Mereja

Category: News

  • Why Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1 billion makes a certain horrible kind of sense

    According to a blizzard of anonymous news reports, Marissa Mayer is working feverishly to land the biggest fish of her career as CEO of Yahoo: namely, the $1-billion-plus acquisition of New York-based Tumblr, the ultra-hip blog network — the two are reportedly involved in discussions that could come to fruition as early as Sunday. Although Tumblr fans seem horrified by the idea, this one makes a substantial amount of sense for both sides.

    Of course, as Om and others have already mentioned, there’s no guarantee this deal will actually be consummated: it could fall apart on valuation, as so many deals do — or Facebook could swoop in with a much higher offer and snatch Tumblr out of Yahoo’s clutches, the same way it did when it stole Instagram away from Twitter last year for close to $1 billion.

    It makes Yahoo look desperate — because it is

    Marissa Mayer at Davos

    Even if the deal does get done, one of the risks for Mayer and Yahoo is that the company could look desperate by paying more than $1 billion for a site that had revenues of less than $15 million last year (although CEO David Karp has said that figure should hit $100 million this year). That’s an almost bubble-like multiple for a company, and there will likely be plenty of criticism from investors who believe that $1 billion could be better spent elsewhere — in other words, on businesses that would make Yahoo a better return.

    But the painful fact is that Yahoo doesn’t just look desperate — in many ways it is desperate. Mayer has made some changes since she took over the ailing former web portal, including the acquisition of Summly and a number of other mobile-focused startups and services, but the company still needs to make some aggressive moves if it is going to jump-start any growth at all. And since Yahoo has about $4 billion in cash on hand, it can arguably afford to make a big bet.

    For Yahoo, the addition of Tumblr would do a number of things: because of the size and profile of the deal, it would make a major statement about Mayer’s intention to do whatever it takes to revitalize the company, and it would also send a signal to Facebook and Google — and even Apple — that Yahoo is a potential force to be reckoned with when it comes to potential acquisitions. Is doing that worth $1 billion? That’s for Yahoo’s investors and board of directors to decide.

    Just as important, it would inject some much-needed life and energy into the somewhat stale lineup of content that the company currently relies on, which caters more to the over-50 set than it does to anyone in the much-desired 18 to 25 demographic. More than any other network, Tumblr is the platform of choice for media-obsessed teens and 20-somethings, who spend massive amounts of time sharing photos and videos and animated GIFs on the site — an engine of potential value that Yahoo desperately needs.

    Tumblr gets a massive exit

    This doesn’t come without its own risks, of course: As a number of observers have noted, Tumblr’s content contains a large quantity of not only mature or arguably offensive content but outright pornography, which many argue is the source of its massive traffic numbers. How Yahoo (or Facebook for that matter) would deal with this kind of content remains to be seen.

    For Tumblr, meanwhile, being acquired would solve a number of problems — the main one being that the company has gone well beyond the “we’re a startup so we don’t really have to make money” stage, and is facing increasing pressure from the investors who have given CEO David Karp more than $125 million in venture financing, an investment that values the company at about $800 million. Accepting a giant check from Yahoo would take care of that problem in one fell swoop, especially if it was all in cash.

    With a major company like Yahoo as a partner, Tumblr could connect its massive audience of users to the firehose of ads and other monetization methods the giant web portal has, and potentially generate much more revenue than it could have by itself. The only lingering question at that point is whether Tumblr fans decide that Yahoo is poisoning the well of social content and community on the site, and decide to flee for greener pastures. In other words, does Yahoo make Tumblr into YouTube — a successful standalone network that can grow and prosper on its own — or does it become MySpace?

    Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Shutterstock / ollyy and Albert Chau

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

        

  • Sony Xperia Tablet Z receives AOSP support

    Sony opened AOSP software code for the  Sony Xperia Z last month, and now the Xperia Tablet Z has been added to the program as well. This will be the first tablet to receive the AOSP port from Sony. The source code will be available through GitHub, usable after the bootloader on the tablet is unlocked. Keep in mind, this software is not intended for everyday use and several apps and services will not be functional.

