Category: News

Earlier this week, a late April Fool’s hoax made its debut, alleging that popular U.S. pastor Joel Osteen had renounced Christianity. Osteen is the pastor of a mega-church in Houston, Texas, and has a worldwide broadcast ministry that has made him one of the most recognizable Christian figures in the U.S.

The elaborate hoax involved a fake blog, YouTube videos, and a fake Twitter account (which has now been suspended) that laid out the fake Osteen’s reasoning for no longer believing in Christianity. From the fake blog:

I believe now that the Bible is a fallible, flawed, highly inconsistent history book that has been altered hundreds of times. There is zero evidence the Bible is the holy word of God. In fact, there is zero evidence “God” even exists.

Though Osteen and his ministry have not officially acknowledged the hoax, Osteen gave an interview to ABC and confirmed that he is still a Christian.

“All is well,” said Osteen. “I still have my faith, nothing has changed.”

Osteen also stated that he isn’t upset about the hoax, and that it is somewhat amusing.

“I’m really not angry,” said Osteen. “I don’t feel like a victim. I feel too blessed that life is too short to let things like this get you down.”

Cloud computing and scalability are often mentioned in the same sentence, but often not when talking about databases. Especially not MySQL databases. A Boston-based startup called ParElastic hopes to change that, and has raised a $5.7 million Series A led by General Catalyst Partners (former VMware CTO Steve Herrod’s new home) to help fund its cause.

ParElastic sits in between the application and the underlying database and lets developers scale without having to resort to complicated sharding or maybe even moving the database back in-house where they can run it on a bigger server. Architecturally, Founder and CEO Ken Rugg told me, ParElastic’s Database Virtualization Engine is similar to a parallel database system, although it functions more like middleware that manages multiple database instances as one and is designed for operational rather than analytic workloads.

Because it intelligently balances database load and distributed data across servers, ParElastic is ideal for multitenant situations where multiple users, applications or services are accessing the database simultaneously, Rugg added.

Now, anyone familiar with the next-generation database market might think they’ve heard this story before, and they kind of have. The NoSQL database movement rode into town on the promise of high scalability, and the NewSQL movement furthered that story by bringing scale-out performance to SQL. Some of these databases are even available as cloud services.

However, Rugg explained, there’s a big difference between these options and what ParElastic does. Namely, while NoSQL and NewSQL options require deploying an entirely new database and likely rewriting some application code, ParElastic’s software just overlays customers’ existing cloud databases. Rugg said about half of its early users are running standard MySQL versions on Amazon Web Services, while the rest are spread across cloud providers such as Rackspace, Joyent and LiquidWeb.

Some ParElastic users actually manage existing SQL services such as Amazon’s Relational Database Service and Google Cloud SQL. One even uses it to manage an in-house database environment. And technically, Rugg noted, ParElastic could manage cross-cloud database deployments but, because of the inherent latency hit that would entail, “we wouldn’t recommend that.”

However, he said, the biggest beneficiary of ParElastic aside from the company itself might well be AWS. It is by far the most widely used cloud in the world, but when users reach the limites of their single database instances, Amazon usually tells them to look into sharding or perhaps transitioning to DynamoDB. “None of those are really too friendly for Amazon keeping their customers moving forward in their cloud,” Rugg said.

Further, although certain cloud providers offer better CPU, IO or network performance than AWS does (Rugg cited Rackspace as being particularly strong on IO performance, for example, and ProfitBricks as looking promising on the network front), “Amazon is sort of the lowest common denominator in a number of ways,” Rugg explained. The economics and performance requirements vary from application to application, of course, but ParElastic could help stitch together a number of commodity AWS instances to provide suitable performance at a lower cost than might be possible using the biggest, fastest instances from other providers.

Having watched the cloud market unfold as it has, though, Rugg and ParElastic aren’t banking on AWS — which has a reputation for launching services that compete with startup ecosystem partners — as the future of the business. By supporting other cloud providers that are gaining acceptance (aside from the ones Rugg noted, Google has been impressing some with the performance of its Compute Engine service), ParElastic is in a pretty good position to handle whatever cloud-database market shifts might occur.

“Even if Amazon comes out and says ‘We’re going to replace you with something we built back in the lab,’ that puts us in a great position in terms of validating the market,” Rugg said.

ParElastic’s existing investors — Point Judith Capital,  CommonAngels and LaunchCapital — also participated in the Series A round, which brings the company’s total venture capital to $8.7 million.

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BoxCryptor, the German startup that provides added security for information held in cloud storage vaults such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive, is previewing a new version of its client-side encryption tool.

