Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer thinks that what Blogger did for Google, Tumblr could do for her aging Internet company — make it relevant and a major player on the modern web. And for that she is willing to spend a billion dollars (or perhaps higher) in order to buy New York-based social publishing and sharing platform.
The news of the pending deal was first reported by AllThingsD and later Adweek reported rumors of their deal as well. At least a couple of our own sources say that the talks are serious. We have also learnt that the deal is being championed by CEO Mayer who according to Kara Swisher, has met with the team from Tumblr. We have learned that Yahoo’s New York-based corporate development team is leading the process, though like all deals, talks could fall apart.
David Karp, Founder and CEO, Tumblr (c) 2012 Pinar Ozger [email protected]
Tumblr says it has nearly 108 million blogs, over 50 billion posts and it is said to have 117 million visitors a month according to comScore. Forbes.com reports that Tumblr made $13 million in 2012 and is looking to bring in about $100 million, thanks to its new advertising initiatives. The company also recently introduced mobile advertising. For Yahoo this could be a much needed foray into mobile advertising and also into pushing new native ad-formats that help diversify its ad business away from the usual web advertising.
Valley calls Karp
David Karp, one of the co-founders and chief executive of Tumblr has been seen around in Silicon Valley. Tumblr has been trying to raise a new round of funding but its slower than expected revenue ramp has acted as a dampener for the fundraising efforts. Tumblr has raised a total of $125 million and is rumored to be valued at $800 million. Tumblr investors include Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Sequoia Capital and Greylock Ventures.
But Yahoo may not be alone in courting Tumblr. In November 2012, my colleague Mathew Ingram argued that Facebook and Tumblr should poke each other. Surprise surprise, it is something that is nagging Yahoo bigwigs.
Facebook in the mix?
We have heard that Yahoo is worried that Facebook could sweep in at the last minute and beat it to the buzzer. If Instagram acquisition was any indication, then we shouldn’t doubt Zuckerberg’s salesmanship. Karp is said to have close relationship with Facebook and was recently spotted at the Facebook Home launch. Facebook could use the much needed younger 18-to-24 year old demographic, something it (successfully) tried to acquire with Instagram. (Read this a teenager’s response to a question on Quora, “How do teenagers waste hours upon hours consuming Tumblr?” )
The question is why wouldn’t Google want Tumblr. After all, it would mean young people on a social network that could feed into Google+ — sort of like how Blogger fed pages into Google. I am guessing given its ownership of Google+ and Blogger, Google might meet some resistance from the Department of Justice. Still, as our sources pointed, Yahoo knows the challenges in the competitive landscape and is trying to move very fast. The speed, would perhaps mean that the company could short circuit the due diligence process and overlook Tumblr’s challenges with content of questionable provenance.
Money Talks
The good news for Tumblr and its backers: Mayer will soon be super flush with cash. According to a recent Yahoo 10-Q filing, the value of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba has gone up substantially as Alibaba’s continues to grow its revenues at a healthy clip. Yahoo owns about 23 percent of Alibaba and the Chinese eCommerce company is likely to go public and could worth as much as $100 billion in its post-IPO avatar. Yahoo is expected to sell about half its stake in the Chinese company in the likely 2014 IPO. Wall Street currently values Alibaba at around $70 billion.
In the end the question that remains: is Tumblr the fountain of youth that Yahoo badly needs or will this be case of a pathetic old-middle aged guy hanging with youngsters trying to be hip. Either way, Tumblr founders and backers could laugh all the way to the bank.
Earlier this evening the bill to establish an Office of Broadband Development passed in the Senate and House and is on its way to the Governor’s Office. As was mentioned earlier this week, the Office has been moved from the Department of Commerce to DEED (Department of Employment and Economic Development) and the director will be appointed by the Governor.
Last night at Google I/O, Bluetooth scored a major victory for connected consumers when Google said it would support the Bluetooth Smart Ready platform natively in Android. This was functionality that iOS devices already have, and it should mean that Android users will get more functional apps to go with their Bluetooth-enabled devices.
As someone who spends a lot of time playing with connected home and personal devices this is fabulous news. I had started gathering research for a post about how as an Android user I feel like many of the popular connected devices are leaving me out in the cold with lame apps, while iOS users get sparkly interfaces and more functionality. The Hue app, the WeMo app, the BlueBulb app and the FitBit are all examples of this iOS first and foremost (and sometimes only) mindset. Or when it comes to specific devices such as the Wahoo Blue heart rate monitor my colleague Kevin Tofel wrote about last year, the Android support only extends to a few devices.