    You can see a Jelly Bean walkthrough of AOSP on the Tablet Z in action below.

    Click here to view the embedded video.

    Source: Sony Blog

    Come comment on this article: Sony Xperia Tablet Z receives AOSP support

  • We’ve entered the age of emotional, design-centric, e-commerce

    When I opened up my first package from online women’s clothing startup Everlane, an immediate smile spread across my face. The company had wrapped the cashmere sweater I bought in a soft, silky Everlane-branded cream-colored bag. It was a very basic choice — not something meant to blow your mind — but a little detail that resonated with me in an immediate tactile and emotional way, and later in a branding way.

    True & Co.The same smile appeared when I was filling out the brief quiz for True & Co., a new startup that’s trying to rethink how women buy bras. The company asks you a variety of questions that are meant to find out the best shape and size of your bras, and it has put a lot of thought into doing this in an innovative, creative, and tactful way (boobs can be a tricky subject).

    For example one quiz question asks “Do your cups runneth over?”, basically asking in a playful way if the bra you’re wearing is too small. You can’t help but laugh at that, easing the tension that is natural when you’re trying to think about the shape of your chest. Email marketing company MailChimp has led the way for using this type of language in an innovative way to develop a brand and an emotion connection and deliver better results.

    Everlane and True & Co are creating new online e-commerce experiences, and they’re using emotion and design to do it. Warby Parker has famously grown its online glasses business in this way, too. These are the new wave of e-commerce companies, ones that could rival not only big box retailers but also the first-generation of e-commerce companies like Amazon, or clothing companies that have moved into selling items online.

    I think Fab founder and CEO Jason Goldberg put it best in an article he wrote last month on his personal blog:

    The third wave of e-commerce is all about bringing emotional purchases online. Non-commodity products. More thoughtful purchase decisions.  I like to call this Emotional Commerce. This is categories like furniture, home accessories, home textiles, fashion, art, and jewelry. These are categories where people care about having something special in their lives.

    warby parker, online eyewearIt will be the Warby Parkers, the Everlanes, the Net-a-Porters, and the Birchboxes that will innovate around using design and UI to get you to part with your money online in exchange for a product that adds a little something extra to you life, your home and your wardrobe. At our RoadMap event in 2012, we highlighted a discussion between Birchbox CEO Katia Beauchamp and Warby Parker co-CEO Dave Gilboa, who discussed some of these ideas. For our next RoadMap event in San Francisco in November, we’ll continue that theme (tickets won’t go on sale until this summer, but you can sign up to get first access here).

    The lesson for e-commerce startups, product developers, website designers, and anyone else building something that other people will be using — in the physical world and the digital world — is that the small details matter. A lot. Om recently gushed about well made shoes:

    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 patterns on the toe to the packaging to the font on the label, all of those little things add up to the design aesthetic. And that way of thinking about the design aesthetic 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 correlates to me.

    Design might be a buzz word in the tech world in 2013, and some high end designers might not necessarily like the bastardization of the term and its embrace by the tech industry. But in many ways, designers and design thinking is starting to be valued like never before at tech companies (and let’s face it, all companies are becoming tech companies these days).

    This has led to better and higher paid positions by designers and new products that are connecting with us on an emotional level. And that’s a good thing.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

        

  • TED Weekends investigates why we judge others

    Rebecca-Saxe-at-TED

    Rebecca Saxe speaks at TEDGlobal 2009. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

    Above and slightly behind your right ear, exists a part of your brain many scientists believe is specifically dedicated to thinking about other people’s thoughts – to predicting them, reading them, and empathizing with them. It’s called the temporoparietal junction, and this is the area cognitive neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe focuses on in her research.

    Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's mindsRebecca Saxe: How we read each other's mindsAt TEDGlobal 2009, Saxe delves into our amazing capacity to identify and predict others’ emotions and actions, and how this ability is learned throughout childhood. This skill serves an important function in human relationships – we learn how to fill in the unspoken blanks between what someone is thinking and how they are presenting themselves. This is what allows us to glance at a photo of someone and be able to know what she is feeling.

    Saxe’s talk is this week’s featured idea for TED Weekends on the Huffington Post. Below, find essays all about our ability to, in a sense, read minds.

    Rebecca Saxe: Learning to Read Someone Else’s Mind

    My TED Talk, above, is about the process by which we learn to read each other. Here are five reasons that I study how human brains think about other minds.

    (1) It is a hard, and awesome, problem. To me, the most breathtaking idea I’ve ever heard is that each thought a person ever has, every moment of experience, of insight, of reflection, of aspiration, is equivalent to a pattern of brain cells firing in space and time. How does a pattern of brain activity constitute a moral judgment? A moment of empathy for a fictional character? The idea for a sentence you’re about to write? Someday, scientists will be able to imagine, simultaneously, these abstract thoughts and how each corresponds to a specific pattern of brain activity. I don’t expect this understanding to arrive in my lifetime. But it’s thrilling to imagine that future, and to feel that my research might be a small step on the route that gets us there. Read the full essay »

    Phillip M. Miner: The Neurology of Disgust

    Growing up believing you are an abomination is strange. But, if you are gay and grew up in Kansas (or many other parts of the world) — like I did — it’s not all that uncommon. We’re told from a very young age that being gay is wrong and gross. The lesson that men who have sex with men are disgusting is repeated so frequently, your average kid quickly gets the message.

    Sometimes the moral judgment is delivered directly — often times through someone with religious moral authority or family. Other times it comes more subtly through language cues. In my experience, the euphemisms for men who have sex with men seem to bleed together to form a powerful and often false identity, saying all men who have sex with men are feminine (“pansy”, “fairy”, “poof”), perverts (“pillow biter,” “corn holer,” “sword swallower”), and abominations (“queer,” “bent”).

    There’s disagreement on the physical mechanisms for creating moral beliefs in the brain. Read the full essay»

    Barbara Ficarra: Equipped for Empathy

    “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” These are heartfelt words by award-winning actress Meryl Streep.

    Do we all have the power of empathy? Are we hardwired to know what other people want? Is it easy to think about other people’s thoughts?

    Rebecca Saxe’s enlightening TEDTalk ”How To Read Each Other’s Minds” asks: “Why is it so hard to know what somebody else wants or believes?” “Why is it so hard to change what somebody else wants or believes?” And “How is it so easy to know other minds?” Read the full essay »

  • Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of May 18th

    Hot-Aisle-Containment-in-Mi

    A look at the hot aisle containment systems at the Microsoft data center in Quincy, Washington, which has since expanded to include modular data centers housed outdoors. (Photo: Microsoft)

    For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week.

    Digital Realty Trust Launches DCIM Software – Data center developers provide the bricks, mortar, power and ping to support their tenants. But they’re increasingly finding the need to get into the software side of the data center business, offering tools to make management easier. The latest to do so is turnkey wholesale giant Digital Realty Trust, which today launched EnVision, a comprehensive data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution.

    The Azure Cloud, Exposed to the Azure Sky – The Microsoft data center campus in Quincy, Washington illustrates the evolution of data center design from huge concrete shells to compact modules sitting outdoors on a slab. Data centers have become glamorous, but the Quincy campus is at the forefront of a new minimalist approach offering one vision of the way of the future, and the way of the cloud.

    Bloomberg Plans $710 Million Data Center in N.Y. Suburb – Financial media giant Bloomberg L.P. is planning to build a $710 million data center in Orangetown, N.Y., a northern suburb of New York City not far from a major data hub for the New York Stock Exchange, according to local media.

