatedly said that 10 years was about the right amount of time for any CEO to stay at the helm of a company," Whitman said at the time.
* 6
*
* 3
* Print
* Comment
With eBay's stock beginning to slide and earnings flat-lining, Whitman knew it was time for alternative ideas. John Donahoe, Whitman's successor, implemented a successful transition at the company by overhauling its pricing structure and shaking up management. It took time and some grumbling from customers, but the process revived the company's stock and earnings growth, much to investors' delight.
There's a potential lesson there for Research In Motion (RIMM).
It has been a truly horrifying 2011 for RIM. Multiple product delays, underwhelming sales, massive outages and public relations embarrassments have battered the company's earnings, stock, and share of the smartphone market.
Yet the company's long-serving co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, continue to cling to their stay-the-course mantra. They maintain that they have a strategy in place, and that they're the best people to lead the company through its current mess.
The co-CEOs had a long, long run of success. Lazaridis, at RIM's helm for 27 years, and Balsillie, who has shared that role for 19, introduced the revolutionary BlackBerry to the world in 1999. The product took the corporate world by storm, and 10 years later, in 2009, the BlackBerry brand controlled a 20% share of the world's smartphone market, according to IDC. In the U.S. market, its share was a dominant 43%, according to comScore.
But that success has run right into a brick wall. Consumers gravitated toward feature-rich iPhones and Android devices, and RIM's product development fell far behind its rivals'.
Today, BlackBerry maintains just 10% of the global market and 19% of the United States'.
Lazaridis and Balsillie say they have a strategy to get RIM out of its current quagmire. They have transitioned the company's software to the more modern BlackBerry OS 7 and, next year, BlackBerry OS 10 will become RIM's unified tablet and smartphone platform.
But the execution of the transition has been disastrous. BB7 devices were severely delayed in getting to market. They finally hit stores in August, and have undersold the company's expectations ever since. The also-delayed PlayBook tablet debuted this year, but without key features like built-in e-mail, contacts and a calendar. The software fix to add those apps has been delayed until 2012.
The company's revitalization efforts weren't helped by a three-day global outage -- the longest in RIM's history. Recently, RIM's bad news took a turn for the weird: Two executives (now former executives) got so drunk on a flight to China that they had to be restrained while the flight turned back to kick them off. The out-of-control flyers apparently chewed through their restraints.
Investors aren't laughing: Shares have fallen 76% this year.
Analysts say it's time for RIM to bring in new ideas.
"What's clear is if RIM keeps doing the same things, it's not going to get better," said Mark Mckechnie, analyst at Gleacher & Co. "RIM's leadership missed the market's strategic inflection point. When everyone began supporting rich media on their devices, they just stuck to their guns."
Some shareholders have called for Lazaridis and Balsillie's heads, but the board -- led by the co-CEOs -- has been resistant.
"I think to some extent RIM is still in denial when it comes to the shortcomings in their offering," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. "Investors want to see a change, and new leadership is usually what investors take as a serious attempt to change."
Milanesi said it's understandable that Lazaridis wouldn't want to let go of the company he founded, but a new voice is needed in some form. She suggested that someone new could fill the role of chief information officer while Lazaridis stays on as CEO.
Others say that, as with recent shakeups at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), Avon (AVP, Fortune 500) and Nokia (NOK), leadership at the very top needs to go in order to bring about real, necessary change.
"RIM's leadership team must take responsibility for -- and ownership of -- the difficulties the company has experienced during 2011," said Declan Longeran, analyst at Yankee Group. He criticized the company's "complacency at the top."
Tole Hart, an independent analyst, suggested that an outsider would make the most sense to take over as CEO. He said the new leader should come from a company like Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), Samsung, or Motorola (MMI), all of which have adapted and moved to the forefront of the smartphone revolution.
Another camp of analysts says vision isn't the problem. Execution is. BB10, by all accounts, will be a much more modern operating system.
"This is probably the worst time for new leadership at RIM," said Ramon Lamas, analyst at IDC. "The company's in the middle of a huge transition. If you have CEOs that are manning the helm to guide company through rough waters, why would you want to change that?"
RIM, which will report its financial results Thursday after the markets' close, declined to comment for this story.
RIM already warned investors that the numbers won't be pretty. You know who those shareholders are going to blame if RIM keeps offering up more of the same. To top of page
"I have repeatedly said that 10 years was about the right amount of time for any CEO to stay at the helm of a company," Whitman said at the time.
* 6
*
* 3
* Comment
With eBay's stock beginning to slide and earnings flat-lining, Whitman knew it was time for alternative ideas. John Donahoe, Whitman's successor, implemented a successful transition at the company by overhauling its pricing structure and shaking up management. It took time and some grumbling from customers, but the process revived the company's stock and earnings growth, much to investors' delight.
There's a potential lesson there for Research In Motion (RIMM).
It has been a truly horrifying 2011 for RIM. Multiple product delays, underwhelming sales, massive outages and public relations embarrassments have battered the company's earnings, stock, and share of the smartphone market.
Yet the company's long-serving co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, continue to cling to their stay-the-course mantra. They maintain that they have a strategy in place, and that they're the best people to lead the company through its current mess.
The co-CEOs had a long, long run of success. Lazaridis, at RIM's helm for 27 years, and Balsillie, who has shared that role for 19, introduced the revolutionary BlackBerry to the world in 1999. The product took the corporate world by storm, and 10 years later, in 2009, the BlackBerry brand controlled a 20% share of the world's smartphone market, according to IDC. In the U.S. market, its share was a dominant 43%, according to comScore.
But that success has run right into a brick wall. Consumers gravitated toward feature-rich iPhones and Android devices, and RIM's product development fell far behind its rivals'.
Today, BlackBerry maintains just 10% of the global market and 19% of the United States'.
Lazaridis and Balsillie say they have a strategy to get RIM out of its current quagmire. They have transitioned the company's software to the more modern BlackBerry OS 7 and, next year, BlackBerry OS 10 will become RIM's unified tablet and smartphone platform.
But the execution of the transition has been disastrous. BB7 devices were severely delayed in getting to market. They finally hit stores in August, and have undersold the company's expectations ever since. The also-delayed PlayBook tablet debuted this year, but without key features like built-in e-mail, contacts and a calendar. The software fix to add those apps has been delayed until 2012.
The company's revitalization efforts weren't helped by a three-day global outage -- the longest in RIM's history. Recently, RIM's bad news took a turn for the weird: Two executives (now former executives) got so drunk on a flight to China that they had to be restrained while the flight turned back to kick them off. The out-of-control flyers apparently chewed through their restraints.
Investors aren't laughing: Shares have fallen 76% this year.
Analysts say it's time for RIM to bring in new ideas.
"What's clear is if RIM keeps doing the same things, it's not going to get better," said Mark Mckechnie, analyst at Gleacher & Co. "RIM's leadership missed the market's strategic inflection point. When everyone began supporting rich media on their devices, they just stuck to their guns."
Some shareholders have called for Lazaridis and Balsillie's heads, but the board -- led by the co-CEOs -- has been resistant.
"I think to some extent RIM is still in denial when it comes to the shortcomings in their offering," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. "Investors want to see a change, and new leadership is usually what investors take as a serious attempt to change."
Milanesi said it's understandable that Lazaridis wouldn't want to let go of the company he founded, but a new voice is needed in some form. She suggested that someone new could fill the role of chief information officer while Lazaridis stays on as CEO.
Others say that, as with recent shakeups at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), Avon (AVP, Fortune 500) and Nokia (NOK), leadership at the very top needs to go in order to bring about real, necessary change.