But one reason for the focus on iOS for many devices, especially those containing Bluetooth, is that native support and easy integration between the radio and the app wasn’t there. But with this announcement, which means developers will find it easier to build Android-based apps for connecting to Bluetooth devices, all that changes.
Then app developers building software for Bluetooth enabled gadgets no longer have an excuse. Although, as seems to be the case with Hue and WeMo which both work with Wi-Fi, perhaps they just think iOS users are more likely to buy their gear, so they’ve skimped on Android resources for the time being. Hue lightbulbs are also exclusively sold in Apple stores, which may also contribute to the meh nature of its Android app.
Bluetooth is serious about the internet of things.
While the Android news is great for the growing number of people toting those devices, it’s just one element in The Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s plans to make the radio technology ubiquitous for the internet of things. Bluetooth is already making huge strides in personal area networking compared with other standards I covered as far back as Jan. 2011. Bluetooth radios are set to be in 2.5 billion new devices this year, according to Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, who I met with on Wednesday. That’s one fourth of the 10 billion Bluetooth radios that have shipped in the lifetime of the technology, according to ABI Research provided by the Bluetooth SIG.
Clearly Bluetooth is popular, and the acceptance by Google of the overarching Smart Ready application development framework will enhance the experience for more consumers, but Powell also detailed plans to create a secure end-to-end network layer for Bluetooth. That technology could ensure that communications between certain devices stay private, an important consideration for medical or personal data.
He also said that in addition to the profiles for data that the SIG had developed for formatting data (for example, it has a running profile that tracks the data associated with steps so an app developer doesn’t have to figure that out), it’s developing a service discovery layer. This will become more important as we get more connected devices and want them to talk to each other without human intervention. For example, if you have four connected Bluetooth lightbulbs in a room, you might want to turn them on all at once instead of individually programming them.
This is a concept I explored with Mike Kuniavsky, a principal in the Innovation Services Group at PARC, in a podcast in March. Foley also noted that in addition to the low energy specification the SIG released it’s working on extending the range of Bluetooth in some flavors to 100 meters. That means it can be used in the home, and not just as a personal area network, but for devices communicating between rooms. Combine that with the end-to-end security and suddenly my Z-wave door locks look like the wrong choice.
However, I won’t sweat that just yet. Even as Bluetooth beefs up for the internet of things, it won’t become the sole radio technology connecting my gizmos and gadgets to the web any more than Wi-Fi is my sole means of accessing the internet. However, Bluetooth has really grown up and moved well beyond its early days as a connection technology for wireless headsets and computer peripherals. Even if I’m not bullish on the future of the Bluetooth mouse, I’m bullish on Bluetooth.
Tableau Software has priced shares for its initial public offering on Friday at $31. The company is offering up 5 million shares, while stockholders are offering 3.2 million shares. Tableau Co-founder and CEO Christian Chabot will ring the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange, where the company will list under the symbol “DATA.”
That’s an apt ticker symbol for a company that is in some ways a bellwether for the current fascination with all things data. Tableau isn’t a big data company, per se, but its visualization software breathes life into many big data calculations. Its focus on making software that’s easy to use and that creates visually captivating charts has turned people from numerous professions into amateur data analysts. (I’ve even used it in the past, including for the first time in 2011.)
Christian Chabot
As Chabot told me during a conversation in 2011, “In any field of human endeavor . . . there are a hundred to a thousand more people who understand the data of that field more than they understand reporting and analytics.”
Anytime you read about a hot new visualization or analytics startup promising the moon, you’re also seeing the results of what Tableau has sown in terms of the user experience. Many of those same companies will be quick to tell you how limited Tableau’s capabilities are. It’s memory-bound, it doesn’t have a database, it’s not available in the cloud (or on the Mac operating system), it can’t do predictive analytics. All true.
Of course, if it raises the kind of capital it expects to by going public, it can build and buy a lot of those capabilities. If pricing stays flat all day Friday, Tableau stands to make $155 million from its 5 million shares.
If investors have really bought into the company and the concept of a data-driven world, then who knows. Machine-data expert Splunk wnet public in 2012, flying the big data banner, and saw shares peak at 91 percent above its original asking price of $17.
I’m not suggesting Tableau is the biggest name in data, or even that it will some day become it. This next-generation analytics field is very young, with startups and larger vendors alike sometimes competing against themselves to win wholly new accounts than trying to displace legacy vendors within large enterprises. And every month, it seems, I come across some new startup that was built with the same principles in mind as Tableau, but with the advantage of having today’s best practices baked into its software.