    NY Times: Data Centers Acting as ‘Wildcat Power Utilities’ – The New York Times has resumed its critique of the data center business, suggesting that the industry has become a “wildcat power utility” by reselling power to customers at a profit. The Times report examines the use of a common business structure – the real estate investment trust, or REIT – by data center operators, “allowing them to eliminate most corporate taxes.”

    IO Immersant Brings Virtual Reality to the Data Center – Ready or not, virtual reality is coming to the data center. IO this week demonstrated a new application that provides a 3D visual representation of a customer’s data center environment, allowing them to “walk through” their data center and check operating conditions, much as players in World of Warcraft explore Azeroth.>

    Stay current on Data Center Knowledge’s data center news by subscribing to our RSS feed and daily e-mail updates, or by following us on Twitter or Facebook or join our LinkedIn Group – Data Center Knowledge.

  • The Modern Motorcycle Diaries

    Kawasaki KLR 650

    Alex Chacon is the owner of a Kawasaki KLR 650, a motorcycle that is one of the best dual-sports in existence. It’s not overly fast, nor is it packed full of technology. Instead this is a machine that is simple to work on and as about as bulletproof as Ford Knox. That may explain why Alex decided to choose it as his stallion of choice when he embarked on an adventure that took him 503 days, through 22 countries and covering more than 82,450 miles (not a misprint). The Modern Motorcycle Diaries is almost guaranteed to be the best thing you watch today, so set aside 10-minutes somewhere, grab an icy beverage and click play.

    Source: Youtube.com

  • Android this week: Google I/O recapped; Better Bluetooth; Galaxy S 4 Google Edition

    The annual Google I/O event has come and gone, with plenty of news specific to Android. While the event focuses on developers, consumers will see benefits in Android thanks to improvements in Google’s core services and many new APIs for developers to use in Android apps. There was no new Nexus phone, no update to the Nexus 7 tablet, nor a new Nexus 11 tablet. But for those willing to shell out $649, there is a modified Galaxy S 4 coming soon.

    Stock Galaxy S 4Google announced that in June, customers can order the handset through the Google Play store. Instead of the phone running Samsung’s customized TouchWiz software, it will instead run on pure Android, just like the Nexus 4. That means it will get future software updates directly through Google and not Samsung or a network provider.

    Of course, some of the newest Samsung features won’t be present on the phone: I wouldn’t expect Samsung’s new camera modes to be there, nor would I expect gestures to work for hands-free scrolling or swiping. Still, in light of no new Nexus hardware, the unlocked handset could appeal to hardcore Android enthusiasts.

    So without the release of Android 4.3 at Google I/O, does that mean Android hasn’t improved? Not at all; in fact, Google essentially boosted Android’s software without needing to wait for carriers and handset makers to upgrade the software. How did this happen? A large part of the 3.5 hour Google I/O keynote was dedicated to new Android services and APIs, plus a new application called Hangouts.

    New Google HangoutsThe new Hangouts app replaces Google Talk and is Google’s effort to unify its messaging platform. The app supports video calls with up to 10 participants, SMS notifications of incoming chat requests when offline, text chat and works across platforms: You can communication with other users on the web or on iOS devices. Hangouts also highlights a great new feature in Android: Support for synchronized notifications. If you get a notification on one device and take action, the notification won’t appear on other devices or in the Chrome browser.

    Google also introduced its music subscription and discovery service called Google Play Music All Access. For a $9.99 monthly fee — $7.99 if you start a 30-day trial by June 30 — you get unlimited access to stream tracks thought the Play Music app and on the web. Human curators surface top songs and albums while music recommendations come from Google’s Knowledge Graph and your Google+ circles.

    Google Play GamingGaming got a supercharge in Android as well. Developers can use the new Google Play Games services that allow cross-platform gaming complete with achievements and leaderboards. Game progress can also be saved to the cloud, allowing gamers to pick up where the left off, even from another device.