"RIM's leadership team must take responsibility for -- and ownership of -- the difficulties the company has experienced during 2011," said Declan Longeran, analyst at Yankee Group. He criticized the company's "complacency at the top."
Tole Hart, an independent analyst, suggested that an outsider would make the most sense to take over as CEO. He said the new leader should come from a company like Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), Samsung, or Motorola (MMI), all of which have adapted and moved to the forefront of the smartphone revolution.
Another camp of analysts says vision isn't the problem. Execution is. BB10, by all accounts, will be a much more modern operating system.
"This is probably the worst time for new leadership at RIM," said Ramon Lamas, analyst at IDC. "The company's in the middle of a huge transition. If you have CEOs that are manning the helm to guide company through rough waters, why would you want to change that?"
RIM, which will report its financial results Thursday after the markets' close, declined to comment for this story.
RIM already warned investors that the numbers won't be pretty. You know who those shareholders are going to blame if RIM keeps offering up more of the same. To top of page
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Yahoo gets $610 Million From Lottery Scammers
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Congratulations, you've won millions in a lottery that you didn't enter! Just wire us some money first to cover fees, and we'll send you your winnings!
These fake lottery email scams have become ubiquitous, with scammers sometimes posing as well-known companies to boost their credibility. In 2008, Yahoo sued several "John Does" for using its name and logo as part of a scam.
On Monday, a federal judge awarded Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) $610 million in damages from the Thai and Nigerian scammers that the company was eventually able to identify through Internet records.
Yahoo's complaint reveals that between December 2006 and May 2009, more than 11.6 million hoax lottery emails were sent through its email system. The court awarded Yahoo $50 per scam email, a total of $583 million, for its victimization through violations of the Can-Spam Act.
The remaining $27 million is an award for trademark infringement. Yahoo was also awarded attorneys' fees.
Yahoo could use the cash: The court's total award is about half of the $1.2 billion profit that Yahoo netted for 2010.
But Yahoo stands little chance of actually collecting. None of the defendants -- a group of Thai and Nigerian individuals, a Nigerian corporation, and a Taiwanese corporation -- have responded to Yahoo's complaint. Nigeria is a famous haven for e-mail scammers.
The New York district court judge, Laura Taylor Swain, noted in her ruling that "apart from minor variations in phrasing and style, the [individual] emails [in the scam] are strikingly similar."
Swain concluded that the "circumstantial evidence is sufficient to support the reasonable inference that defendants are co-conspirators."
These fake lottery email scams have become ubiquitous, with scammers sometimes posing as well-known companies to boost their credibility. In 2008, Yahoo sued several "John Does" for using its name and logo as part of a scam.
On Monday, a federal judge awarded Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) $610 million in damages from the Thai and Nigerian scammers that the company was eventually able to identify through Internet records.
Yahoo's complaint reveals that between December 2006 and May 2009, more than 11.6 million hoax lottery emails were sent through its email system. The court awarded Yahoo $50 per scam email, a total of $583 million, for its victimization through violations of the Can-Spam Act.
The remaining $27 million is an award for trademark infringement. Yahoo was also awarded attorneys' fees.
Yahoo could use the cash: The court's total award is about half of the $1.2 billion profit that Yahoo netted for 2010.
But Yahoo stands little chance of actually collecting. None of the defendants -- a group of Thai and Nigerian individuals, a Nigerian corporation, and a Taiwanese corporation -- have responded to Yahoo's complaint. Nigeria is a famous haven for e-mail scammers.
The New York district court judge, Laura Taylor Swain, noted in her ruling that "apart from minor variations in phrasing and style, the [individual] emails [in the scam] are strikingly similar."
Swain concluded that the "circumstantial evidence is sufficient to support the reasonable inference that defendants are co-conspirators."
Friday, December 2, 2011
Is Your Smartphone Tracking Your Every Move
The Web fallout continued Friday over news that a hidden app could be tracking smartphone users' activity.
Many bloggers and smartphone customers fretted about the privacy issues raised by Carrier IQ, an information-mining app secretly installed on many phones. But at the same time, other tech observers were beginning to say that some of those concerns may have been over the top.
First, a recap: On Monday, researcher and developer Trevor Eckhart posted a 17-minute YouTube video apparently showing how the software -- designed as a diagnostic tool to find and help fix mobile network problems -- runs on his smartphone and logs every keystroke, every text and the full URL of every website he visits.
News of the app's existence on millions of phones had bounced around on tech blogs for a while. But attention skyrocketed this week when Eckhart posted his video.
By Thursday, it had turned into a rapidly developing story in which new information seemed to surface hourly. Mobile carriers and smartphone makers rushed to dispute claims made by Eckhart and others who said they confirmed his findings, explain their use of the app or announce that they once used it but plan to get rid of it.
The potential ramifications obviously had privacy-minded folks concerned.
"A couple of things seem pretty clear," Jay Stanley, a senior privacy and technology analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said Friday. "We don't know what the company was storing or accessing or what their clients were storing or accessing, but they seem to at least have the capability to store and access a lot of very personal information."
Many mobile customers seemed to focus their concerns on the fact that the software runs without their knowledge and appears difficult, if not impossible, to uninstall.
For example, on Sprint's community forums, several topics had been created to discuss the issue. And customers weren't happy.
"There's no excuse to knowingly and willingly want to have that kind of invasive software, that potentially puts customers sensitive information at risk, on the phone," one customer wrote. "This software may violate multiple privacy laws, and that alone ought to void our contracts."
Sprint said it uses the app to root out network problems but can't see user activity. Other wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers also responded. Verizon said it doesn't use the app, and Apple said it has stopped supporting it and plans to eliminate it altogether.
By Thursday morning, some on the Web were trying to put the brakes on the fears, though.
"Okay, folks, before we complete this public lynching, is there any evidence that Carrier IQ actually transmitted inappropriate data?" tweeted Declan McCullagh, a correspondent for tech site CNET.
In a message posted to Pastebin, Dan Rosenberg, an analyst with Virtual Security Research, wrote that some of the fears about Carrier IQ have been overblown.
"After reverse engineering CarrierIQ myself, I have seen no evidence that they are collecting anything more than what they've publicly claimed: anonymized metrics data," he wrote. "There's a big difference between 'look, it does something when I press a key' and 'it's sending all my keystrokes to the carrier!'.'"
"In my opinion, the media has made it more malicious than it really is and I am not concerned about my phone usage at all," wrote Matthew Miller, a columnist with tech site ZDNet. "It sounds to me like the software is designed to BENEFIT consumers and is not being used to track and target you."
But the ACLU's Stanley remains concerned. He cited promotional material on Carrier IQ's on website that notes its ability to track users' activities.
"If you look at their website, we don't know what their clients were buying, but we do know what they were selling," he said. "What they're saying to the media doesn't seem to comport to what they tout on their own website."
Carrier IQ says the core purpose of its tool is to uncover broad trends across a network. Its software can help carriers find out where calls are dropping and why, and zero in on device glitches.
For at least some of those who remain concerned (and there are no doubt many), there may be some hope of at least finding out if the app is running on their phones.
A new app in the Android Market, Voodoo Carrier IQ detector, is designed to help you simply find the kit on your phone if it exists. It's only a day old and not perfect, developers say, but will continue to be tweaked.
Many bloggers and smartphone customers fretted about the privacy issues raised by Carrier IQ, an information-mining app secretly installed on many phones. But at the same time, other tech observers were beginning to say that some of those concerns may have been over the top.