But Tableau definitely commands a lot of the mindshare. How it fares as a public company could be a strong indicator of just how powerful the data movement is, and how well it capitalizes on a new influx of cash will determine how long it stays on the top of customers’ minds.
Did you hear about the new version of Android? No? That’s because there isn’t one, at least not in the traditional sense.
Although it was widely expected that Google would introduce Android 4.3 during Wednesday’s Google I/O keynote this week, it didn’t happen. Instead, more than three hours were spent talking about new services — a music subscription and multiplayer gaming — with developer tools that tie Android and Chrome together. These services and new developer tools actually help Google to update Android many of the 900 million Android activated devices without adding more fragmentation challenges brought by new a new software version.
Android enthusiasts are likely disappointed by any news on the Jelly Bean software front, leaving people like Computerworld’s JR Raphael wondering: What happened to Android?
I try to be as platform-agnostic as possible, but I’m certainly considered a member of the Android enthusiast crowd. And like others, I was disappointed when no new Android version appeared. I also felt let down with a lack of new hardware, but that’s another story. But I’m a consumer, so these thoughts make sense. And Google I/O is a developer event; not a consumer conference.
It turns out that every developer I’ve informally spoken with at Google I/O is actually relieved that Android 4.3 doesn’t exist yet. Note, it likely will arrive soon, as an updated Bluetooth stack for Android is coming arriving in the “coming months” with support for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices. So why would developers be happy there’s no new Android version?
I can think of a couple of reasons. First, with a new Android version would come what Google calls an API level. Typically, new APIs and services are supported in the new version and these aren’t supported on devices with older software. But by offering new APIs and services now — which is exactly what Google did during day one of I/O — existing devices can take advantage of the new features. The new Hangouts app, Google Play Music All Access, and Google Cloud Messaging are good examples. Sure, some of these will require at least Android 4.0 but none of them require Android 4.3.
Second, developers told me they’re tired of taking heat for their apps not being supported on certain versions of Android. Adding another version would only make things potentially worse in that area, not better. Simply put: the features that Android is lacking, according to developers, are getting added through the new services that Google is releasing. And these new functions aren’t adding to any lingering fragmentation challenges.
Frankly, Google has iterated Android relatively quickly in order to make it comparable to iOS in terms of design and usability. That’s good, but it came at a great cost: The pace of software change has been faster than hardware change. I don’t mean in the power and functions of hardware: Chips of all kinds have improved just as quickly as software. But consumers don’t switch devices that quickly, often waiting 18 to 24 months to upgrade a phone, for example.
Google can slow the pace of Android versions while improving the platform at the same time with this approach. And it can also allow more time for hardware makers and carriers push Android updates out, helping to get more users on the most current version of Android. While all this happens, consumers will also help the process, by upgrading to newer phones with Android 4.0 or better. Looking at the situation this way, it was actually a smart move for Google to focus less on the version of Android and instead improve the platform for developers and consumers with better APIs.
The weekend isn’t upon us just yet, but here’s a little project to tuck away for when the Sunday doldrums set in — the New York-based tinkerers/part suppliers at Adafruit Industries have worked up a way to give your old pair of Chuck Taylors a bit of luminescent DIY flair.
The process is pretty straightforward — with about $21 in specialized parts like a small sheet of electroluminescent material and a pint-sized power inverter (I suspect there’s a fair chance you’ve got AAA batteries, sewing needles, and glue nestled in a drawer somewhere) you too can have a pair of Converse that light up in the dark. Adafruit’s Becky Stern says that once everything is put together your shoes will stay aglow for about an hour before starting to dim if you’ve opted to use the slightly smaller CR2032-powered inverter, though you can eke out extra juice by playing with smaller EL panel sizes or using an inverter that runs on AAA batteries instead.
If nothing else, it’s a neat little crash course in cobbling together components and the end result is a pair of sneakers that are sure to catch some attention — just make sure not to get them too wet. First-time makers may not be completely comfortable with the concept of lashing together a gadget with an Arduino and some shields, but a lightweight hack for some light-up shoes may be enough to get them ready for more ambitious hacks to come.
As always, there’s nothing to stop you from peeking at the project tutorial and looking for somewhere else to buy your components. After all, when Adafruit Industries founder Limor Fried chatted onstage with our own John Biggs at Disrupt NY 2013, she said the company isn’t so much a parts vendor as it is an educational tutorial company “with a gift shop at the end”.
