Category: News

For those startups in newer areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality who complain that VCs are too focused on consumer internet companies, help is at hand: Genesis Angels is a new VC that has raised a fund of around $100 million, with a large chunk coming from co-founder and serial investor and Kazakh petrochemical mogul Kenges Rakishev, which it plans to use for early stage investments in emerging areas like these and others. Based in Israel, but looking for startups worldwide, Genesis launched just this week, naming ex-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert as its chairman.

Moshe Hogeg, the other co-founder behind Genesis Angels (and founder and CEO of mobile video/photo startup Mobli, pictured here with Rakishev, left, and Olmert, center), says that the idea for Genesis came out of his and Rakishev’s observation that while the market for consumer internet services is saturated with a lot of me-too companies, there is a flourishing world of R&D in areas like robots and artificial intelligence that is not getting enough attention. It’s mostly giant tech companies like Google and Microsoft and academic institutions that are putting money into the very cutting edge of technology.

(Indeed, it was just yesterday, during Google’s earnings call, that CEO Larry Page talked about the “big bets” that Google wants to make on new technology. Google is not afraid to make big investments, he said, because the fear is that if it doesn’t it may miss out on the next big thing.)

The problem with this is that it leaves little room for startups. And although more recent developments like Kickstarter and Indigogo are creating a new groundswell of interest and financial support for some of these projets, there are yet others that will not want that kind of public profile for what they’re working on.

Hogeg describes Genesis’ role as something between the concept stage and when a VC may typically become interested in a company working on cutting-edge technology. “You can send the most brilliant scientist to a VC, but often it might take that scientist and his startup five years to create their products,” he explained in an interview. “VCs will say, ‘No problem, come back in four years.’ Genesis will invest in those companies in the meantime.” Typical investments will be in the range of $200,000 and $2 million.

If you visit Genesis Angels’ site, you will see that it already lists a number of companies in its portfolio, including Hogeg’s. These are listed, he says, because they are some of the investments Rakishev himself has made. Genesis, he notes, is still raising money for its first fund, with the total in play currently close to $100 million. Among those contributing to the fund are merchant bank Forbes & Manhattan, as well as private individuals who are well-known in the space of angel investments specifically around areas like hardware and new technology. The first three investments that are being made out of the new fund, Hogeg says, will be coming out shortly.

Ehud Olmert’s appointment as chairman is about laying the groundwork for the kind of assistance that Genesis Angels will be able to offer its portfolio companies, Hogeg says.

“He is a big believer in technology. Irasel invested the most in this area when he was still prime minister,” he notes. The relatively small country currently has some 3,000 tech companies, according to this report from the AP on the launch of the new VC.

Olmert took office in 2006 but left in 2009 under a corruption scandal cloud that he is still fighting. But that, apparently, has not affected his wider influence. “Mr Olmert is a very powerful man and he can use his contacts to help us and our companies, for example in partnering and joint ventures. He can open any door in the world.”

There have been other VC funds focused on these emerging areas. Dmitry Grishin, for example, the CEO of Mail.ru and founder of Grishin Robotics, last year started a $25 million fund dedicated to investing in other robotics companies (examples of his investments here, here and here).

It may be that Genesis teams up with people like this to cooperate on investments. “He shares a vision with us about this space,” says Hogeg.

Pricing is at the heart of every business, and pricing decisions are far more complicated than merely covering expenses. In the price of a good there are connotations of quality, the volume sold and even the perception of the brand. But when it come to digital goods — where the cost of goods sold is measured in AWS instances and engineers — setting prices can become almost pure strategy.

Bill Gurley, a general partner with Benchmark Capital, takes a look at this strategy when it comes to setting what he calls the rake, or commission, between a platform owner and those using the platform. Examples of the rake include Apple’s 30 percent fee on apps in its App store as well as the service fees associated with oDesk or OpenTable.

Gurley’s article, which is well worth a read, explores the relationship between the rake and the spread of the platform through a series of anecdotes. I just wish he had some documented research; not because I think his conclusions are wrong, but because I think we’d learn even more about how the cost of doing business on a platform affects volume in more subtle ways.