The new version of BoxCryptor is more explicitly aimed at teams. It includes new features such as the ability to share file access permissions without sharing private passwords, and to share files with entire teams with a single click. BoxCryptor 2 also does away with the original version’s mapping of files to folders, a system that meant every folder and project required the setting-up of a new BoxCryptor drive – now, there’s just one drive.

Another compliance-friendly new feature for businesses is the option to have a master key covering everything encrypted by employees, just in case someone leaves suddenly or goes rogue.

The update comes as BoxCryptor finds itself up against an increasing range of rivals such as Viivo and DigitalQuick. CipherCloud closed a $30 million investment round last December, and Symantec is also now in the Dropbox encryption game. In short, everyone’s clicked that consumer cloud services will be used in business, like it or not, and their consumer-grade security leaves a market opportunity for more serious users.

According to BoxCryptor CEO Andrea Wittek, the full version of BoxCryptor 2 will come out sometime this quarter. The technical preview, launched on Tuesday, can be downloaded for Windows and Android.

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After Sony revealed the PlayStation 4 in February, everybody turned to Microsoft expecting a reveal of the next Xbox. Previous rumors suggested an April showing, but a new report says that we won’t be seeing anything about the new console until May.

Paul Thurrot revealed during the latest “What the Tech?!” podcast that Microsoft would be unveiling its next Xbox on May 21. The Verge was able to confirm the date with sources close to Microsoft saying that the event was originally schedule for April, but was pushed back to May for an unknown reason.

There wasn’t much more information revealed about the console, but Thurrot did throw out one interesting tidbit – the price. He claims that the next Xbox will retail for $500, but will only cost $300 if the consumer chooses to go with a subscription service. A subscription model would be nothing new for the company as it already offers the Xbox 360 for $99 with a two-year contract that has the consumer paying a monthly fee for Xbox Live.

Interestingly enough, Thurrot also says that the internal Microsoft documentation he has mentions the always online requirement that stirred up quite a bit of controversy last week.

As for the event itself, The Verge’s report says that Microsoft will be holding a small event in May to officially unveil the console and a few of its core features. The company will be saving most of its big announcements, however, for E3 in June.

[h/t: NBC News]

A string of recent iPhone and Galaxy price cuts has rocked the phone markets from Europe to Brazil to India. This is the season for price cuts from Apple (AAPL) and Samsung (005930), and we see the same thing every year. But this time around, the cuts are more severe than we have ever seen before. Some pricing on Galaxy S models in Asia have dropped by nearly 50% as Samsung battles back against the insurgency of upstart brands like Micromax and Karbonn. The Galaxy S III’s price in Europe has plunged by nearly 40% from June 2012 as Samsung prepares to debut the Galaxy S4. Apple’s iPhone 4 has dipped to just $270 in Brazil. In India, Apple now offers to pay 7,000 rupees for old smartphones from consumers who trade them in towards an iPhone 4 — probably the most aggressive promotion Apple has ever launched over there.

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If you have followed me for anytime now then you probably already know that I am a happy Pandora customer. The music app gets me through my days in my lonely office of one. It turns out, I am not the only fan of the streaming service as I have 200 million friends joining me.

Pandora announces that it has passed that milestone after eight years in the market. While the personalized radio service came online back in 2005, it took until July of 2011 to reach the first 100 million users, but growth has obviously expanded exponentially since then.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren says, “We started this company to help people discover and enjoy music they love, and to help artists reach and grow their audiences. Only in our wildest dreams did we imagine what it would become. It is now clear that radio is changing, and that’s great news for music fans and for the tens of thousands of working artists who now have a home on the air”.

There are also some rather interesting statistics that come along with the announcement. For instance, Pandora claims that it streams 200 million songs before 10 am daily, listeners have personalized their stations with more than 25 billion thumbs, last month Pandora played more than 100,000 unique artists and more than 1 million unique songs and more than 140 million listeners have tuned in to Pandora on a mobile device.

Statistics for how many of those customers were on paid accounts versus free were not included in the announcement. Personally, I find the $3.99 fee a small price for the lack of ads and unlimited mobile streaming — I listen on my phone as opposed to my PC.

Photo Credit: Regissercom/Shutterstock

The rising yuan, which hit its highest last week since China’s FX market was set up in 1994,  should boost demand for China’s offshore “dim sum” bond market, and Africa may join in the action.

Trade between China and Africa totaled $200 billion last year, and Standard Chartered expects that to hit $325 billion by 2015, so it makes sense for African governments and companies to hold assets denominated in the renminbi, or yuan as the currency is also known.