James Russell, a London based designer, took issue with my post Wednesday about the new Google+ design and how its aesthetic is different from Facebook. He argued that, well, the new Google+ still looks like Facebook and went on to make his case using visuals from both services. Basically, he thinks it is business as usual. I accept his criticism for his reasoning makes sense, but I just don’t agree.
Photo courtesy: Leffot
I don’t know James, but my sense from reading his post is that he approaches design through a visual lens. Unlike him, I am not a designer and so my way of thinking about design is influenced by not mere visual aspects, but also how things are constructed. I don’t just love the shoes because of how they look — though that matters — but I also look at where the leather comes from, how it is stitched together and what kind of craftsmanship has gone into it. From shoe trees to little patters to packaging to the font on the label, all of those little things add up to the design aesthetic.
And that extends to other things, including website design. Yes, fonts matter, and the layouts matter, but so does the relative relationship to the kind of content, the speed of the web service and even the screen size and how it all correlated to me.
So, using that lens, when I looked at Google+ and its new design, what I saw was that it was less social in the Facebook sort of a way. And by that I mean: it’s less about people, likes and shares being the action drivers on the page. Instead, I saw a design aesthetic defined by data and machines inferring relationships, the importance of content and the relative weight of all the elements on the page. The new super hashtag is a good example of what I am talking about — it surfaces a lot more information on those specific topics.
As I pointed out in my post and also on my post about Google Maps’ redesign, we have moved into the world of data-informed applications and design too has to adapt to this reality. So, while there might be elements on the page might overlap on few occasions, the departure in the core philosophies that is reflected in the overall aesthetic is pretty clear to my eye.
And as far as I can tell, that aesthetic is all about a philosophy and how it relates to senses. Google has always been about inferring and serving up information. Facebook is about implicit actions.
The new Google+ design is an extension of that thinking. And as Google’s Senior Vice President of Google+ said: “We have put Google in Google+.”
There were a record number of solar panels installed in the U.S. on rooftops and on ground-mounted systems in 2012. Now both traditional financing companies and new types of investors are starting to get in on the trend of providing the funds for the high upfront costs of installing solar panels, in exchange for making some money back several years down the road. But the potential to make money in this way has only just started.
On Thursday solar installer SolarCity announced that it has signed up Goldman Sachs, and other investors, to create a $500 million fund to support leases for solar panels for home and business owners. With that much money, SolarCity can install some 110 MW worth of solar panels.
Solar leases are a contract between the building owner and SolarCity, whereby SolarCity pays the upfront cost of installing the system, owns and maintains the panels, and the building owner pays for the monthly electricity for the power from the panels over around 20 years. As Ucilia noted on GigaOM Pro today, the residential solar leasing market alone is expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2016, according to GTM Research.
Some banks and even companies like Google have been willing to put hundreds of millions into these types of funds. SolarCity has been able to raise $1.7 billion in funding over its lifetime to finance installations from groups like U.S. Bancorp, Google, PG&E and Credit Suisse. Other solar financing companies — and the competition is now getting fierce — include Sungevity, OneRoof Energy, Sunrun and Clean Power Finance.
There’s such a demand for solar leases and financing that even some companies are falling behind on getting funding for these businesses. SunPower said earlier this month that demand for its residential solar leases is far greater than the money available to finance them. Power company NRG Energy also wants to retry getting into this space, after trying out this market awhile back.
It’s not just banks and corporate do-gooders that want the opportunity to make a decent return — some 10 to 12 percent in some cases. Crowd-funding is starting to appear as an interesting blip on the radar. Startup Solar Mosaic says that it’s now raised $1 million from its crowd-funders for its solar panel systems, which offer around a 4.5 percent annual yield. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that commercial‐scale solar panel systems can reach returns of 8 percent to 14 percent in states like Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
As big power players, upstart solar financiers and even everyday crowd-funders grow these funds and receive the returns, this market will start to expand significantly. As a boom of solar panels continues to hit the U.S., various parties can make significant money off this transition. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that residential solar panels could be installed on 2.4 percent of U.S. houses by 2020.
Recent reports have indicated that Google+ has struggled to keep brands engaging. It’s not exactly the first place fans think of for engaging with celebrities either typically (unless perhaps they’re trying to engage with Wil Wheaton or look at photos of Hugh Jackman).
Some celebrities just rehash the stuff they’re sharing on Facebook or Twitter. That doesn’t go for Rose McGowan. I think it’s safe to say she’s an active Google+ user – one of the 390 million Google boasted this week as it launched a slew of new features.