First, a recap: On Monday, researcher and developer Trevor Eckhart posted a 17-minute YouTube video apparently showing how the software -- designed as a diagnostic tool to find and help fix mobile network problems -- runs on his smartphone and logs every keystroke, every text and the full URL of every website he visits.
News of the app's existence on millions of phones had bounced around on tech blogs for a while. But attention skyrocketed this week when Eckhart posted his video.
By Thursday, it had turned into a rapidly developing story in which new information seemed to surface hourly. Mobile carriers and smartphone makers rushed to dispute claims made by Eckhart and others who said they confirmed his findings, explain their use of the app or announce that they once used it but plan to get rid of it.
The potential ramifications obviously had privacy-minded folks concerned.
"A couple of things seem pretty clear," Jay Stanley, a senior privacy and technology analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said Friday. "We don't know what the company was storing or accessing or what their clients were storing or accessing, but they seem to at least have the capability to store and access a lot of very personal information."
Many mobile customers seemed to focus their concerns on the fact that the software runs without their knowledge and appears difficult, if not impossible, to uninstall.
For example, on Sprint's community forums, several topics had been created to discuss the issue. And customers weren't happy.
"There's no excuse to knowingly and willingly want to have that kind of invasive software, that potentially puts customers sensitive information at risk, on the phone," one customer wrote. "This software may violate multiple privacy laws, and that alone ought to void our contracts."
Sprint said it uses the app to root out network problems but can't see user activity. Other wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers also responded. Verizon said it doesn't use the app, and Apple said it has stopped supporting it and plans to eliminate it altogether.
By Thursday morning, some on the Web were trying to put the brakes on the fears, though.
"Okay, folks, before we complete this public lynching, is there any evidence that Carrier IQ actually transmitted inappropriate data?" tweeted Declan McCullagh, a correspondent for tech site CNET.
In a message posted to Pastebin, Dan Rosenberg, an analyst with Virtual Security Research, wrote that some of the fears about Carrier IQ have been overblown.
"After reverse engineering CarrierIQ myself, I have seen no evidence that they are collecting anything more than what they've publicly claimed: anonymized metrics data," he wrote. "There's a big difference between 'look, it does something when I press a key' and 'it's sending all my keystrokes to the carrier!'.'"
"In my opinion, the media has made it more malicious than it really is and I am not concerned about my phone usage at all," wrote Matthew Miller, a columnist with tech site ZDNet. "It sounds to me like the software is designed to BENEFIT consumers and is not being used to track and target you."
But the ACLU's Stanley remains concerned. He cited promotional material on Carrier IQ's on website that notes its ability to track users' activities.
"If you look at their website, we don't know what their clients were buying, but we do know what they were selling," he said. "What they're saying to the media doesn't seem to comport to what they tout on their own website."
Carrier IQ says the core purpose of its tool is to uncover broad trends across a network. Its software can help carriers find out where calls are dropping and why, and zero in on device glitches.
For at least some of those who remain concerned (and there are no doubt many), there may be some hope of at least finding out if the app is running on their phones.
A new app in the Android Market, Voodoo Carrier IQ detector, is designed to help you simply find the kit on your phone if it exists. It's only a day old and not perfect, developers say, but will continue to be tweaked.
Monday, November 28, 2011
PC's Whipping up Come Secret "Apple" Sauce to Fend off The Tablet
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As the iPad eats away at personal computer sales, the PC appears to have found a potential savior in ... Apple?
It's an unlikely source, but it's true. Ultrabooks, the ultra-thin notebook computers with no hard disk drive or slot for a DVD, are a category of PC that was essentially invented by Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its MacBook Air, which debuted in 2008. Now, PC makers are scrambling in their attempts to replicate Apple's secret sauce.
Market analysts expect them to succeed: Sales of Ultrabooks are forecast to boom over the next few years in the same way that netbooks took off in 2007 -- until the iPad debuted. Ultrabook sales will reach 136.5 million in 2015, making up 43% of notebook sales, according to IHS iSuppli.
The rise of the Ultrabook is expected to happen quickly. This year, IHS predicts fewer than 1 million Ultrabook sales, making up just 2% of all notebook sales. But next year, the thin notebooks will rise to 13% of all laptop sales, then 28% in 2013 and 38% by 2014.
The PC is in need of a white knight. Consumer demand for PCs is slumping badly, particularly in the United States, Canada and Europe. Industry consultancy Gartner has repeatedly slashed its PC shipment forecasts over the course of the year.
The iPad isn't going to kill the PC entirely, but experts say it's slowing purchases of laptops, particularly small notebook PCs like netbooks. When Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) said it was considering getting out of the PC business in August, then-CEO Leo Apotheker cited as a prime reason that "the tablet effect is real."
"To compete with media tablets, notebook PCs must become sexier and more appealing to consumers," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at IHS. "Enter the Ultrabook, which borrows some of the form-factor and user-interface advantages of the media tablet."
Does Intel's ultrabook stand a chance?
In May, Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) first unveiled the Ultrabook -- a name it trademarked. Intel describes an Ultrabook as a notebook PC that is thinner than 0.8 inches, has Flash memory, can be turned on instantly, is always connected and has a battery life of longer than eight hours.
That list rivals the features found in the iPad and similar tablets -- and, of course, the MacBook Air.
Unlike netbooks -- which typically have cramped keyboards, sluggish processors and stripped-down versions of Windows XP -- Ultrabooks have full-sized keyboards, run the latest version of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) Windows and will feature Intel's newest chipsets.
It's an unlikely source, but it's true. Ultrabooks, the ultra-thin notebook computers with no hard disk drive or slot for a DVD, are a category of PC that was essentially invented by Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its MacBook Air, which debuted in 2008. Now, PC makers are scrambling in their attempts to replicate Apple's secret sauce.
Market analysts expect them to succeed: Sales of Ultrabooks are forecast to boom over the next few years in the same way that netbooks took off in 2007 -- until the iPad debuted. Ultrabook sales will reach 136.5 million in 2015, making up 43% of notebook sales, according to IHS iSuppli.
The rise of the Ultrabook is expected to happen quickly. This year, IHS predicts fewer than 1 million Ultrabook sales, making up just 2% of all notebook sales. But next year, the thin notebooks will rise to 13% of all laptop sales, then 28% in 2013 and 38% by 2014.
The PC is in need of a white knight. Consumer demand for PCs is slumping badly, particularly in the United States, Canada and Europe. Industry consultancy Gartner has repeatedly slashed its PC shipment forecasts over the course of the year.
The iPad isn't going to kill the PC entirely, but experts say it's slowing purchases of laptops, particularly small notebook PCs like netbooks. When Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) said it was considering getting out of the PC business in August, then-CEO Leo Apotheker cited as a prime reason that "the tablet effect is real."
"To compete with media tablets, notebook PCs must become sexier and more appealing to consumers," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at IHS. "Enter the Ultrabook, which borrows some of the form-factor and user-interface advantages of the media tablet."
Does Intel's ultrabook stand a chance?
In May, Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) first unveiled the Ultrabook -- a name it trademarked. Intel describes an Ultrabook as a notebook PC that is thinner than 0.8 inches, has Flash memory, can be turned on instantly, is always connected and has a battery life of longer than eight hours.
That list rivals the features found in the iPad and similar tablets -- and, of course, the MacBook Air.
Unlike netbooks -- which typically have cramped keyboards, sluggish processors and stripped-down versions of Windows XP -- Ultrabooks have full-sized keyboards, run the latest version of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) Windows and will feature Intel's newest chipsets.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Netflix in Trouble
Netflix dropped a double bomb late Monday: The company now expects to lose money for all of 2012, and it is looking to raise cash in a secondary offering of its stock.