For example, Gurley makes much of the benefits of having a low rake, which encourages developers/end users/merchants to use the platform and also prevents a newcomer from coming in and undercutting you on price. What he doesn’t dig into is how the benefits of scale in the digital world mean that undercutting people on price is a race to the bottom. This is one reason people are concerned that no one but Google can compete with Amazon Web Services when it comes to cloud computing, despite Microsoft saying it will match AWS pricing on its own Azure cloud.

Here’s Gurley’s take on competition and the set rake:

If your objective is to build a winner-take-all marketplace over a very long term, you want to build a platform that has the least amount of friction (both product and pricing). High rakes are a form of friction precisely because your rake becomes part of the landed price for the consumer. If you charge an excessive rake, the pricing of items in your marketplace are now unnaturally high (relative to anything outside your marketplace). In order for your platform to be the “definitive” place to transact, you want industry leading pricing – which is impossible if your rake is the de facto cause of excessive pricing. High rakes also create a natural impetus for suppliers to look elsewhere, which endangers sustainability.

And here he is discussing a favorite business model for digital platforms — a low rake with a mechanism for people who want to spend more to do so in exchange for better placement or the opportunity to get favorable placement on the platform:

You start with a low rake to get broad-based supplier adoption, and you add in a market-driven pricing dynamic that allows those suppliers who want more volume or exposure to pay more on an opt-in basis. This way no one leaves the network due to excessive fees, yet you end up with a higher average rake over time due to the competitive dynamic. And when prices go up due to bidding and competition, the suppliers blame their competition not the platform (part of the genius of the Google AdWords business model). This also allows you to extract more dollars from those suppliers who desire to spend more to promote themselves (without raising the tax on those that don’t).

The article is worth reading, and I hope that some MBA professor takes it into his head to start some rigorous research on the best commission structures across digital verticals, or perhaps the biggest factors that should influence your rake rates. Because while generally low is good, if one could manage to be an area where high or medium works — at least for a while — then why not start there and see what happens?

Or better yet, invest in tools that allow for dynamic pricing based on the user’s need or demographics. That’s something more easily done online and is utterly neglected in Gurley’s article. In a digital world, the cost of goods is lower, so the risk of playing with pricing is lower as well. I think we’re going to see a lot more of it.

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Google has invested over a billion dollars into clean power projects, but the search engine giant wants even more ways to access clean power directly for its data centers. That’s why on Friday Google is expected to publicly ask utilities to offer clean power buying programs to large companies like itself that are willing to buy clean power, potentially at a premium. At the same time, Google is also announcing that it’s working with Duke Energy in North Carolina on just such a program.

Duke Energy said it will ask the state commission in North Carolina in the coming months to approve a new plan to sell clean power directly to companies that request it. Utilities sometimes can’t offer these types of programs because of regulatory constraints.

Google will buy that clean power and use it to expand its data center operations in Lenoir, North Carolina. Google said it will invest another $600 million into building out more computing capacity and the equivalent power to run that capacity in Lenoir. The Lenoir data center, which will involve a total investment of $1.2 billion for Google, runs services like Google search, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube.

As I discovered on my North Carolina mega data center road trip last year (which included a stop at Lenoir), North Carolina is becoming a hub for some of the internet giants’ largest data centers. But the problem has been that the North Carolina grid is mostly coal and nuclear power. As a result, some of the internet companies in the state, like Apple, have been trying to be creative — Apple is building out two massive solar panel farms and a fuel cell farm at its data center in Maiden, North Carolina.

Google’s Lenior data center was one of the first in the region, and was built a bit before the internet companies started implementing more clean energy for data centers. Last year for my series, I interviewed Gary Demasi, who has led Google’s efforts purchasing clean power for data centers, and he told me that Google has “gotten more proactive and aggressive since then.” That’s why Google might be starting its first efforts for direct clean power in North Carolina.

Google calls the new program “renewable energy tariffs.” Basically, the customer using the power — in this case Google — would pay for the additional cost of clean power, instead of the rate-payers — basic residential and commercial customers — which is how it operates in many states.