If you want to see McGowan showing off her “fish face,” you’re going to have an easier time finding it on Google+ than you are on Facebook or Twitter.
A video of a bus crash with a deer is gaining some viral steam. According to the video’s description, the white-tailed deer crashed through the CamTran bus on Tuesday evening. It shows the deer crash through the windshield, then flail and run around like a maniac.
Eventually, though we don’t see it in the video, the driver reportedly let the deer out of the bus through the door, and it went back out into the wild. The incident reportedly happened in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
I’m pleased to share an update from the Arrowhead Electric Coop Facebook page – with a reminder that while this is good news, it doesn’t mean service will be available next week…
Big Broadband News!! Progress on backhaul (the all important connection to Duluth) is being made. Monday, make ready work will begin on power poles in Lake County. Once completed the much needed fiber optic cable will be installed and eventually spliced into Arrowhead’s cable. It’s a huge step in the right direction for Arrowhead and everyone in Cook County. No dates to provide at this time…stay tuned….!!
If interested in construction crew locations in Cook County: Fiber Splicers working in Schroeder, Aerial drop crews working in Grand Marais and pulling cable into conduit installed last year along Bethany Dr.
Meeting with contractor today to begin discussing the much anticipated construction crew ramp up…
At Google I/O, Google announced today that it has rebuilt its AdMob mobile ad network technology. It incorporates tech from other Google platforms like AdSense, and adds some additional features.
The new AdMob includes smarter app promotion features. “Conversion Optimizer helps many AdWords advertisers increase conversions while decreasing cost per acquisition,” explains AdMob product manager Vishay Nihalani. “We’re now bringing Conversion Optimizer to app developers using AdMob to promote their apps, so they can get the best possible number of installs for their budget. Choose a target cost per acquisition for each download, and Conversion Optimizer will show ads when they are most likely to lead to an install.”
“Ensuring that your app is showing quality, relevant ads is important for app developers,” says Nihalani. “Now, developers will have more control over which ads appear in their apps, by blocking sensitive categories, so they can increase relevancy and protect their brand.”
Additionally, AdMob Mediation has a new simplified setup, and there’s new local currency payments.
Finally, there’s a new reporting interface that lets developers slice data in a variety of ways, and has multi-dimensional reports, which can be broken down over time by app, ad unit, platform, country, bid type, etc.
The new AdMob is rolling out to developers starting today. It will be available to all developers globally within the coming months.
Following Larry Page’s impromptu speech and Q&A session at Google I/O, long time Apple observer/writer John Gruber wrote a post entitled Google Versus, wherein he questioned Page’s feel-good commentary. Dave Winer also pointed out this double talk. Here are three comments by Page that got Dave and John riled up:
Let’s be positive
Every story I read about Google is us versus some other company or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero sum.
Except Microsoft is not playing ball
The Web is not advancing as fast as it should be. Certainly, we struggle with companies like Microsoft. We would like to see more open standards and more people involved in those ecosystems. I wouldn’t grade the industry well with where we have gotten to.
And that other Larry is just greedy
We’ve had a difficult relationship with Oracle, including having to appear in court. Money is obviously more important to them than any collaboration.”
While I am complete agreement with Page’s general sentiment about opportunities and the importance of being positive, I think Larry (and all other technology industry leaders) should actually practice what they preach if they want others to follow.
Google’s effort to unify its messaging platforms isn’t done yet. The new Hangouts app, introduced on Wednesday at the Google I/O developer event, will soon see SMS integration.
After installing the new Hangouts app for iOS and also using the service on my Chromebook Pixel, bringing Chat, Talk and Hangout features all together is a welcome experience. And one that’s long overdue as Google has had several overlapping message services not long after Android arrived on the scene. Oddly, at least to me, is that Google Voice hasn’t been talked about in any of the message unification efforts.
This addition of SMS for Hangouts, which makes sense, is what has me wondering where Google Voice fits in to Google’s grand plans. Since it’s not a true VoIP service, maybe its outside the technical bounds of Hangouts. But traditional SMS is handled by cellular networks and it’s clearly in the scope of Hangouts if it’s coming soon. As a result, Google Voice still feels like the unloved child in Google’s family of services.
I actually use Google Voice to make calls through my computer when working, which essentially are VoIP calls, at least for part of the transmission; the calls originate on my Chromebook over Wi-Fi or LTE. I do this through what used to be Google Talk — there’s a phone icon to place the call.
Perhaps Google is simply leaving well enough alone with Google Voice until data networks mature further and voice over LTE takes root. For now, however, the service just seems left behind while all other Google messaging features are growing up.