Netflix (NFLX) warned in its last earnings report that it expects to be unprofitable "for a few quarters" starting at the beginning of 2012. The primary culprit is Netflix's pricey plan to expand its streaming video service into the United Kingdom and Ireland, but a wave of subscribers jumping ship hasn't helped.
Monday's regulatory filing extended Netflix's "we're going to lose money" warning to the full 2012 fiscal year. Shares of Netflix fell about 3.3% in morning trading on Tuesday.
The filing also revealed that Netflix is in the process of raising $400 million from investors to help bulk up its cash stash.
Netflix is selling 2.86 million shares at $70 apiece -- 6% below Monday's closing price -- to mutual funds and accounts managed by T. Rowe Price. That offering is scheduled to close around November 28.
It's also selling $200 million in convertible bonds to investment funds affiliated with Technology Crossover Ventures, a fund that has been investing in Netflix for more than a decade.
While that will give Netflix more money to invest in content, secondary offerings are sometimes considered ominous signs. They can signal that expenditures have outpaced expectations and that a company needs to raise more cash.
Netflix, which had $366 million in cash on hand at the end of last quarter, is facing threats from rivals with much deeper pockets. Studios are demanding more money for their valuable content, and the playing field is getting crowded. Beyond direct rivals like Hulu and kiosk service Redbox (owned by Coinstar (CSTR)), big tech players like Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) are jumping into the streaming game.
One analyst predicted earlier this year that Netflix's streaming content licensing costs will rise from $180 million in 2010 to a whopping $2 billion in 2012. Netflix said in its filing on Monday that it has payments of more than $3.5 billion due over the next few years to pay for content under contract.
Meanwhile, Netflix is losing some of those all-important licenses. In September, Starz ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix and said it will pull its movies and TV shows from Netflix early next year.
That loss of content leaves angry customers asking why they're paying more for less. In July, subscribers were incensed after Netflix said it would begin charging separate prices for its DVDs-by-mail and streaming video plans. That amounted to a big price hike for Netflix customers, as the cheapest-possible bill for customers who want both services jumped from $10 to $16 a month.
As a result of the price hike anger, on September 15 Netflix was forced to cut its U.S. third-quarter subscriber estimates by 1 million customers, or about 4%, to 24 million. Shares plunged 19% that day.
But the real debacle came just three days later, on September 18. Netflix CEO Hastings announced that the company's movies-by-mail service would be rebranded as Qwikster, while the Netflix brand would be dedicated to streaming video.
Again, customers raged -- so much so that Netflix pulled a stunning reversal a few short weeks later and canceled the Qwikster plan. Many pundits and customers were shocked by the flip-flop move.
The subscriber ire is finally starting to cool. Cancellations "continued to steadily decline" in October and November, Netflix said in its filing this week. The company now expects its domestic streaming customer base to be flat in November and to resume "strongly positive" growth in December. 
Monday, November 14, 2011
Breaking the White Male Tech Start Up Mold
EW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In the tech world's startup scene, where investors gamble millions on promising ideas, accelerator programs operate as kingmakers. Get into a top one and you'll have access to seed funding, mentors and the industry's leading venture capitalists.
That's an edge that can reap rich rewards. It's also an edge that most often goes to those who fit Silicon Valley's typical demographic for entrepreneurs: Young white males. Few of the industry's incubators keep track of the racial and gender breakdown of the founders they choose to back.
Take Y Combinator, for example. Based in Mountain View, Calif., it offers a bit of launch funding, typically a few thousand dollars, in exchange for a small equity stake. But Y Combinator's real value is its network: Participants get legal aid, guidance and advice from well-connected industry veterans. The program's reputation is so strong that three of the industry's most influential investors -- Yuri Milner, Ron Conway and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz -- offer every participant a no-questions-asked $150,000 investment.
Y Combinator has funded around 300 startups in its six-year existence. How many were run by women, or by minority entrepreneurs? Y Combinator has no idea.
"At the end of the day, as a startup investor, I only care about a great team and product," says Alexis Ohanian, Y Combinator's East Coast representative. "You could be from Mars, though the immigration hassle would be tricky."
Another Y Combinator representative told CNNMoney: "We've never collected any stats about people's race or ethnicity. It's not a big factor when we're judging applications."
That approach resonates with many in Silicon Valley. The tech industry likes to view itself as a pure meritocracy, where the only thing that matters is the quality of a visionary's idea and the depth of their technical skills.
But critics point out that subtle -- and sometimes not so subtle -- biases come into play. Legendary investor John Doerr made a telling, offhand remark a few years ago at a venture capital conference. He observed that the "world's greatest entrepreneurs" are almost all "white, male, nerds who've dropped out of Harvard or Stanford."
"When I see that pattern coming in -- which was true of Google -- it was very easy to decide to invest," he added.
Investor Mitch Kapor, who co-founded the Lotus Development Corp. 30 years ago and now runs his own technology investment firm, says the idea of a tech meritocracy is "an aspirational statement," not a factual one.
"Not everybody gets the same breaks; not everybody gets the same opportunities," he said in an interview this summer with Soledad O'Brien for CNN's Black in America documentary The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley. "The part that is meritocratic is great, and there's a big part of it that isn't. And so, please, let's not fool ourselves and pretend otherwise in some self-congratulatory kind of way."
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Adobe Adnonding the Fight For Mobile Content
(Wired.com) -- In an abrupt about-face in its mobile software strategy, Adobe will soon cease developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers, according to an e-mail sent to Adobe partners on Tuesday evening.
And with that e-mail flash, Adobe has signaled that it knows, as Steve Jobs predicted, the end of the Flash era on the web is coming soon.
The e-mail, obtained and first reported on by ZDNet, says that Adobe will no longer continue to "adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations," instead focusing on alternative application packaging programs and the HTML5 protocol.
"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores," the quoted e-mail says.
In the past, Adobe has released software tools for mobile developers that create a single platform programmers can use to make applications that work across three major mobile platforms: Android, iOS and the BlackBerry OS. While it's seemingly easier than learning all of the native languages for each operating system, some developers have claimed a loss in app performance when coding in a non-native language that then gets translated into other languages.
The move indicates a massive backpedaling on Adobe's part, a company who championed its Flash platform in the face of years of naysaying about its use on mobile devices. Despite Flash's near ubiquity across desktop PCs, many in the greater computing industry, including, famously, Apple Computer, have denounced the platform as fundamentally unstable on mobile browsers, and an intense battery drain. In effect, Flash's drawbacks outweigh the benefits on mobile devices.
Flash became a dominant desktop platform by allowing developers to code interactive games, create animated advertisements and deliver video to any browser that had the plugin installed, without having to take into account the particulars of any given browser. However, with the development of Javascript, CSS, and HTML5, which has native support for video, many web developers are turning away from Flash, which can be a resource hog even on the most advanced browsers.
Apple made its biggest waves in the case against Flash in April of last year, when Steve Jobs penned a 1,500-word screed against the controversial platform, describing it as a technology of the past. Jobs and Apple disliked the platform so intensely, it has since been barred from use on all iOS devices.
Despite attempts to breathe life into Flash on other mobile devices -- namely, Android and BlackBerry OS -- Adobe has failed to deliver a consistently stable version of the platform on a smartphone or tablet. In WIRED's testing of the BlackBerry PlayBook in April, Flash use caused the browser to crash on a consistent basis. And when Flash was supposed to come to tablets with Motorola's Xoom, Adobe was only able to provide an highly unstable Beta version of Flash to ship with the flagship Android device.