Unlike Apple, Google has shown less interest, so far, in building its own clean power plants at the sites of its data centers. However, that could change, as I’ve heard rumors that Google might want to build more of its own clean power projects, as the price of solar panels has gotten so cheap in recent months. However they do it, clearly Google is trying to innovate within the stodgy world of regulation and the power grid.

Check out my series on North Carolina’s mega data centers:

• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• 10 reasons Apple, Facebook & Google chose North Carolina for their mega data centers
• The controversial world of clean power and data centers
• The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built

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• The case for low-power servers in the data center
• Data center, meet the smart grid
• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world

Twitter may have gotten significantly more useful for businesses this week with the launch of keyword targeting for its ad platform. The company began rolling out the feature on Wednesday in all languages and markets where Twitter ads are supported.

Do you think the new targeting capability makes Twitter more valuable for businesses? Let us know in the comments.

With keyword targeting, advertisers can reach users based on words in their recent tweets and in tweets with which they’ve recently engaged.

“This is an important new capability – especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent – because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context,” says Twitter Revenue product manager Nipoon Malhotra. “For example: let’s say a user tweets about enjoying the latest album from their favorite band, and it so happens that band is due to play a concert at a local venue. That venue could now run a geotargeted campaign using keywords for that band with a Tweet containing a link to buy the tickets. That way, the user who tweeted about the new album may soon see that Promoted Tweet in their timeline letting them know tickets are for sale in their area.”

According to Twitter, users are more likely to engage with promoted tweets that take advantage of keyword targeting. The company ran tests with clients like GoPro, Everything Everywhere, Microsoft Japan and Walgreens, and found this to be the case.

“After testing keyword targeting in timeline across four marketing campaigns, GoPro saw close to two million impressions, and engagement rates as high as 11 percent on Tweets promoted using the new feature,” says Malhotra.

Twitter’s new offering has been drawing comparisons to search advertising. Peter Kafka at All Things D says it’s Twitter making its ad pitch “more Googley”. Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch also compares it to search.

In fact, even Malhotra plays the search card, saying, “Setting up a campaign to target keywords in the timeline is very similar to the setup process for search. Enter the keywords you want to target, choose whether you want to use phrase match or unordered keyword match, and specify your other targeting options such as geographic location, device and gender.”

As Kafka notes, however, some have been quick to point out that it’s not exactly like search in that the intent expressed in a tweet is hardly reflective of the intent of a search. Essentially, when you’re searching, you’re looking for something. When you’re tweeting, you’re simply saying something. Occasionally, that might be a signal of something you’re interested in buying, but how often?

The set-up process is about as easy as it could possibly be. You simply go to Twitter’s Advertisers page, log in, and follow the steps. Tell Twitter who you want to target, what you want to promote, how much you want to spend, and how you want to pay. That’s pretty much it.

Some are still skeptical about how effective the new feature will make Twitter for advertisers, but it certainly can’t hurt. The functionality is available in the full Twitter Ads user interface as well as through the Ads API.

What do you think? Does this make Twitter a better place to advertise? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Amazon Studios has just unveiled 14 new pilots for your viewing pleasure, and your feedback will determine which pilots are developed into something more.

Over on the Amazon Original Pilots page, you can find the pilots for 8 different comedy shows. Most of them have been announced and viewers have simply been waiting for the pilots to drop – this includes Zombieland, based on the film of the same name and Betas, a show about a Silicon Valley startup.

The full list of the comedy pilots is Alpha House, Betas, Browsers, Dark Minions, Onion News Empire, Supanatural, Those Who Can’t, and Zombieland.

Amazon has also launched the pilots for 6 children’s shows: Annebots, Creative Galaxy, Positively Ozitively, Sara Solves It, Teeny Tiny Dogs, and Tumbleaf.

All of the pilots are free to watch for people in the U.S. and the U.K. German LOVEFILM customers will get the pilots in a few weeks.

Amazon is also inviting viewers to rate and review the pilots, in an attempt to determine which ones should receive a full-series run. On the pilots page, Amazon links viewers to a survey where they can answer questions about any and all of the 14 pilots – “Overall, how would you rate the show” and “Based on what you’ve seen, would you watch future episodes” type questions.