Nigeria for instance said in 2011 it would start to hold yuan in its central bank reserves, and Standard Chartered analysts said in a note that Nigeria and Tanzania’s central banks each bought 500 million yuan of a 3.5 billion yuan dim sum bond launched by China Development Bank last July. Standard Chartered says:

As the use of the CNY (yuan) as a trade-settlement currency becomes more widespread, more African central banks are likely to look to diversify their foreign exchange reserves to include the CNY.

 For now, dim sum bond issuance by African governments or corporates outside of South Africa or Nigeria is not likely until the market has deepened and broadened enough to foster significant appetite for African debt denominated in the CNY from Singaporean and Hong Kong investors, who account for around 80 percent of demand in the dim sum market.

 

 

Saving something to read later, in Instapaper or Pocket, doesn’t mean that you’ll ever actually get around to reading it. A company called Blackstrap aims to fix that: It will print all of your read-later articles into a $15 book. “If an article deserves a little time, then Blackstrap it: choose the ones you want to linger over and we’ll print, bind and send them to you, to enjoy undistracted,” the company says.

Blackstrap’s Tyler Fonda tells the Huffington Post, ”We had been thinking a lot about slowing down the digital flow. So we formed an LLC called Molasses in honor of that thought. Blackstrap is the most distilled, viscous version of molasses. We thought that was fitting for this product.”

To make your book, you log into your Pocket, Instapaper or Twitter account through Blackstrap and then select which articles you want in print form. (On Twitter, you’re selecting links from tweets you’ve favorited.) Each book can be up to 74 pages long. Shipping in the U.S. is free. Turnaround time is 10 to 15 days, though the company told me it’s working on making that faster.

Blackstrap says its service doesn’t run afoul of copyright law: You can only print an article from a given URL once, and the company’s terms and conditions specify that users can’t make copies of their books. “We believe that the service we provide is merely allowing our customers to ‘space-shift’ digital content they are interested in reading offline,” Fonda told HuffPo.

So is anybody actually going to use this? $15 plus the wait for shipping seems like a lot for a service that can largely be replicated by printing articles at your desk — and the blog-to-book services that sprang up around the time that blogs got popular never really took off. It made me think, though, that Pocket and Instapaper should consider adding an option that would let users export all their saved articles into a single PDF. At the very least, as the image shows, Blackstrap’s resulting product is a slim volume that can fit neatly into that stack of magazines you also never get around to reading.

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There’s cash in that trash.

Analysts at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch are expounding opportunities to profit from the burgeoning waste disposal industry, which it estimates at $1 trillion at present but says could double within the next decade. They have compiled a list of more than 80 companies which may benefit most from the push for recycling waste, generating energy from biomass and building facilities to process or reduce waste. It’s an industry that is likely to grow exponentially as incomes rise, especially in emerging economies, BofA/ML says in a note:

We believe that the global dynamics of waste volumes mean that waste management offers numerous opportunities for those with exposure to the value chain. We see opportunities across waste management, industrial treatment, waste-to-energy, wastewater & sewage,…recycling, and sustainable packaging among other areas.

There is no denying there is a problem. Around 11.2 billion tonnes of solid waste are produced by the world’s six billion people every day and 70 percent of this goes to landfill. In some emerging economies, over 90 percent is landfilled.  And the waste mountain is growing. By 2050, the earth’s population will reach 9 billion, while global per capita GDP is projected to quadruple. So waste production will double by 2025 and again from 2025 to 2050, United Nations agencies estimate.

And in emerging markets, challenges and opportunities are both enormous, BofA/ML says. Just Brazil for instance needs investments of $180 billion in this sector. For one, recycling is less widespread. Second, as countries grow richer they produce more rubbish. Third, all big emerging countries have multi-billion dollar plans to improve waste disposal.

Lets look at some of the opportunities BofA/ML has identified:

– Disposal and recycling of municipal solid waste (rubbish, in common parlance) is currently worth $400 billion but over the next decade,  $87 billion in investments are expected in this sector.

– Waste-to-energy (energy recovery from waste): One ton of rubbish can create 500-750 kilowatts of power. This market is worth $7.4 billion in 2013 and  could grow to $81 billion by 2022.

– Sustainable packaging: Accounts for a third of solid waste in developed countries. Worth almost $109 billion in 2011, the market is expected to grow to $178-212 billion by 2015-18.

– e-waste (discarded electrical or electronic devices):  Recycling/reuse of e-waste components was worth $13.9 billion in 2012 but could grow to between $25 and 44.3 billion by 2017-20. One example of how lucrative this can be – -recycling one million mobile phones can recover 24 kg of gold, 250 kg of silver and more than 9,000 kg of copper.

Wastewater and sewage treatment:  The biggest investments are needed in the developing world but in the United States alone, infrastructure of $1 trillion could be needed over the next 25 years, BofA says, citing research from the American Waterworks Association.