"Adobe has lost so much credibility with the community that I'm hoping they are bought by someone else that can bring some stability and eventually some credibility back to the Flash Platform," wrote software developer Dan Florio in a blog post on Wednesday morning.
The drastic reversal in Adobe's mobile plans comes in the wake of the company cutting 750 jobs on Tuesday, a move prompted by what Adobe labeled "corporate restructuring."
An Adobe representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Groupon Hits the Market with a Splash
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Shares of daily deals site Groupon closed at $26.11, roughly 31% above their initial offering price in the public debut of the stock on Friday.
Groupon (GRPN) had priced its initial public offering at $20 a share late Thursday, the last step on a rocky journey to its debut. Under the ticker GRPN, Groupon began trading Friday at about 10:45 a.m. ET on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and opened at $28, 40% above the target.
Raising $700 million for the company, Groupon's IPO was the second-biggest tech IPO in history, behind the $1.7 billion Google raised in 2004.
The stock ticked up as high as $31.14 before falling back to around $28 later in the morning. In mid-afternoon trading it remained in that range, at $28.29, and then slipped a bit just before the close.
Groupon ended the day with a valuation of more than $16 billion. At that price, the pioneering coupon company is worth more than many traditional retailers, including Whole Foods (WFM), Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) and Bed, Bath & Beyond (BBBY, Fortune 500).
Because of Groupon's recognizable name and cachet, some stock analysts had expected an even bigger rise at the open, particularly because a miniscule number of shares were being offered. At the last minute, Groupon's underwriters threw in an additional 5 million shares to make the offering 35 million shares.
That's still only around 6% of the company's outstanding shares -- a very small amount, given the public's interest in the company.
"I think 'highly disappointed' is the operative phrase," said David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial. "With such a limited number of shares offered in what could have been unlimited demand, I thought thought the markets should have responded better. Now that it didn't happen, it's causing people to take a second look at the company's fundamentals."
Those fundamentals aren't pretty: Since the moment Groupon filed its paperwork, it's been hit with criticism for unorthodox accounting measures, which led to several downward revisions of its financials.
Groupon's initial filing in June drew heavy scrutiny for the company's reliance on a nonstandard metric called "adjusted consolidated segment operating income." The unwieldy "ACSOI" stripped out Groupon's steep costs for marketing and acquiring new subscribers.
Under pressure from regulators, Groupon re-filed in August to instead use only standard accounting procedures. As a result, the operating profits that Groupon cited in its first filing became operating losses.
Then, in late September, Groupon revised its reported revenue to "correct for an error" -- namely, including in its revenue the cash it has to hand back to merchants for their share of the coupons Groupon sells. That effectively whacked Groupon's sales in half, to $688 million for the first half of 2011, down from the $1.5 billion it claimed previously.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Will Your Next Phone be Bendable
As we enter the final months of 2011, the thoughts of tech watchers like me are turning to what we can expect in 2012.
Voice recognition in all our devices? Touch control replacing the mouse and keyboard? The death of the wallet as mobile payments become mainstream?
Maybe. But what I'm most excited about is something far more audacious: flexible screens.
Expecting this much-anticipated technology to become widely available in 2012 is optimistic but not unthinkable.
Last week, Nokia demoed a mindblowing prototype handheld device that lets you bend and twist the screen to complete actions like scrolling and zooming.
Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable.com.
Meanwhile, Samsung said on an earnings call last week that it expected to debut phones with flexible displays in 2012 and that flexible tablets would follow.
The advantages of flexible displays are obvious: They're more durable, and they pave the way for new input methods, such as bending the display to zoom.
But where will this new tech take us?
I think this technology will lead to the biggest breakthrough in mobile devices since the touchscreen. In fact, the next innovation in screen technologies may be an even bigger leap forward than touch displays.
Think not of a bendable display but of a foldable one.
You see, the biggest limitation of any device these days is screen size. There's a constant tension at play: You can have a small screen that fits in your pocket (your phone) or a big screen for home use (a tablet computer).
But you can't have both. Or can you?
The ultimate dream for these flexible displays is that they could roll up: Imagine a phone-sized device that could unfurl to be the size of a tablet.
Perhaps it would be like an ancient scroll, a tube that unrolls to create a full 10-inch screen. Or perhaps a phone display could expand in two directions, making it useable both when collapsed and when unfurled.
Ah, but why stop with our current form factors? Wouldn't it be wonderful if these devices could take forms more like the paper they replaced?
While the transition from newspapers, magazines and books to digital devices has led to a few compromises -- those tactile forms are all reduced to a rectangular square of glass -- flexible screens can mimic the paper they replace.
E-book readers might simply become single sheets of digital paper. Magazines and newspapers could be made up of multiple sheets that update their content wirelessly on a daily or even hourly basis.
Where flexible screens might have the biggest impact, however, is in their ubiquity. The iPad remains an expensive device, but that hasn't stopped it popping up in unexpected locations.
Some hotels let guests check in on an iPad installed with a custom app or even borrow one for the duration of their stay.
Upscale restaurants are using iPads instead of menus. One auto enthusiast installed one as his in-car entertainment system. Another put one in his kitchen cupboard, calling it a "kitchen entertainment system."
What will happen when screens are millimeters thick and virtually unbreakable?
Simply put: The cheaper, thinner, more portable and more durable screens become, the more uses we'll find for them. And what could be thinner or more durable than a flexible display? Any surface could -- and will -- become a screen.
Microsoft released a video this past week imagining what will happen when every surface is a digital display. It too is mindblowing.
It's an exciting future and one that's rapidly approaching: If the device makers can pull it off, next year could see the launch of the first "bendable" phone. Let's hope so.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Whats Next in The Tablet Market
Props to Amy Graham for this great perspective
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/25/tech/gaming-gadgets/smaller-cheaper-tablets/index.html
(CNN) -- Smaller tablet computers that are significantly more affordable and portable than the iPad are finally starting to hit the United States -- and they could hit a crucial sweet spot in the consumer market.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/25/tech/gaming-gadgets/smaller-cheaper-tablets/index.html
(CNN) -- Smaller tablet computers that are significantly more affordable and portable than the iPad are finally starting to hit the United States -- and they could hit a crucial sweet spot in the consumer market.
Recently Kobo announced the new Kobo Vox, which costs $200. That's the same price as Amazon's recently announced Kindle Fire. The Kobo Vox starts shipping Friday, while the Kindle Fire won't start shipping until November 15. The Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which costs about $250, is already available in stores and online.
Although marketed mainly as e-book readers, all three of these consumer devices are actually small tablet computers (7 inches long) that run the Android mobile operating system and use Wi-Fi -- no carrier data plan or contract required. So theoretically, they can do much more than just let you buy and read e-books.
This makes them potentially powerful tools for people who want access to the Web, apps and more -- especially people who face economic or other barriers to using smartphones or computers. Small, inexpensive, easy-to-use tablets could become an important bridge to help people cross the digital divide and gain expanded access to education, jobs, community, and other resources.
The grand vision of tablet computers is that, ideally, they'll allow the average, non-geeky person to do most of what can be done with a laptop computer -- in a way that's much easier to learn, use and carry around.
Certainly this is the case with Apple's iPad, which sold 11 million units in the last quarter alone.
But at this point, iPads start at $500 -- about what you might pay for a brand new 32-inch flat-screen TV at Best Buy, and twice or more what PC netbooks cost at most retail stores. From the perspective of typical consumers, especially given the current economy, that's a significant luxury investment.