Not all of these pilots will receive additional episodes – but the exact number that will is still undecided. Amazon Studios director Roy Price told The Verge:

“We don’t have any particular number of shows in mind…We would like to see a few shows come out of the process. Seven would be a lot, but zero wouldn’t be enough. So somewhere between there.”

So, go watch, and go vote. Let’s see if Amazon can draw up some good series out of this experiment.

Yo-yo world champion BLACK admits that the first time he picked up his instrument of choice, at age 14, he couldn’t figure out the simplest of tricks. But after a week of practice, he started to understand its movement and dynamics.

BLACK: My journey to yo-yo masteryIn today’s talk, given at TED2013, BLACK remembers, “I thought, ‘The yo-yo is something for me to be good at. For the first time in my life, I found my passion.’”

BLACK practiced for hours a day and, four years later, won the World Yo-Yo Contest. But when fame and fortune failed to follow, he put the yo-yo aside and studied to be a systems engineer.

In the end, though, he says couldn’t stay away. He won the World Yo-Yo Contest for a second time in 2007 and, from there, he hasn’t looked back, taking his unusual performance art all around the world.

“I wanted to show on stage how spectacular the yo-yo could be, to change the public image of the yo-yo,” he says. “What I’ve learned with the yo-yo is that if I make enough efforts with huge passion, there’s no impossible.”

After you’ve watched today’s talk — yo-yos swirling masterfully along to dramatic music — watch more videos of this yo-yo superstar in action. Starting with an incredible six-minute act.

If you only have 40 seconds, here’s a supercut of some of his greatest tricks.

Here, BLACK uses a yo-yo to pull a tablecloth off a table — without spilling a drop of water.

The routine that won BLACK the World Yo-Yo Contest in 2007.

And BLACK performs to Christopher Hardy’s “Breathing Light.”

Check out some beautiful images of BLACK from the TED stage »

We’ve already talked about how Twitter has changed the way that real-time journalism functions during news events like the Boston bombings, by taking all the editorial activity that usually happens behind the scenes in newsrooms — the speculation, the fact-checking, and so on — and pushing it out into the open where anyone can take part in it. But it’s not just Twitter, of course: as we’ve seen this week, other social platforms like Reddit are also playing a growing role. Is that good or bad? As with most things on the internet, there’s plenty of both.

Within hours of the explosions in Boston, members of the Reddit community had created a thread (or sub-Reddit) about the incident, in an attempt to identify potential suspects. Users posted photos that had been published online or submitted by onlookers, and analyzed video clips, piecing together clues like a specific kind of zipper that was used on a backpack found at the scene. Eventually, two potential suspects were identified — including one who posted a message on Facebook about his innocence.

Plenty of mistakes to go around

After some more investigation and crowdsourced information gathering, users on the Reddit thread seemed more or less convinced that the two were not likely to be the actual bombers, and eventually declared them “cleared.” Meanwhile, the New York Post identified the same two people as potential suspects and published their photos on the front page (both suspects have now been identified — one was reportedly shot by police on Friday and as of mid-afternoon on Friday the other was said to be on the run).

Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic wrote that the process taking place on Reddit amounted to “vigilantism,” and was reprehensible, and warned against encouraging untrained people to try and determine the validity of forensic evidence after such an event. But is what happened on Reddit so bad? And is it any worse than what the traditional media have done in similar situations? I’m not convinced.

Yes, users of Reddit made mistakes — plenty of them, including identifying the wrong person as a suspect a second time on Thursday after erroneous information emerged from police scanners and other sources. But CNN and the NY Post have made plenty of mistakes as well, something Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review doesn’t really mention in his post about how brilliant the traditional media was and how wrong Reddit has been. The larger point is that this isn’t an either/or situation — crowdsourcing is valuable, and has been valuable for journalism and will continue to be.

Remember when we didn’t think random people putting together an encyclopedia would ever work? And yet it has — in part because it has a lot more structure than Reddit or 4chan. And those sites would probably be a lot more useful in these cases if people spent more time thinking and less time typing. But that doesn’t negate the value they can provide. The idea of using the knowledge and resources of the crowd is the whole point behind Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s “open journalism,” and it is a force we need to figure out how to tame, not dismiss as irrelevant based on one incident.