To profit from all this clearly needs a long-term commitment. Companies highlighted by BofA/ML range from sewage treatment firms Copasa in Brazil and Severn Trent in Britain;  waste-to-energy firms China Everbright and UK’s Pennon and sustainable packaging producers U.S. Rock-Tenn and Hong Kong’s Lee & Manpaper. The analysts add:

Although it is difficult to accurately gauge the link between such exposure and share price performance, we still consider waste-related  exposure an important and positive point to track, given that waste is a sustainability megatrend with a 20-25 year lifespan.

Looks like Google might be in the hot seat again because competitors filed a new antitrust complaint against them in the EU alleging that the Android OS gives an unfair advantage for Google apps. The complaint was filed by Fairsearch Europe, which consists Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle. Lead lawyer for Fairsearch said that Google is using Android “as a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today,”  He is referring to the fact that Android OEM’s have a contractual obligation to place Google-branded apps such as Maps, YouTube, and Drive in “prominent default placement on the phone.”

I guess if anyone is an expert with this kind of complaint, it’s Microsoft since they were already a victim for similar occurrences.  Back  in 2004, they were fined €497 million (or $600 million) for bundling Windows Media Player with its operating system. Then they failed to bundle competing web browsers with Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which cost them the €561 million (or $732 million).

No comments to this new case specifically, but Google spokesman Al Verney said the company continues “to work cooperatively” with the commission.

sources: NY Times / Fairsearch Europe (PDF)
via: TheVerge

Come comment on this article: Google in the hot seat again as Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle file new antitrust complaint with the EU

Windows XP remains one of the most popular operating systems on the planet, especially for businesses that don’t feel like upgrading to Windows 7 or 8. That popularity will surely continue for years to come, but Microsoft won’t be along for the ride starting next year.

As per its support schedule, Microsoft announced that it’s dropping extended support for Windows XP in April 2014. That means that businesses and users alike have a year to upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8. Doing so will ensure that users continue to receive support in the form of security updates and patches from Microsoft.

Of course, Microsoft would love nothing more than to move more people to Windows 8. The new OS isn’t doing that well among consumers (except for gamers), but a forced upgrade from Windows XP may at least push some companies into buying bulk Windows 7/8 licenses.

There are some problems with that though. In April of last year, we looked at how forcing users to upgrade to Windows 7 or 8 was going to cause some headaches for businesses that rely on Windows XP and its compatibility with older software. Upgrading to a newer OS would require more than just buying a bulk license – it would require the company to rewrite core software.

As companies plan on upgrading from Windows XP, there are some companies waiting to pounce on those unsure of Windows 7 or 8. One in particular is Canonical, stewards of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. The company has been pushing Ubuntu’s enterprise capabilities for some time now, and the allure of a free OS would certainly be appealing to some.

While we certainly can’t see what the future holds, we can at least look back on a good 12 year run for Windows XP. It was arguably the most popular Windows OS ever released, and it reigned during the golden age of PCs. Those days are long gone, but we can at least look back fondly at that green hill desktop that reminded us that the grass truly was greener on the other side of the personal computing revolution.

Sometime last fall, Apple’s iOS App Store and Google’s Play reached rough parity in the total number of apps they offer for download. But the two mobile app stores remain unequal in other ways: While Google Play accounted for a majority of worldwide mobile app downloads during the first quarter of 2013, Apple continues to rake in almost all the profits: it claimed 74 cents for every dollar spent on apps during the quarter, according to a report by Canalys published Monday.

This is basically mirroring the dynamic we’ve seen play out between Android handset makers and the iPhone maker: Apple takes in a vast majority of the profits in the smartphone industry while Android device makers sell far more handsets.

Here’s the stat breakdown on Android versus iOS downloads in the Canalys App Interrogator report:

Worldwide, Apple’s App Store accounted for the largest indexed proportion of revenue between the four stores, at around 74%, while the Google Play store saw the greatest number of downloads, accounting for about 51% of the stores’ collective total, with Apple close behind.

Google has a bare majority of downloads, but that will likely get bigger as Android is by far the leading mobile platform by volume. What’s less certain is how quickly Android app downloads will be able to draw away the revenue advantage that Apple (and its developers) so clearly enjoy. Android app downloaders have historically demonstrated a preference for free apps.

As I wrote earlier this year, Google’s app marketplace is indeed starting to catch up to Apple’s in a variety of metrics, including quality of available apps, better store management and app curation. But the revenue factor is a huge one: as long as developers can continue to count on iOS device owners being more likely to spend money on apps, the longer it will take for the Android platform to attract high-quality, popular and exclusive app hits that make iOS users feel like they’re missing out.