This month there are fresh rumors that Apple may be planning to introduce a smaller and less costly "iPad mini." But nothing is confirmed, so don't hold your breath.
The tablet market is growing fast, and its dynamics are shifting quickly. According to a new report from Strategy Analytics, in the last year Android tablets grew from 2% of the global tablet market to 27%. Meanwhile, the iPad's global tablet market share has dropped from 96% to 67%.
That doesn't reflect a decrease in the iPad's popularity, but rather that consumer demand for tablets is not one-size-fits-all.
In fact, size is a key issue for people shopping for tablets. The iPad measures roughly 7-by-10 inches -- too big for a typical pocket or purse, and nearly twice the size of the basic Kobo Vox, Nook Color and Kindle Fire models. Digital devices that aren't as easy to carry around tend to mainly get used only at certain times of day, in certain settings.
For this reason it's questionable how "mobile" larger tablets like the iPad really are.
Aside from the Vox, Fire, and Nook Color, there are lots of other small Android tablets available. But so far these products have faced various challenges in the consumer market:
Cost: The Wi-Fi-only version of Samsung's 7-inch Galaxy Tab costs about $350, which is on the pricier side. The carrier-branded versions cost much less to buy up front if you agree to a two-year contract. For instance, Verizon currently sells the 7-inch Galaxy Tab for just $200, but data plans cost $30-$80 per month, and there's a $350 early termination fee.
Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, is selling a small Android tablet by Arnova for just $99-$129 in a small pilot program -- but for that bargain-basement price you have to agree to a one- or two-year newspaper subscription, costing up to $13 per month.
Device quality: This is an issue for the cheapest tablets. For instance, one reviewer noted that the touchscreen performance on the Philly.com tablet is less than stellar.
In contrast, the Nook Color has been getting generally favorable reviews for device quality. The advance Kindle Fire reviews are also mostly positive.
Android's learning curve: This can be an obstacle for some. The straightforward Android experience that comes with tablets by Samsung, Motorola, Lenovo, and other manufacturers can be daunting to typical consumers -- especially the majority of U.S. consumers who don't yet own a smartphone. A more constrained but dependable out-of-the-box user experience can be simpler to learn and can make the average consumer happier, at least initially.
Gadgets that are more complex or open-ended tend to confuse or frustrate average consumers -- which generally isn't good for sales. Despite the high relative cost of Apple devices, and the fairly closed nature of the Apple ecosystem, there's a lot to be said for "It just works."
However, most "pure" Android tablets do offer one key advantage over constrained e-reader tablets: direct access to Google's Android Market, where there's a virtually unlimited choice of apps.
The Fire, Nook Color, and Philly.com tablets only offer apps through their own markets, not the Android Market, which means they can block the installation of competing apps, such those from other e-book vendors or publishers.
Also, even though Kobo touts that its Vox will offer access to "over 15,000 apps," the company has not clarified whether that will be through the Android Market or its own app store. Which means it's possible that you may not be able to install the Kindle e-reader app on the Kobo Vox -- at least, not without "rooting" the tablet to remove vendor controls, which can be a formidable technical hurdle.
The coming year -- especially the 2011 holiday season -- will probably indicate whether smaller tablets will play a leading role in the U.S. digital media landscape. If these devices start becoming as commonplace as iPhones and Kindles, they may become popular and powerful tools for the delivery of mobile services for health, education, jobs, and more.
Sure, you can use a small, cheap tablet to read books, watch YouTube, and play "Angry Birds." But maybe someday lots of people will be using these devices to get a college degree -- or perhaps to learn to read in the first place.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Google News for Those Who Really Care
CNN) -- On this week's Tech Check podcast, Doug Gross, Stephanie Goldberg and Mark Milian discuss the roll-out of "Ice Cream Sandwich," Google's delicious new version of its Android mobile operating software.
Google debuted Android 4.0 this week in Hong Kong, along with the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which will be the first gadget to run it.
The crew discusses its features, including Face Unlock, which is designed to recognize the user's face instead of a password.
Mark has spent a week testing Siri, the new voice-activated "digital assistant" on the iPhone 4S. We discuss her strengths and weaknesses, as well has giving in to the irresistible urge to ask her questions from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Our Reader Comments of the Week come from a story about WireDoo, the new search engine being developed by a team working with MC Hammer. Yes ... that MC Hammer. (As if there could be two).
And we present to you a Tech Fail of the Week that was 14 years in the making.
Michael Dell, founder of Dell Inc., was asked in 1997 what he would do if he were the CEO of Apple. This week he got a long-awaited opportunity to revisit his fateful words.
To listen to Tech Check, click on the audio box to the left. To subscribe, you can add Tech Check to your RSS feed here. You can also listen, or subscribe, on iTunes.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Hackers Take Aim at NYSE
Thanks to David Goldman and CNN for the article
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Anonymous' call for a massive attack on the New York Stock Exchange's website was met Monday -- but very, very briefly.A group calling itself Anonymous, a name used by disparate groups of online "hactivists," threatened to take down NYSE.com at 3:30 p.m. ET today as an extension of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations that have continued into a fourth week.
The website was slow and then unavailable from about 3:35 p.m. to around 3:37 p.m, after which it returned to normal. Keynote, a mobile and Internet monitoring company, confirmed that NYSE.com slowed down during that time. It also measured widespread disruptions to the site between 5:30 p.m. and 5:55 p.m.
Another tracking site, AlertSite, measured "a definite increase in response times from 3:45 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET." After that, the site returned to normal. Monitoring site downforeveryoneorjustme.com also registered a series of brief outages.
But Rich Adamonis, a spokesman from the NYSE, rebutted the monitoring sites' findings.
"We detected no service outage on our corporate website at that time," he said.
In a message that went out in early October through a video on YouTube, the group called for a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack, which directs a flood of traffic to a website and temporarily crashes it by overwhelming its servers. It doesn't actually involve any hacking or security breaches, and would have no effect on NYSE's stock-trading systems.
Adamonis confirmed that trading was not impacted.
DDoS is a tool that Anonymous has employed successfully before, taking down MasterCard.com and Visa.com for several hours on Dec. 8, 2010.
The YouTube video posted earlier calling for the NYSE.com attack proclaimed: "A new civil rights movement has begun. You now have an opportunity to make a difference. Join the protests. Organize your own. Watch online. Be a part of the movement."
Anonymous' attacks haven't always worked: It failed in an attempt to take down Amazon.com (AMZN, Fortune 500), which has extensive safeguards against sudden traffic spikes. The DDoS attacks have also led to the arrests of several participants.
At least a few people claiming to be part of Anonymous didn't think the attack on NYSE.com was a risk worth taking. One site used to coordinate Anonymous operations, AnonNews.org, posted a statement saying that it was "sincerely worried" about the plan, due to the bad press it could give to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A back-and-forth debate raged across Twitter Monday afternoon, with various factions of Anonymous alternately cheering and decrying the planned attack.
But in the end, the chatter drew more attention than the actual effects of the cyberprotest. NYSE.com barely blipped, and the markets finished the day with a rally: The Dow Jones industrial average finished Monday up nearly 3%.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Facebook Fact or Fiction
The recent deluge of Facebook changes -- both those that have already happened and those that are on the way -- have people talking.
OK ... that's an understatement. They have people shouting (with either glee or fury). And fuming. And, sometimes, freaking out.
When a site has roughly 800 million users, and each of those users has a quick and easy way to share their thoughts with others, interest is high and info starts flying fast in the face of what looks like a pretty radical overhaul.