Apple recently denied allegations from the United States Justice Department that suggested it was the ringleader in a conspiracy to fix eBook prices. The trial isn’t set to start until next month, but AllThingsD posted a now-public document the DoJ plans to use as evidence when making its case. In the email from late Apple co-founder to News Corporation’s James Murdoch, Jobs writes that News Corp. should “throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.” Apple stands accused of colluding with book publishers to stop eBook vendors like Amazon from selling titles at discounted prices. Apple is now the lone defendant in the price-fixing trial after the four book publishers originally indicted settled out of court with the DoJ. A copy of Jobs’s full email follows below.
Microsoft, who just received a cease and desist letter from Google for a separate issue, has now had a new “Scroogled” ad allegedly leak to the public, though it was allegedly meant for Microsoft employees.
This one attacks Chrome, saying that it tracks you everywhere and whatnot.
It’s unclear why Microsoft would bother to put together a Scroogled ad for the benefit of its own employees, but a spokesperson told The Verge, it’s “an internal video that was leaked.”
Good thing Avinash Kumpati has it available on YouTube:
Having a single monitor can be a difficult task if you’re used to working with more than several windows at once. Windows OS makes available a few shortcuts for switching between applications and organizing them on the desktop, but for some users this is not enough, and extra desktops are required for better efficiency.
Google kicked off its annual developers conference, Google I/O, on Wednesday, with a keynote lasting nearly four hours. It’s always expected that Google will make a bunch of announcements at these events, and they certainly did. This year’s hasn’t been the sexiest Google I/O full of new gadgets and big new services, but it has focused a great deal on developers, and isn’t that supposed to be the point anyway?
We’re not going to get into all the announcements here. You can follow this page to see all of that. I do, however, want to draw attention to some of the things Google has announced that have implications specifically for businesses. It’s worth noting that a lot of Google’s announcements came in blog posts, rather than in the keynote.
Maps
One of the biggest announcements to come out the event was a complete overhaul of Google Maps. This was expected thanks to a leak last week, and then another one earlier this week, but it is still a huge deal, as Google Maps is one of the company’s most popular products. It also plays a major role in how people find businesses using Google from the desktop, tablets, and from mobile devices. Google actually announced revamps for each of these devices as well.
The new Google Maps for Android smartphones and iPhones is coming this summer, and will include a new Zagat experience, with Zagat badges appearing in the interface, as well as Google Offers integration. If you find Starbucks, for example, you can see an offer from them, and save it for later or use it.
There is also a new five point rating scale across Google Maps for mobile and desktop.
With the new tablet interface, Google will point users to businesses and destinations by categories with a new discovery feature called “Explore”.
With the new desktop Maps experience, Google highlights things it thinks matter to users. “And the more you interact with the map, the better it gets,” says Google. “When you set your Home and Work locations, star favorite places, write reviews and share with friends, Google Maps will build even more useful maps with recommendations for places you might enjoy.”
“In addition to a customized map, we’ve also made it easier to uncover the best local gems,” the company says. “Search results are labeled directly on the map with brief place descriptions and icons that highlight business categories and other useful information – like restaurants that are recommended by your Google+ friends. Info cards provide helpful information such as business hours, and ratings and reviews so you can quickly decide where to eat, drink and play.”
The interface also allows people to zoom in right into indoor imagery, where available.
Changes to how Google does search are always of interest to businesses, because it’s the top way people find them. There’s not necessarily a lot in the way of SEO news coming out of Google I/O (though there was certainly plenty from Matt Cutts earlier this week), but you should still be aware of the search announcements that were made.
The biggest thing is that Google is bringing the conversational search that Android and iOS users have been enjoying to the desktop via Chrome. Soon, users will simply be able to talk to Google when they want to know something, and Google will talk back. Google SVP Amit Singhal discusses this on the Inside Search Blog:
People communicate with each other by conversation, not by typing keywords — and we’ve been hard at work to make Google understand and answer your questions more like people do. Already, you can tap a mic, talk to Google in a more natural way and get responses spoken back to you on Android, iPhone, and iPad devices.
Today, we previewed what this conversational experience will look like in Chrome on your desktops and laptops. Soon, you’ll be able to just say, hands-free, “OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?” and get a spoken answer. Then, you’ll be able to continue the conversation and just follow up with “how far is it from here?” if you care about the drive or “how about Monterey?” if you want to check weather somewhere else, and get Google to tell you the answer.