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Although the decentralized digital currency first appeared in 2009, Bitcoin’s popularity has really taken off in recent weeks and the value of the coins has skyrocketed since January. The world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, currently has the currency listed as being worth $209 per coin.

Although you can purchase bitcoins, the real way to get your hands on some is to mine for them using a computer. The process involves solving a complex mathematical algorithm and it becomes harder to find blocks of bitcoins as time goes on because there’s only a set number of them in the system (the total number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million).

Anyone can mine for bitcoins, although attempting to find coins on your own is now very difficult because so many people have jumped onboard the digital gold rush in recent weeks. Check out the Bitcoin mining profitability calculator to see the average generation time for a solo block.

You can however, increase your chances of making money by joining forces with others and mining in a pool.

The trouble is, although it seems everyone is talking about Bitcoin at the moment, understanding what it is, and how to get started may seem a bit confusing to first timers. I’d recommend you read this article on Business Insider, browse the official FAQ and watch this excellent video from Duncan Elms which will tell you everything you need to know about the digital currency.

To join in on the Bitcoin craze you’ll need a wallet, and a miner. Launch GUIMiner and go to File, New Miner. Choose the type you want, and then give your miner a name. Select a server and go to the website to create an account and then create a worker or copy the details of the one created for you. Log into GUIMiner using the worker details, and then click the Start Mining button.

50Miner is also very good.

Are you a bitcoin miner? And if so what has your experience been like? Have you made any real money from it?

Photo credit: ppart/Shutterstock

As Kanye West prepares to become a parent and expends his mental energy on crafting joke names for his progeny, he certainly doesn’t have time to go to court over one of his biggest hit songs.

TMZ is reporting that a lawsuit has been filed over West’s 2005 hit ‘Gold Digger’. The lawsuit claims that West sampled a small portion of a 1974 Thunder & Lightning song titled ‘Bumpin’ Bus Stop’. Thunder & Lightning singer David Pryor wrote and sang the song, and now his children are suing West for his use of the sample. Trena Steward and Lorenzo Pryor are suing for money and an injunction on sales of ‘Gold Digger’.

The sample in question comes from the beginning of ‘Gold Digger’. As West is saying “Get down girl, go ‘head, get down,” a voice in the background can be heard saying “get down” repeatedly. Steward and Pryor claim this is sampled from ‘Bumpin’ Bus Stop.’ The sample comes in at around the 33-second mark in the ‘Gold Digger’ video below:

(Image courtesy Matthew Field/Wikimedia Commons)

If you pass a MoMA Design Store in New York City today, you’ll notice a slew of entrancing kinetic sculptures in their windows – a giant shark swimming after a lure and a cyclist powering a cardboard ferris wheel. Ayah Bdeir: Building blocks that blink, beep and teachEach of these sculptures is powered by littleBits, the Lego-like electronic toys created by TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir. LittleBits snap together with magnets to beep, light up and power motors. MoMA Stores have been carrying the educational toys since January.

Bdeir tells the TED Blog that her collaboration with MoMA actually began two years ago, when littleBits were featured in the MoMA exhibit, “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects.” When she heard the toys would be carried in the store, she quickly thought about fantastical window displays.

“We are huge fans of MoMA and the MoMA store,” she explains. “So we decided to pitch them an even bigger idea: what if we designed our own window display, entirely made with littleBits … Every single piece of the installation is made with littleBits — not a single external motor, or robotics platform, or programming whatsoever. The largest wheel and the smallest ‘lil guy are all animated with littleBits. It’s so mesmerizing.”

Watch a video of the making of these window displays »

One of the biggest challenges facing any company in global expansion mode is how to maintain swift and sure communication. The more countries you enter, the more languages you encounter, and soon enough, your once lean, streamlined enterprise is slowed by translation issues.

What do you do?

Hire interpreters? That sounds easy, but the bigger you get, the harder that is to manage. My company, Rakuten, Inc., operates in 13 countries, spanning a dozen languages. I’d need a standing army of translators to manage now, and my plan involves adding many more countries. That’s not a cost-effective strategy.

Translation software? That’s fine for short bursts of communication, but would you trust a more complex discussion to the software? Would you launch a new product with software delivering orders to everyone from development to marketing? Would you communicate with your compliance department that way? As anyone who has ever chuckled over the hilarious mistakes of AutoCorrect knows, software is most certainly fallible.

At Rakuten we faced this challenge and have embraced a solution that not only improved our communication as a company, but it propelled us into the ranks of global expansion leadership. I call it Englishnization. It is the commitment to English as the company’s official language.