Inevitably, that leads to things getting a bit confused sometimes. So, here's a look at some of the rumors that we've seen flying around about Facebook's big changes, along with our best effort to sort them out.
1. Facebook is going to start charging you
Do we actually have to address this one? Apparently, yes.
Every once in a while, this rumor starts cropping up in status updates -- often in all caps. Some people can't seem to get their brains around the fact that a useful service like Facebook is going to remain free. So people begin copying and pasting messages announcing the date the site is going to a pay model.
A quick glimpse and you'll find multiple "We Won't Pay For Facebook" groups. On Facebook.
So, of course, when all the new changes rolled out, the planets were aligned perfectly for the rumor to spring back up. This time, it apparently got so prevalent that Facebook addressed it.
Here's the deal: Facebook will never really have a reason to start charging you for using it. To oversimplify the situation, you aren't Facebook's customer. You're its product. The site's business model is based on advertising and it wants as many users as possible to dangle in front of the click-hungry advertisers.
Charging for Facebook would inevitably decrease the number of users. And that would decrease advertising revenue. It's not going to happen.
Verdict: False. Very false.
2. Friends will see the websites I visit, even when I'm not on Facebook
This one is partially true, with one big "if."
With what Zuckerberg called "frictionless sharing," Facebook users can have the stories they're reading on certain other websites pushed straight to their News Feed for friends to share. But this will only happen on sites with the Facebook "like" button -- and only when the user has given the site permission to share the info.
That addresses one big privacy complaint Facebook has been hit with in the past, when new features started automatically, requiring users to opt out instead of opting in.
But there's always the possibility for confusion. Some people might not realize that they're authorizing the feature or may simply forget they've enabled it. In that case, best not to make a habit of reading a bunch of articles about how to find a new job if you're FB friends with your boss.
Verdict: Partially True (If you enable it)
3. The Timeline is going to show all my photos and info (whether I want it to or not)
One of the biggest changes Facebook is making is switching users' profile pages into what's being called a Timeline. It will, in effect, make your profile look more like a blog, with a chronological stream of photos and posts from the entire time you've been on Facebook and even before.
People viewing your profile will be able to scroll through, year by year, and see what you were up to far more easily than they can now.
Reports of that have led some users to freak out, or even say they planned to delete all their photos before the feature rolls out.
Here's the deal: The Timeline will definitely make it easier for your friends to see your photos and posts, particularly older ones. A single click could take them from your recent and respectable photos from office parties and play dates to those infamous college keggers from days of yore (you know ... if you're young enough to have been on Facebook in college).
But you'll be able to curate your own timeline. You can remove photos or posts you don't want on it and resize images to emphasize (or de-emphasize) chapters of your life. At the end of the day, there will be nothing there that's not already available to prying eyes -- but the eyes just won't have to pry as hard.
Verdict: Mostly False
4. Facebook monitors my activity when I'm not logged in
This one isn't directly linked to the changes, but has cropped up as they're about to roll out. And, in truth, as more off-site sharing is introduced, it could become more prevalent.
Earlier this week, an Australian blogger posted data that he said shows information being sent to Facebook by users even when they're not logged into the site.
Facebook acknowledges that it uses "cookies" when you visit the site that then transmit data from other sites that are connected to it.
Facebook engineering director Arturo Bejar told the Wall Street Journal that the system is used to prevent phishing attacks and spam and to make it easier for users to log in on the sites they've connected to the social network. Facebook deletes the data immediately, he said, and it's never used to target advertising or the like.
"The onus is on us is to take all the data and scrub it," Bejar told the Journal. "What really matters is what we say as a company and back it up."
Verdict: True (But in a limited way)
5. I can't use Spotify unless it's linked to Facebook
This one depends: Are you already on Spotify? If so, you're in the clear. If not, or if you already signed up through your Facebook account, the two services are pretty much married, 'til digital death do they part.
To Spotify, the emerging music-streaming service, and Facebook, it's a seamless and convenient way to listen to music and share songs with your friends. To people who might want to listen privately, or those elusive few who don't have Facebook accounts, it's a hassle.
Users will still be able to use their Spotify settings to control what information gets sent to Facebook, though. So don't worry -- if you're secretly listening to lots of Bieber and Gaga on Spotify, you can still do it on the down-low.
Verdict: True (If you didn't already sign up)
Read the full article here - http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/28/tech/social-media/facebook-rumors/index.html
Monday, September 26, 2011
Actual CNN.COM Headline Today: Digital monkeys with typewriters recreate Shakespeare
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/26/tech/web/monkeys-typewriters-shakespeare/index.html
(CNN) -- It's a time-honored adage about the laws of probability: Give 1 million monkeys 1 million typewriters and they'll eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare.
Now, a software developer in Nevada is putting that saying to the test. And his digital monkeys are off to a good start.
This weekend, Jesse Anderson wrote on his blog that a computerized simulation of the theoretical simian typing pool has completed "A Lover's Complaint," a narrative poem that appeared in a book of The Bard's sonnets.
"This is the first time a work of Shakespeare has actually been randomly reproduced," Anderson wrote. "Furthermore, this is the largest work ever randomly reproduced. It is one small step for a monkey, one giant leap for virtual primates everywhere."
Anderson's virtual monkeys began typing on August 21. Using open-source software called Hadoop, he created a huge group of "monkeys" that input random strings of gibberish. When a chunk of text matches a word used in Shakespeare's catalogue, it gets crossed off of a database of the plays and poems.
His database comes from Project Gutenberg.
So far, he said, over 5 trillion character groups have been churned out.
Based on a page updating the project's progress, several more works might be checked off the list soon. The monkeys appear to need only two more words to complete the comedy "The Tempest" and seven more to bang out "As You Like It." (There's been no explanation for why the computer monkeys seem to be lagging behind on Shakespeare's tragedies.)
"The monkeys will continue typing away until every work of Shakespeare is randomly created," Anderson wrote.
Permutations of the Infinite Monkey Theorem dates back as far as Aristotle (although he obviously didn't have a typewriter).
Anderson's inspiration came from a perhaps less likely source: "The Simpsons."
He says it harks back to a "Simpsons" scene in which Mr. Burns chains up 1,000 monkeys, giving them the task of writing a great novel and berating one of them for typing, "It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times."
Anderson's approach is, if nothing else, gentler.
"No monkeys were harmed during the making of this code," he wrote.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Blockbuster Down But Not Out Yet as Netflix Lurches to No-Where
And just when you thought the industry was done with "power moves". See the full article from www.cnn.com here
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Blockbuster was expected to launch a Netflix rival on Friday -- and it did, kind of.
"Blockbuster Movie Pass," launching October 1, bundles Dish's traditional cable TV plan with Blockbuster's DVD-by-mail service. It also includes some streaming content: a library of 3,000 movies will be available for streaming to a TV, or 4,000 if you stream to computer.
That's a small subset of the 100,000 DVDs and video games Blockbuster says it has stocked in its by-mail catalog.
The service costs $10 a month as an add-on to a Dish subscription. New customers who sign up for Dish's "America's Top 200" package for $39.99 a month -- or any more expensive service -- with a 2-year contract will receive the service for free for one year.
New subscribers who sign up for Dish's "America's Top 120" package will get Movie Pass for free for three months.
The streaming catalog includes shows from Fox, Cartoon Network, Discovery, Epix, Fox, DIY, HGTV and TBS. A more specific list of content was not immediately available.