Open journalism works better

Am I calling what Reddit has been doing since the Boston bombings journalism? Yes. It may not encompass the entirety of what we know as journalism, and it is clearly flawed, but it is certainly an important aspect of it — just as Eliot Higgins, an unemployed British accountant, is performing a valuable journalistic act (one that New York Times writer C.J. Chivers has recognized) in verifying smuggled weapons in Syria by watching hundreds of hours of YouTube videos every day, even though no one is paying him to do so.

Will Oremus at Slate makes a fairly persuasive argument that Reddit has in some cases been *more* responsible in its attempts to identify the individuals than some traditional sources, including the Post. This kind of crowdsourced fact-checking and verification of evidence has been going on for years — it’s just more mainstream now. And anyone looking for evidence of someone jumping the gun and encouraging vigilantism doesn’t have to look any further than CNN.

When I wrote recently about the benefits of having journalism occur out in the open, journalism teacher Steve Fox and others said I didn’t spend enough time on the need for verification, and maybe I didn’t, but I believe this also should be done out in the open. In fact, one of the benefits to doing so is the ability to have more eyes on the information at hand — thereby making it easier to filter out the noise and find the signal, or triangulate the truth. As Jay Rosen has said, journalism gets better the more people there are doing it. And that includes Reddit.

Post and thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr users Christian Scholz and Eva Blue and Jan-Arief Purwanto

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3D printers can be used for a lot of things, but a music player never seemed like one of them. One inventor at Art Hack Day 2013 in Stockholm proved that assumption wrong with his own unique 3D printer that doubled as a music player.

What’s interesting about this particular 3D printer is that it not only plays music, but it prints the music as well. As it’s playing the music, the printer is also creating the “sound-form” of the music as its visualized by a computer program. During the event, the printer played and printed six songs, including the Imperial March and Carmen: Habanera.

Here’s the printer playing and printing Carmen:

You may be asking yourself, “What’s the point?” The point is that it’s really awesome.

If you want to try out 3D printed music for yourself, you can grab the source code here.

[h/t: 3ders]

If Sprint was hoping that Dish’s merger offer would get rival suitor SoftBank to up its bid, it may come away disappointed. An unnamed SoftBank executive tells Bloomberg that the company has no plans to sweeten its offer and instead “will focus on its existing plans” for acquiring the company. As it stands now SoftBank’s $20.1 billion offer is significantly less than the $25.5 billion offer that Dish proposed earlier this week. Sprint has formed a special committee to take a look at Dish’s offer and Dish has asked the Federal Communications Commission to hold off on approving the proposed SoftBank merger until Sprint executives have had the opportunity to evaluate the competing offer.

As it matures, Google’s Chrome OS is looking more and more like a traditional operating system as opposed to a simple browser. François Beaufort from Google points out the Files app shows a number of improvements in the latest Developer version of Chrome OS. And unlike web apps, Files will be what Google calls a Packaged App; software that runs in Chrome OS outside of the browser.

That last point is key because Packaged Apps take advantage of Chrome’s security elements — sandboxing, in particular, so that if they crash or hang, they can’t affect other apps or browser pages  – while still using web technologies. The apps are treated like first-class citizens to the operating system. You can tap Alt + Tab to switch between them, for example. Google explains:

Packaged apps deliver an experience as capable as a native app, but as safe as a web page. Just like web apps, packaged apps are written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. But packaged apps look and behave like native apps, and they have native-like capabilities that are much more powerful than those available to web apps. Packaged apps have access to Chrome APIs and services not available to traditional web sites. You can build powerful apps that interact with network and hardware devices, media tools, and much more.

Aside from the Packaged App technology, the developer build of Files has more and better ways to show files.

On my Chromebook Pixel, for example, I can only see Downloads, Google Drive and any external storage in the Files app. Since the Pixel is my full-time work machine, I typically run the standard Stable version. The newer Developer version also shows recently used files, files that are shared and those marked for offline use. From what I can see, it doesn’t yet include support for other cloud services, however.

Both the usability improvements and the standalone nature of the Files app show that Google doesn’t plan to keep Chrome OS as a simple browser running atop a Linux kernel. The platform is quickly iterating to provide the desktop experience that traditional computers users are used to while still being a lightweight but effective computing environment.