I made no cultural judgment when I picked English. I don’t think English is “better” than any other language. It was purely a practical choice, drawn from my own experiences in the global marketplace. The most talented individuals in industries such as technology and finance spoke English, either as a first or second language. Many had been educated in English-speaking institutions. Try thinking about this in terms of your own global business efforts. Imagine a conference room of individuals drawn from the far corners of the globe to work in your company or to do business with you. What language are they most likely to have in common? Now picture this group engaged in brainstorming, negotiations, or expansion planning. What promotes the best and most effective free flow of ideas — a common language or the latest translation software?

I began Englishnization in 2010. I made the announcement in English. I held that day’s board meeting in English. Within 24 hours of my announcement, all the signs in headquarters from the elevators to the cafeteria had been switched over from Japanese to English. Word rippled from headquarters in Tokyo across our global offices. I was 100% serious. Englishnization was happening.

Englishnization has three phases: All workers are required to take a two-hour 200-question test (TOEIC) to assess their reading and listening comprehension of business English, and continue to take the test until they’ve passed. Those who fail to meet the standard risk demotion. A second phase involves bringing in outside help to coach employees on how to study and manage learning English. The last phase makes English the language of meetings — in Tokyo and all over our global flow chart.

Our results so far: Since we started looking at TOEIC scores, the company-wide average has moved from 526.2 points in October 2010 to 737.3 out of a possible 990 in February 2013. In just over two years, the average employee has improved his or her TOEIC score by 211.1 points. Some have improved their scores by over 400 points. Beyond the scores, virtually all of our internal meetings are now conducted in English. Also, today, 30% of new hires are non-Japanese, and 50% of new engineers are non-Japanese. The vast majority do not speak Japanese, but they do speak English. These employees are communicating in English regularly with the employees in our Tokyo headquarters as well as our overseas subsidiaries and partner companies. English is also helping us to attract and hire the best and the brightest talent all over the world.

I will not say it has been easy. The pressure on my employees to learn English and integrate it into daily business life has been intense. I have had to reflect on and refine my process in order to take into account the human impact of this effort. But it is clear to me that Englishnization moves us forward in the global marketplace in away that translators and translation software could never manage. When I give a weekly address to all employees — in English — everyone worldwide can receive and act on that information instantly. There’s no waiting around for the translation. When I post using social media, whether it is through Twitter or our internal social media tools, I can engage and connect immediately. When employees need to collaborate, they can do so across national borders. Our global company is unified not just by ownership and corporate purpose, but by language.

I have been called many things since I launched Englishnization. Some Japanese executives called me stupid. Some of my colleagues told me I was crazy. I’m sure my employees muttered many more colorful phrases about me in a variety of languages.

But the one thing I am not called is wrong. As difficult, stressful, and crazy as Englishnization has been, it has been the right move for Rakuten. We communicate as one. We manage and innovate with speed and precision, and that will only increase with our English skills. We are fully and truly global. Meanwhile, plenty of globally expanding competitors are still lost in translation.

Apple’s (AAPL) vision of a hybrid device that combines a touchscreen tablet and a notebook computer has finally been revealed — and it looks a whole lot like dozens of devices that are already on the market. Patently Apple recently dug up a newly published patent that details at least one route Apple may take if it ever decides to launch such a product. And while the hybrid device is novel in some regards, it also closely resembles a number of devices that have been widely available for years now.

Continue reading…

It was one of the biggest acquisitions of the Web 2.0 internet world, and for a generation of startup founders who grew up in the post-iPhone app world, Facebook’s purchase of the Instagram for a staggering $1 billion set a new precedent. The acquisition was a landmark for the technology community in terms of the amount of money a company would pay for a simple app, and it also underscored the importance  of photos on social media by setting off a series of “photo wars” and new tensions among the big web companies including Twitter and Facebook.

But for Instagram and its users themselves? Things haven’t actually changed all that much — so far.

One year ago on April 9, 2012, Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Facebook wall (where else?) that the not-yet-public Facebook would acquire Instagram. Founded in 2010 as a pivot from a location-based app called Burbn, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger’s Instagram turned into a scrappy mobile startup that seemed like the antithesis of Facebook’s ubiquitous web platform. It seemed like an odd match, and the even if the sale was a defensive move to keep Instagram out of Twitter’s hands, Zuckerberg explained why the duo still made sense:

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

The fears that came with the purchase

I wasn’t yet a tech reporter when I heard about the Facebook acquisition, but I remember having an instant sense of fear when I heard the news. Instagram was one of the first apps I eagerly downloaded when I got my first smartphone in August 2011. In the 20 months since then, I’ve shared more than 700 photos on the service, or on average, more than a photo a day. When I heard the news, my immediate worry was that Facebook would kill the app I’d grown to love, a tool that I have used to document my favorite memories over the past year.