Blockbuster has long been teasing plans to launch a streaming service to compete head-on with behemoth Netflix (NFLX), whose recent price hike has led to consumer backlash and a scaled-back subscriber forecast. Friday's move is a step in that direction, expanding Blockbuster's streaming services beyond the pay-per-rental model it currently uses.
But like Netflix, Blockbuster faces obstacles in getting monthly subscribers access to the most popular movies and TV shows. Its pay-per-rental catalog features recent releases like X-Men: First Class and Bridesmaids, priced at $3.99 for 24-hour viewing rights. Those titles aren't likely to show up in its all-you-can-watch unlimited streaming offering.
Blockbuster didn't immediately comment on what content is included in its "Movie Pass" package. The package also isn't available to non-Dish subscribers, though company executives said to "stay tuned" for later announcements on that front.
Dish Network (DISH, Fortune 500) acquired Blockbuster in April for $320 million in a bankruptcy court auction. Blockbuster's U.S. businesses filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2010, hoping to sharply reduce their nearly $1 billion debt. The company put itself up for sale in February 2011.
Blockbuster struggled for survival ever since media conglomerate Viacom (VIA) spun off the company in 2004. Its brick-and-mortar stores were bleeding cash as traditional video renting declined, and competition from Netflix and Coinstar's (CSTR) Redbox kiosks heated up.
But Blockbuster will also face high competition in the streaming space, both direct rivals like Hulu and big tech players that are eying the space, including Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500).
Studios and cable providers have been careful not to let any single streaming service nab all of the valuable content. As a result of carving up the streaming video market, each service offers something a little different -- and no one can boast that they let customers watch all of their favorite shows.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Netflix Trying to BackPedal
Great article from CNN.com - http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/20/tech/web/netflix-reaction/index.html
It has been a rough couple of months for Netflix. The company that virtually defined online movie rentals was swamped by an unprecedented wave of customer ire two months ago when it raised prices for both its DVD mailing and online streaming services.
It has been a rough couple of months for Netflix. The company that virtually defined online movie rentals was swamped by an unprecedented wave of customer ire two months ago when it raised prices for both its DVD mailing and online streaming services.
Netflix announced this week that it's splitting itself in two and rebranding its movies-by-mail service as "Qwikster." Based on initial online responses, this latest effort didn't make things much better.
"Reed, thanks for reminding me that I should go somewhere else for my DVD rentals. It was an insult enough that you raised the price on me last month, right in the middle of the biggest recession since the Great Depression, but now instead of a sincere apology, all we get is excuses and a flimsy new name."
That's from a customer named Jonathan Ortega and it's one of more than 16,000 comments on a blog post by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explaining the latest changes. In the post, Hastings announced that the service that made Netflix famous, mailing DVDs in those iconic red wrappers, was being spun off as Qwikster, while Web streaming video will continue to be called Netflix.
Not all the posts took the same flamethrower approach as Ortega's. But even some of the more evenhanded messages raised questions.
"While I appreciate the explanation (and e-mail) and I guess I understand your reasoning for doing this, the thing I'm having the hard time about is the separation of websites," wrote a user named Tellier Killaby Booth. "I don't understand why I will now have to go to two separate websites to manage my queues. The only reason that I have both services is because half the things I watch aren't available yet on streaming."
Chris Taylor of Mashable (a CNN content partner), questioned whether the spin-off of Qwikster was "the worst product launch since New Coke."
"As any marketer will tell you, there are some truly awful times to launch a new product -- like August, when few potential customers are paying attention, or January, when they're all shopped out from the holidays," Taylor wrote. "And then there's launching your new product in the 10th paragraph of an apology for some previous poor communication, as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did late Sunday with Qwikster. ..."
Taylor, who says he has met and interviewed Hastings several times, calls him "one of the smartest and most amiable minds I've ever met." But he lays out a laundry list of problems, from the odd spelling of Qwikster to creating unnecessary confusion for customers who keep both streaming and DVD service.
The Internet wasn't unanimously down on Netflix's move, however.
Venture capitalist Mark Suster, who focuses on early stage tech companies, had a more positive take, calling Hastings' explanation "simply brilliant." (Worth noting: His company, GRP Partners, does not list Netflix as one of its investments.)
"[M]any short-termists will think it's a bad idea. Indeed, my Twitter stream tells me so," Suster wrote Monday on his blog. "I find much of the criticism so far fairly reactionary."
He argues that, by splitting off streaming from DVD delivery, Neflix can react more flexibly to the emerging streaming market while maintaining its hold on the mail-delivery market. Keeping them both under one umbrella would have made it harder to respond rapidly to changes in customer demands, he said.
As DVD customers decline in favor of streaming (and Suster says they inevitably will), Netflix may have to raise prices for DVD delivery, but could keep streaming prices the same under this model, he wrote.
"It's rare in business to see somebody like Reed Hastings tackle the massive changes happening to their businesses and deal with them before they're too late," he wrote. "Imagine if the record labels had been as bold. By making the separation, Reed can now point the Netflix business squarely at the future."
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Facebook Co-Founder Speaks Out on The Network, The Google, and The Reality of Leaving a Billion Dollar Baby
San Francisco (CNN) -- The founding principles of business ethics at Facebook, according to co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, are as straightforward as the site's privacy settings system.
Many of the early developers of Facebook have moved on to work at other companies, but they operate under a specific code, Moskovitz said Monday: A great idea is a prerequisite for starting a company, businesses should be built for the long haul, and Google is not an ideal employer.
He spoke at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
Moskovitz, who was portrayed in a few scenes in the "Social Network" movie, described the dark characterization of Facebook's founding as a creation myth, contrary to authors' depictions, courtroom testimonies and the Hollywood film. He and his crew executed "with the right ethics," and the many lawsuits were handled "in exactly the right kind of way," he said.
"When you build something really big, that stuff will happen," he said of Facebook's opponents. "It was a little scary at first."
Facebook's runaway success in 2004 was clear to the founders the day after they launched the website, Moskovitz said. No amount of money would have convinced them to sell the company, he said. But that theory had certainly been tested over the years.
Like several other high-profile Facebook founders, Moskovitz left to start his own company. It's called Asana and makes project-collaboration software for businesses. Some of the ideas for Asana were conceived when he was a manger at Facebook, he said.
Moskovitz agonized over quitting Facebook and "looked for every reason to stay," he said.
"We left Facebook because we had the idea for Asana," he said. "I hated the idea of starting my own company. I really didn't want to become an entrepreneur."
Mark Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and other Facebook elite helped romanticize the concept of starting a business, Moskovitz said. He said he regrets that consequence of his success because Silicon Valley is rewarding programmers who pitch unimaginative ideas.
The goal for many is to flip their companies to a frequent shopper like Google, which competes with Facebook in many areas.
Dave Morin, another Facebook founder who left to design a social network for more intimate groups called Path, spurned an offer from Google, Moskovitz said. There, he would have been locked into "indentured servitude" because of restrictions in his contract, said Moskovitz, who is an investor in Path and advised Morin not to accept the offer.
"All of those people (from Facebook's early days) have done great work and added a lot of impact to the world and, frankly, are financially very secure," Moskovitz said. "So the only thing they're interested in now is doing that again -- you know, adding massive impact to the world and thinking about the very long run, and trying to build companies that last and really change the world for the better."
And, of course, not working for Google.
Joe Carretta
The TNS Group
Formerly known as TigerNet Systems, Inc.
Office phone: 203.316.0112 x105
Office fax: 203.316.0118
Email: jcarretta@thetnsgroup.com<sviscardi@thetnsgroup.com>
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)