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Whether you’re asking Siri about the weather, the score of last night’s ballgame or something a little more personal, you’re probably at least a little curious about how Apple handles all those voice-activated search requests. Well, you can thank the ACLU and Wired for getting to the bottom of things: it turns out that Apple, using anonymized user ID numbers, holds on to your Siri data for up to two years.

Here’s Wired‘s explanation on what happens when you ask Siri to do something for you and the information goes off to an Apple data center:

Apple generates a random numbers to represent the user and it associates the voice files with that number. This number — not your Apple user ID or email address — represents you as far as Siri’s back-end voice analysis system is concerned.

Once the voice recording is six months old, Apple “disassociates” your user number from the clip, deleting the number from the voice file. But it keeps these disassociated files for up to 18 more months for testing and product improvement purposes.

The report includes a statement from Apple, which confirms the anonymized information may be kept “for up to two years.” But, according to the Apple spokeswoman, “If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers are deleted immediately along with any associated data.”

The two-year mark is six months longer than Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, all of which retain search data for 18 months.

Apple clarified what it does with this information because a lawyer for the ACLU started asking questions. The concern stemmed from Apple’s privacy policy for Siri users, which states in part, “Older voice input data that has been disassociated from you may be retained for a period of time to generally improve Siri and other Apple products and services.”

Machine learning technology and natural language processing, which is what Siri is based on, needs a lot of information to identify patterns in data and therefore be more helpful both in understanding your speech and providing correct answers.

Being connected to an anonymized set of digits may make some users uncomfortable, so the ACLU thinks Apple should make that more clear before they start using the service.

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Over the past decade, patient-centered care has become a mantra for high-quality health care. Policymakers, researchers, physician-leaders, and patients have all cited the need for care to be tailored to patients’ unique needs and preferences. And there is solid evidence that patient-centered care can help improve care quality and reduce costs. However, in the rush to become more patient-centered, the health care system has misplaced its focus.

Current approaches to patient-centered care are based on aggregated preferences rather than individualized needs. Researchers and health systems deploy focus groups and surveys to assess general patient preferences in an effort to determine “what patients want.” But patients are a diverse group with diverse needs. Characterizing general beliefs and preferences alienates those whose needs and preferences do not align with the majority. The result has been a monolithic view of patients and their needs — a framework that prevents the delivery of truly patient-centered care.

All service industries share the challenge of providing tailored, individualized service. In response, leaders in customer service have developed tools and infrastructure to understand and respond to individual needs and preferences. Health care providers should leverage these approaches.

Tailored Service

For example, lessons from hospitality industry hold promise in helping physicians understand patient preferences and deliver tailored care. Consider New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer, who has built a restaurant empire on a relentless pursuit of hospitality and personalized service.

People sitting down for a business dinner or anniversary at one of his restaurants might receive reserved, formal service. A group of eager tourists, on the other hand, may hear longer explanations of each dish and its provenance.

This type of service acumen is essential if physicians are going to respond to each patient’s unique needs and provide individualized care. However, medical education currently focuses on teaching standardized approaches to patient interaction. We were taught specific language that patients find helpful and specific actions and reactions such as placing a hand on patients if they begin to cry.

These strategies are well intentioned but stem from a misguided focus on the needs of the average patient. New servers at Meyer’s restaurants do not learn the preferences of the average diner. Instead, they are trained to quickly assess the preferences of the people at each table and tailor service to their unique needs. Medical schools should help students develop these same skills.

Consumer-Marketing Tools

Additionally, consumer-marketing tools, such as customer segmentation, can help providers deliver tailored care. Customer segmentation is ubiquitous across service and consumer product industries, but its application to health care has lagged. As health-care-delivery systems expand and more data is stored in electronic databases, there exists the potential to prospectively segment patients according to their needs and preferences.

Recently, researchers have used cluster analysis and data mining of large health databases to group patients according to preferences and measures of experience. Delivery systems could use these data to predict patient needs and expectations. For example, a practice could determine which patients are more likely to prefer being close partners in care decisions, be especially angered by lengthy wait times, or place a premium on warm, trusting relationships with staff.