And needless to say, I wasn’t alone in this fear. A quick Google search for “Will Facebook ruin Instagram” brings up at least five articles by that title on the first page of results. To say that people were aprehensive is putting it mildly.

What’s stayed the same

But now a year after the deal was announced, the essential core of Instagram — being able to quickly take and share mobile photos that look good, upload instantly, and generate positive social feedback from friends — hasn’t really changed. Sure, there have been signs that Instagram is under new ownership, such as the terms of service debacle in December. But the threats of quitting Instagram seemed overblown, and for now, my feelings about the app I first downloaded remain the same. Instagram still feels like a fast, efficient, and creative world within the app.

Before the Facebook acquisition, Systrom said the company was aiming to hit 100 million users, and the app went ahead and met that benchmark in February of this year. The acquisition didn’t slow user growth, but it didn’t triple the predictions either — presumably once you start reaching large enough numbers, it’s hard to keep growing at earlier paces. But the app continued to do well, likely strongly influenced by the jump to Android just days before the acquisition that turbocharged usage and the increased support from Facebook’s servers to handle increased capacity.

So far, we haven’t seen a designated Instagram tab appear on Facebook profiles. And aside from larger photos on the revamped timeline (for all photos, not just those from Instagram), and integrated likes on photos, there hasn’t been much in the way of preferential treatment for the photo app, as Zuckerberg noted in March. Of course this could, and probably will, change over time. But for now, we haven’t seen anything too radical.

What’s changed

However, we have seen some changes to the platform over the past year. They might not be ones that casual users would notice, or changes that alter the core experience of Instagram. But they do hint where the company could be headed, and how the two companies are interacting so far:

1. It set off the battles among the web giants. Over the past year we’ve seen the launch of apps and products like Twitter’s photo filters, Twitter’s video service Vine, Flickr’s re-launched mobile app, and the rise of Snapchat. The Instagram acquisition came as Facebook realized it didn’t have a lock on how people shared photos, or as Om wrote, “Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects.” But the acquisition didn’t slow down Facebook’s competitors, and suddenly Instagram was pulled into the ongoing struggles between Twitter and Tumblr and Apple and Facebook. Instagram had previously been friendly in allowing users to cross-post content to a variety of sites like Tumblr and Twitter, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was an early investor in Instagram. But with reports that Twitter failed at acquiring Instagram just before Zuckerberg succeeded, relations between the companies deteriorated later in the year.
2. Instagram has to play by Facebook’s rules now. Until December, we hadn’t seen many consequences from Instagram’s new owners, but when Instagram updated its terms of service and people thought their Instagram photos of their kids could end up on billboards, they freaked out. Intentionally or not, Instagram had gone down Facebook’s “do it now, ask permission later” path, and as it has with Facebook, it got Instagram in trouble. While it seems people’s proclamations of swearing off Instagram didn’t really last, it served to remind causal users of the app that the acquisition had really taken place.
3. Say hello to the web. Prior to the deal, Instagram’s founders had said repeatedly that they had no interest in moving Instagram to the desktop, but the company did launch desktop profiles in November and photo-viewing and feeds in February. It’s hard to tell if those additions have changed the service much, but as we wrote before it’s the ability to upload photos via desktop that would change the alter the experience more dramatically — that so far, the founders have said they’re not interested in adding.

Looking forward to the next year of Facebook + Instagram

So what will happen to Instagram over the upcoming year? Facebook has been through some serious changes since the acquisition – there was the botched IPO, the dramatic improvement of the speed and user experience on mobile, the launch of e-commerce products with the Karma acquisition and Gifts, the launch of Graph Search, the revamp of Newsfeed and tweaks to Timeline, and a new Home on Android.

Post-IPO, the company is building up its service as an advertising network, and doubling down on ways to make money. It seems like Instagram could be the next target for that. Emily White, Sheryl Sandberg’s protege at both Google and then Facebook where she worked on AdWords and then Facebook’s mobile partnerships, just announced last week that she’s joining Instagram’s team to be director of operations for the group. White’s joining Instagram could do for the group what Sandberg’s arrival did for Facebook: hello, monetization and advertising. We’ve already seen celebrities using their large followings on Instagram for brand endorsements.

But if users flipped out over terms of service (that a lot of people don’t even read anyway), it’s easy to imagine the outrage that would come if and when mobile ads started appearing in the Instagram feed. That could be the tipping point for many users who haven’t seen big changes over the past year. But it also could be the way for Facebook to start making up the billion dollars it spent on those photos of yours.

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Thanks to a recent court ruling by a California appellate court, it doesn’t matter that you were only checking your smartphone to update Google Maps. That’s because the law, as it currently reads, bans any sort of hands-on use of phones while driving.