    Android also saw one other big announcement this week, but it didn’t happen at Google I/O. The Bluetooth SIG announced that Android will gain support for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices in the coming months. That’s likely to be included in an actual Android release as some developers told me that Google will be completely changing the Bluetooth software stack in Android. Regardless, this means widespread support for Bluetooth 4.0 Smart and Smart Ready accessories such as watches, heart rate monitors and other low-powered companion devices.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

        

  • Weekly Address: The President Talks About How to Build a Rising, Thriving Middle Class

    President Obama talks about his belief that a rising, thriving middle class is the true engine of economic growth, and that to reignite that engine and continue to build on the progress we’ve made over the last four years, we need to invest in three areas: jobs, skills and opportunity. 

    Transcript | Download mp4 | Download mp3

  • Hops compounds have potential to treat diabetes, cancer: research

    Okay beer drinkers, drink to your health! Only kidding. Research over the last few decades has determined a compound from hops used to brew beer, humulone, has a wide array of potential health benefits, from curing viral infections and reversing diabetes to curing certain…

  • Eric Holder: idiot zen master

    (NaturalNews)In his recent testimony before Congress, US Attorney General Eric Holder, the so-called highest law-enforcement officer in the land, responded to questions about the AP scandal. Holder’s Justice Dept. had secretly subpoenaed and seized the phone records of Associated…

  • IRS demanded Facebook posts, book titles, names of donors during politically-motivated targeting of non-profits

    The scandal surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s illicit, politically-motivated scrutiny of conservative, patriot, Tea Party and pro-Israel groups continues to expand daily, as more information is learned about its depth, breadth and scope. In addition to delaying…

  • Economic insanity: Obama spends $11 million to create each ‘green’ job

    There has been nothing you could call “successful” about President Obama’s so-called “green energy” initiatives, but the worst thing of all is the billions in taxpayer dollars he has utterly wasted on failed companies who were trying to push unproven, and ultimately…

  • Chiropractic advocacy: Do chiropractors have a professional responsibility to help those less fortunate?

    With almost 50 million uninsured Americans in today’s world and roughly three million living below the poverty level, healthcare providers have an obligation and duty to help patients of all ages, economical status levels, with and without insurance; but how many providers…

  • Parents bully youth over fracking presentation at Colorado middle school

    Fracking has turned into an explosive topic at a Colorado school where several staff members may be forced to resign over an informational student presentation. Two young members of the environmental group Earth Guardians educated students at Evergreen Middle School…

  • Society has flipped upside down: Toothpaste, Nazis and normalcy long lost

    Earlier in the week, a tipster brought to my attention that an article I wrote reviewing a natural toothpaste product had been ripped off and pasted on some sort of Nazi website (without my permission or knowledge, of course). ”I guess Nazis want healthy teeth, too…

  • Conventional medicine openly admits to confusion over BRCA1 gene

    By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Angelina Jolie testing positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation and the decision to remove her breasts. This decision has been touted as a brave and reasonable choice, considering the assumed high risk for breast cancer. But…

  • The health benefits of dry skin brushing

    The health benefits of dry skin brushing Skin Brushing Our skin is the largest organ of absorption and elimination. Many people exfoliate the skin on their faces regularly, but the truth is that your whole body could do with thorough and regular exfoliation. Skin that…

  • Meditation cuts death risk in half for people with heart problems

    Perhaps the biggest impediment regarding the acceptance of alternative medicine in the United States is the fact that Americans have been conditioned to believe that only “traditional” methods of healthcare are effective and acceptable. But the truth is, there are…

  • Five reasons to detox using a coffee enema

    Colons today have it pretty rough. Whether from the stress of a hurried lifestyle, consumption of poor quality and highly processed foods like sweets and sugars that feed harmful organisms, inadequate levels of digestive enzymes that send partially digested proteins…

  • Fourth Amendment victory: Warrantless blood test, unreasonable search and seizure in DUI cases struck down by the court

    The Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights has suffered mightily of late, but the U.S. Supreme Court has recently strengthened it in a case involving drunk driving and a little requirement like a search warrant. In a 5-4 decision, justices ruled that police who are…