He also announced improvements to Google’s Knowledge Graph, including newly supported languages, and the ability to provide answers to what it thinks will be your next questions.
Singhal explains, “You’ll also get smarter answers to questions like ‘what’s the population of Canada?’ Not only will Google answer that question, but you also get an answer to the next few follow-up questions people often ask. In a single card, you’ll see how Canada’s population changed over time — and a comparison with California and Australia.”
Finally, Google Now got some new cards, and the ability for users to set reminders. More on all of this here.
While not part of the Google I/O announcements, Matt Cutts also made another announcement via Twitter. He said, “It’s safe to assume webspam will continue to tackle link networks that violate” Google’s quality guidelines, and that they just took action on thousands of linkselers in a “paid-link-that-passes-PageRank” network.
YouTube Gets New Ecommerce Feature
Also not part of the keynote announcements, Google announced a feature for YouTube, which could prove to be a pretty big deal in ecommerce. They’re now letting businesses include “Buy Now” buttons on their YouTube channels, so users can purchase products through various retailers.
“Every day, millions of people turn to YouTube for advice, from learning how to do the perfect smokey eye to trying out a new recipe for mashed potatoes,” says Danielle Tomassini from the Google Shopper team. “People are using YouTube not just for entertainment, but to learn a new skill, find more information, and shop for products. This presents a unique opportunity for consumer goods brands to reach shoppers in the moment and provide them with an easy way to go from watching a video to purchasing the product.”
The new offering comes in the form of a new channel gadget, and lets users shop for products from various retailers from the comfort of the YouTube channel they’re already browsing.
“This new channel gadget will enable shoppers to seamlessly move from browsing how-to videos and featured products to finding which retailers carry them, check availability, compare prices and make a purchase, all with fewer clicks than today,” says Tomassini.
Google has launched the gadget with Unilever to highlight hair products from TRESemmé.
Curiously, the offering is not part of the Google Shopping ecosystem Google has created, but rather utilizes GloTo.
There are a lot of interesting things happening with Google Wallet.
For one, there’s a new API that could have a huge impact on converting mobile sales. According to Google, 97% of mobile shoppers abandon their shopping carts. This is mostly due to all of the hoops they have to go through to complete the process (like filling out big forms). The Instant Buy API makes the process much faster and easier.
“The Instant Buy API is designed for merchants and developers selling physical goods and services, who already have a payment processor and are looking to simplify the checkout experience for their customers,” says Prakash Hariramani, Senior Product Manager for Google Wallet. “Developers selling digital goods within their apps will continue to use Google Play In-app Billing, which offers full payment processing capability, including support for carrier billing and gift cards.”
And speaking of Gmail, Google is adding quick actions to let people RSVP, check-in and leave reviews right from their inboxes. Buttons will appear next to certain types of messages, and people can take actions without even having to open the email. Businesses can add custom actions to their emails.
Google announced the Google Wallet Objects API to let businesses connect loyalty programs, offers, etc. to Google Wallet.
“Consumers want access to all of their loyalty cards, offers, and more on their smartphone,” says Group Product Manager Pali Bhat. “An average household has 18 loyalty cards but use less than half of these cards regularly because of the inconvenience. And the same goes for tickets, membership cards and other items.”
Users will be able to save loyalty programs, offers, etc. directly to their Google Wallet, and businesses will be able to showcase their brands, acquire users and engage them through instant loyalty sign-up, real time updates and offers.
“With Google’s location services, your users get timely notifications about their saved Wallet objects,” notes Bhat. “Additionally, with a simple upgrade path to Google Offers, you can distribute your offers across Google properties — including Adwords, the Google Display Network and Google Maps for Mobile — and benefit from Google’s targeting capabilities.”
They also announced that more phones – Samsung Galaxy S4 (Sprint), HTC One (Sprint) & Samsung Galaxy Note II (Sprint & US Cellular) – get the Google Wallet app.
Google+
Google+ has received a total of 41 new features, and a general redesign, and it could present some new opportunities and challenges in getting your content seen in Google’s growing social network. Included is a multi-column layout, bigger media, new animations, and a “related hashtags” feature:
“Suppose, for example, that you’re reading about your favorite sports team,” says Google SVP Vic Gundotra. “We’ll look at the post, determine what it’s about, and tag it accordingly. Behind the scenes, we’ll also identify and rank relevant conversations across the network. When you click on the related hashtag, we’ll flip the card, and let you browse related content inline.”
It looks like Google+ optimization could get more complex (as it certainly has with rival Facebook, not to mention Google’s crown jewel – search). More on the rest of the features here.