The case comes on an appeal from the Superior Court of Fresno County. Last year, Steven Spriggs was cited for violating section 23123, which bans the use of wireless technologies while driving.

Specifically:

Section 23123, subdivision (a) provides: A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving.

Spriggs argued that the statute was only enacted to limit talking on a cellphone, and didn’t originally apply to any other use of the device. Also, since the state had to amend the rules later to add language banning texting while driving, it supports his claim that the original intent of the law only applied to conversing while driving.

But the court rejected that claim.

“Our review of the statute‟s plain language leads us to conclude that the primary evil sought to be avoided is the distraction the driver faces when using his or her hands to operate the phone. That distraction would be present whether the wireless telephone was being used as a telephone, a GPS navigator, a clock or a device for sending and receiving text messages and emails,” said judge Kent Hamlin.

Furthermore:

Neither the plain language of the statute nor the legislative history support the conclusion that section 23123, subdivision(a), was designed to prohibit hands-on use of a wireless telephone for conversation only. Notably, the legislative history acknowledges that the statute as worded does not eliminate a “potentially more significant” distraction of carrying on a conversation while driving. The statute instead focuses on the distraction a driver faces when using his or her hands to operate the phone, specifically including “the physical distraction a motorist encounters when either picking up the phone, punching the number keypad, holding the phone up to his or her ear to converse, or pushing a button to end a call.” That distraction would be present whether the phone is used for carrying on a conversation or for some other purpose.

Basically, the law in vague enough to cover any sort of hands-on use of the wireless device. This includes mapping in any form.

Of course, if someone wanted to program their route into Google Maps and then never touch it again while driving, that would be ok. If they wanted to make alterations to the route, they would presumably have to pull over first.

In the end, the court ruled that the law may have been enacted arbitrarily and could very well need retooling – but that’s a job for the legislature, not the court.

“It may be argued that the Legislature acted arbitrarily when it outlawed all ‘hands-on’ use of a wireless telephone while driving, even though the legal use of one‟s hands to operate myriad other devices poses just as great a risk to the safety of other motorists. It may also be argued that prohibiting driving while using ‘electronic wireless communications devices’ for texting and emailing, while acknowledging and failing to prohibit perhaps even more distracting uses of the same devices, is equally illogical and arbitrary. Both arguments should be addressed to the Legislature in support of additional legislation barring any use of those other devices in other than a hands-free manner, or in support of a repeal or amendment of section 23123 to allow the ‘hands-on’ use of wireless telephones for other purposes while driving,” says Hamlin.

As of today, 39 states ban texting while driving for all drivers, and another 6 ban the practice for novice drivers. But a recent survey from AT&T found that nearly 50% of people do it anyway – even though 98% acknowledged that it is indeed wrong to do so. A rule like this banning mapping will likely be ignored by even more people than that.

[California v. Steven R. Spriggs via Digital Trends]
[Photo via ~W~, Flickr]

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0 arrives in the U.S. later this week the company announced on Tuesday. Starting April 11, the 8-inch Android tablet with digital ink support arrives on retail shelves and on the web for ordering at $399.99. Amazon, Best Buy & Best Buy Mobile, h.h. gregg, Newegg, P.C. Richard & Son, Staples and TigerDirect.com are Samsung’s retail partners for the Galaxy Note 8.0.

Most of the hardware specifications and pictures line up with what we saw back in January:

• 8-inch LCD with 1280 x 800 resolution
• 5 megapixel rear camera, 1.3 megapixel front camera
• 2 GB of memory, 16 GB of storage (up to 64 GB microSD expansion supported)
• Android 4.1.2 with Samsung TouchWiz
• A 1.6 GHz quad-core processor
• S-Pen and supporting software

The 8-inch tablet is basically a super-sized version of the Galaxy Note 2 smartphone, owing largely to its digitizer support for the S-Pen and similar features. Like the Note 2, the new Note 8.0 supports hovering with the pen for drill-down information in many apps and the ability to run two applications on the screen at one time. I love this feature on my Note 2, but I can see even more value on the larger display of Samsung’s new tablet. Of course, the Note 2 works with cellular voice calls; the same can’t be said of the Note 8.0.

Surely the $399 Galaxy Note 8.0 will be compared heavily to Apple’s $329 iPad mini. I’ve already seen comments and reviews that the Note 8.0 is too expensive by comparison. Even without getting my hands on Samsung’s new slate, however, I find that to be a short-sighted viewpoint.

Yes, the tablet is $70 more. For that premium, you’re getting a slightly higher pixel density, digital pen support, ability to upgrade the memory with a microSD card. Are those features worth the $70? That’s up to you and how you use your mobile devices, of course.

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