Despite their broad applicability, these types of strategies and insights from service industries are underutilized by health care systems. One reason is providers have been reluctant to see health care as a service industry. Only by accepting the reality that it is one can providers learn from the successes of others in the field. And there is plenty to learn.

An L.A. SWAT team was called to the home of actor Eddie Kaye Thomas this week, but it wasn’t the latest incident of ‘swatting‘.

TMZ this week is reporting that Thomas placed a 911 call this week, after a woman at his house threatened him with a knife. Police arrived and an hours-long standoff with the woman ended when the SWAT team forced her out of the house with tear gas.

The TMZ report states that Thomas had only met the woman the night before the incident. The woman reportedly “trashed” Thomas’ house and smashed a guitar during the incident. She has been charged with felony vandalism.

Thomas is most famous for playing the role of Finch in the 1999 movie American Pie. The character is famous for bedding another character’s (Stifler’s) mom at the end of the movie.

In addition to reprising his role in other American Pie movies, Thomas has starred in movies such as Freddy Got Fingered, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

(Image courtesy Attit Patel/Wikimedia Commons)

Google released its Q1 earnings on Thursday, beating Wall Street estimates. The company reported $14 billion in revenue, up 31% year-over-year.

Google has made available its entire earnings call for all to listen to after it was broadcast live . If you want to revisit it, here you go:

You can see the full earnings release here.

Earlier this month, it was rumored that Microsoft was working on a 7-inch Windows 8 tablet. The news came after Microsoft changed up its rules reducing the minimum resolution for a Windows 8 device to 1024×768. Now the company has confirmed that it is indeed working on a smaller tablet.

During its earnings call yesterday, outgoing Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said that smaller Windows 8 devices are on the way. We can assume that he means that Microsoft itself is working on a cheaper, smaller Surface tablet, but don’t be surprised if Microsoft’s partners also announce smaller tablets.

As I’ve said before, smaller tablets may be key to a Windows 8 revival. The touch-friendly OS and Microsoft’s Surface tablets haven’t exactly been flying off store shelves. One of the major reasons is the high cost as the base Surface RT retails for $499. A seven-inch tablet would lower the price barrier for consumers interested in Windows 8 hardware, but were turned off by the high price of entry.

Of course, we have no idea when Microsoft or its partners will release these smaller Windows 8 tablets. A good bet is the latter half of this year as Windows Blue, or Windows 8.1, will be launching around that time. Microsoft is rumored to be completely revamping its marketing with Windows Blue and a cheap seven-inch tablet would fit nicely with marketing that extols an even friendlier Windows 8 experience on desktop and mobile.

Microsoft’s BUILD conference will be held in June of this year, and the company will also have a large presence at E3. While the latter will be mostly focused on the next Xbox, it wouldn’t be an entirely bad idea for Microsoft to show off a smaller Surface that can act as a controller for the company’s next game console.

[h/t: GottaBeMobile]

The first call came at 2:38 a.m., which I missed. Caller ID said “Watertown Emergency.” The second came a few minutes later; it was a robocall from the chief of police warning us of an “active incident” in East Watertown, telling folks to stay at home and not open the door for anyone not in a uniform.

Try to sleep after that. A quick check of Twitter showed there had been a shootout and possible explosions in East Watertown and that the suspects were also involved in the shooting of an MIT campus police officer late Thursday night. The officer died.

I live in Watertown, a town just west of Boston where overnight police have converged in their hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers. The town — and to some degree the metropolitan area including Boston, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham — is now in full lockdown. My house is barely a mile from what appears to be a paramilitary operation but I can hear and see nothing of it. Nor did I hear the gunfire and explosions that rocked East Watertown in the early morning hours, and which neighbors captured on cell phone video.

In the hours after the robo-call, there was the usual flurry of information and misinformation on Twitter as well as the TV stations — one of the suspects was erroneously identified on Reddit and other sites as missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi. One of the local TV outlets, after spending a half hour rehashing what had been reported and misreported by others, then dropped the feed of the State Police’s statement during the night. Mind boggling.

Friends and family of missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi are frustrated that he was falsely accused of the bombing: ow.ly/kdZL2—
Ted Nesi (@tednesi) April 19, 2013

Folks quickly turned to police scanner apps to get the lowdown. (Ustream then picked up another app here.) That sparked a debate on just how responsible that is.