Google Cloud Platform
Google made some announcements about its Cloud Platform, including making Google Compute Engine available to all businesses and developers. It comes with sub-hour billing charges for instances in one-minute increments with a ten-minute minimum, so you don’t pay for minutes you don’t use.
“Shared-core instances provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads,” says Google’s Urs Hölzle. “Shared-core instances provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads. Advanced Routing features help you create gateways and VPN servers, and enable you to build applications that span your local network and Google’s cloud. Large persistent disks support up to 10 terabytes per volume, which translates to 10X the industry standard.”
This is really all just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to new stuff Google has in store, but these are some of the things businesses should be paying attention to. Of course, it really depends on what type of business you run. Android developers have a ton of new stuff to dig into that we didn’t even mention here, for example.
Which new Google offering (if any) do you think will have the greatest impact on your business? Tell us in the comments.
A look at the Beagle supercomputer at the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago. It’s one of the tools the university is using in its biomedical computation program. (Photo: University of Chicago)
An ambitious project at the University of Chicago aims to lead the nation in biomedical computation, by making the region the largest hub in the world for genetic and medical information.
At the forefront of the effort is Bionimbus, an open source cloud-based system for managing, analyzing and sharing genomic data. Developed by the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology (IGSB) at the University of Chicago, the Bionimbus community cloud is operated by the Open Cloud Consortium‘s Open Science Data Cloud, and an open source version of Bionimbus available to those who wish to set up their own clouds.
Bionimbus is designed to support next-generation gene sequencing instruments and integrates technology for analyzing and transporting large datasets. The Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) currently distributes around one petabyte of scientific data to interested users and plans to roughly double that amount of data in each of the next several years. Most OCC users are at universities and institutes that are on high-speed networks Internet2 or National Lambda Rail.
Pritzkers Assist With Fundraising
Recently Hyatt Hotels Chairman Tom Pritzker and his wife Margo hosted a fundraiser to introduce the project to about 50 influential friends. Pritzker is a university trustee and has hosted many annual dinners for the University of Chicago Medicine.
“Frankly, I’ve walked away from any one of the dinners really excited about whatever the topic was because it’s like a window into the future,” Pritzker told the Chicago Tribune. “You get to sit here, and for two hours someone is painting a picture for you of what the world is going to be like 10 to 15 years from now.”
During the fundraiser University of Chicago computer scientist Ian Foster presented a map of global fiber-optic networks, highlighting the densely populated Chicago area. With Chicago being the crossroads of information, the big data project hopes to leverage that geographic advantage for building the genome storage hub.
“Business, innovation, discovery, jobs still depend on taking raw materials and turning them into refined products,” Foster said. “Often, nowadays, the raw material is data and the refined material is knowledge.”
Leveraging Beagle Supercomputer
University of Chicago Computation Institute (C.I.) senior fellow and IGSB associate senior fellow Robert Grossman has been working on the Bionimbus Cloud for approximately four years. He states that it is currently one of the largest clouds to hold genomic data. It is the first project of its kind authorized by the National Health Institute (NIH) to use public data about genomes to perform biomedical research.
Argonne National Laboratory and IGSB are collaborating on two big data projects, using the Beagle supercomputer and the Bionimbus Cloud. The Beagle supercomputer was launched last month by the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division and the Computation Institute. The 150 Teraflop system contains 186 blades, housed in 8 Cray XE6 cabinets.
With a goal to revolutionize the way clinical researchers analyze and collect medical data, the big data projects will simulate biological processes in order to understand the causes of certain diseases like cancer, and to compile knowledge about basic patient outcomes and recent medical discoveries in order to discern more effective diagnoses and treatments.
Earlier reports suggested Samsung might finally ditch its flimsy-feeling plastic for better build quality on its upcoming Galaxy Note III, but a new report suggests those plans have been scrapped. SamMobile says that while Samsung tested Note III designs that included a metal case and even a flexible plastic display, it ended up choosing a design that takes most of its queues from the new Galaxy S4. As such, we can expect a plastic case and a similar shape, though the report notes that the new phablet will also feature a smaller bezel around the display just like the Galaxy S4. Despite the phone’s rumored 6-inch display, it may still be manageable as a result. Samsung’s Galaxy Note III is expected to launch this fall.
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Having a single monitor can be a difficult task if you’re used to working with more than several windows at once. Windows OS makes available a few shortcuts for switching between applications and organizing them on the desktop, but for some users this is not enough, and extra desktops are required for better efficiency.