Police scanner just went down. It's obvious they are trying to keep their operations more private. #watertown—
Josh Varela (@JVarela13) April 19, 2013

Finding out what happened required triangulation — as one Twitter correspondent put it, cops on the scanners are having conversations, they don’t know what’s going on either.

Reports were all over the map. Both suspects of the Marathon bombing were involved; both were killed; one was captured, one was killed; the reality emerging this morning is that one suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was dead; the other, his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was at large wearing a suicide vest. Or not. The latter appears to be suspect number 2 (white hat guy) in the Boston Marathon bombings.

What this shows is that proximity to an event means nothing in terms of accuracy unless you are an actual eyewitness. The information I had a mile away was available to everyone.

The lockdown continues.

Photos courtesy Getty Images.

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Google announced that it is updating its terms and conditions for AdSense users. The changes will go into effect April 23rd.

AdSense product manager Matt Goodridge writes in a blog post, “In order to keep pace with changes in our products, we regularly review our Terms and Conditions to make sure they’re up to date and in line with those of other Google products. As a result of our recent review, we’ll be making some updates to our Terms, starting April 23rd. If you’re based in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or North America, you’ll see a notification in your account when you log in after this date. It will present you with the updated Terms and prompt you to accept them. For publishers based in the Asia-Pacific region, the change to our Terms will happen slightly later as we’re rolling the changes out gradually across all regions.”

Google says the main things that are changing are that the new version of the terms will be easier to navigate, and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. Also, the terms will be more mobile-friendly.

“With mobile being one of the big trends in 2013 and beyond, we’re expanding our Terms to cover mobile properties more specifically,” says Goodridge. “We’ve also incorporated guidelines for using the AdMob SDK and other publisher products.”

These aren’t the only changes, however. Google says a number of smaller changes have been made throughout, so you will want to review them.

As you probably know, on Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA. The bill, which aims to help the government react to cybersecurity threats by making it easier to share information between itself and private companies, saw bipartisan support. Opponents of CISPA have argued that the bill is a a massive invasion of privacy, and will be used to justify wholesale spying on the American public by making companies who give up private user info immune from suits or prosecution.

Although CISPA as a whole saw bipartisan support, one last-minute amendement that looked to curtail a worrisome practice by employers was shot down on party lines.

Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter attempted to tack on a provision to CISPA that would make it illegal for employers to require prospective employees to hand over their social media passwords as a condition of acquiring or keeping a job.

The proposal was voted down 224-189, with Republicans in the majority.

“People have an expectation of privacy when using social media like Facebook and Twitter. They have an expectation that their right to free speech and religion will be respected when they use social media outlets. No American should have to provide their confidential personal passwords as a condition of employment. Both users of social media and those who correspond share the expectation of privacy in their personal communications. Employers essentially can act as imposters and assume the identity of an employee and continually access, monitor and even manipulate an employee’s personal social activities and opinions. That’s simply a step too far,” said Perlmutter.

This isn’t the first time that Perlmutter has introduced this sort of legislation. Last year, the same employee password protection language was rejected in the House.

Last year, the practice of employers demanding the Facebook passwords of prospective employees became a hot topic. Both state legislatures and the U.S. Congress introduced measures to counteract the rising trend. One particular bill, the Password Protection Act of 2012, was introduced in both the House and the Senate, but went nowhere.

On the flip side, some states have had success in passing bans on the practice. First, the state of Maryland enacted a law banning password snooping. And this year, laws in both California and Illinois went into effect.

“It’s not déjà vu — this is the same amendment I introduced twice last year, so people have had plenty of time to study and discuss it. It has bipartisan support. It wouldn’t kill the underlying cyber-security bill; it wouldn’t send it back to committee. It merely safeguards an individuals’ personal privacy as they use their own personal social media accounts,” said Perlmutter.

It’s important to note that Perlmutter did in fact vote yes on CISPA.

But despite those claims, the provision was crushed. If the past year is any indication, password protection legislation must be tackled at the state level, as it’s the only place that its been able to see any sort of success.