Category: News

Wikipedia announced that it is now letting mobile users add images to articles. If you’re browsing Wikipedia from your mobile browser, and come across an article without an image, you’ll now be able to add one.

“In one easy step, you can upload an image from your phone’s camera or image library and add it directly to an article that has no images,” says Wikipedia associate product manager Maryana Pinchuk. “You can also donate images for use on articles that already have images but may need more.”

“Images enhance the visual appeal of Wikipedia and its sister projects and help bring our content to life, but they’re also a powerful educational tool,” adds Pinchuk. “There’s no better way to describe a notable building or landmark than with a current photo. Not only will you be illustrating knowledge, you’ll also be sharing your photographs with billions of people around the globe.”

Back in October, Wikipedia gave its mobile site a new layout. Clearly, improving the mobile experience has been a focal point for the organization in recent months.

In other Wikipedia news, long-time Executive Director Sue Gardner announced she’s stepping down from her position this morning, though she doesn’t think she’ll be leaving for another six months.

Considering the fact that’s Spotify’s logo is pretty much absent from both its desktop and mobile apps, you may not have noticed that the streaming music service recently changed it.

Yep, out with the old (left), and in with the new (right).

The new logo is definitely more straightforward and more mature looking. The “o” has been put back in line with the rest of the letters, and the font has been simplified.

Earlier this month, Spotify announced 6 million paid subscribers (out of 24 million total users). That was an increase of a million paid subscriptions in just three months.

Spotify also unveiled their first ever advertising campaign with a few new TV, digital, and social media spots – the first of which debuted earlier this week during NBC’s The Voice. The new logo was seen in these ads.

We also heard the rumor that Spotify is working on its own exclusive video to compete with services like Netflix and HBO GO.

New stuff, new look. What do you think of the new logo?

[Brand New via The Verge]

You don’t need a cable subscription to watch ABC, CBS or NBC – but don’t expect to learn about alternatives if you’re a Charter customer. Over-the-air antenna maker Antennas Direct recently wanted to buy some air time on Charter‘s cable channels to explain how TV viewers can access these channels without a pay TV subscription.

“We thought it was a fairly benign message,” Antennas Direct President Richard Schneider told me Thursday. Charter disagreed – and rejected the spot for competitive reasons.

The spot was part of a bigger marketing campaign that Antennas Direct is currently running for its products, with six different spots already airing in 15 markets and plans to show them in two dozen additional markets soon. Here’s one of them:

Antennas Direct has been one of a number of antenna manufacturers that has profited from interest in cord cutting. And over-the-air TV has also started to find its way into new technologies, including Boxee’s cloud DVR and Aereo’s TV streaming service. (Speaking of which: I’ll be interviewing Aereo founder and CEO Chet Kanojia at our paidContent Live conference in New York next month. Check out the full program for that event on the paidContent Live site.)

Schneider told me that the company’s early customers were mostly home theater enthusiasts interested in getting uncompressed HD TV signals. Then, some 18 months ago, more and more average consumers started to look for antennas – a trend that he largely attributes to the growing popularity of online streaming services. “Hulu and Netflix are helping revive antenna sales,” Schneider said, adding: “Over-the-air digital is really the new basic cable.”

Consumers would increasingly watch the basic broadcast channels for free, and then pay for catch-up and on-demand viewing, he argued. Of course, cable execs tend to argue that cord cutting doesn’t exist, even though people like Dish’s Charlie Ergen disagree. Asked about these arguments, Scneider responded: “Someone is buying all these antennas.”

Antennas Direct’s sales have nearly tripled last year, and the company is expecting to generate close to $15 million in revenue in 2013 – even without those ads on Charter.

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We may love text messaging on our smartphones, but it appears that more of us are texting and driving than previously thought before. According to a study done by AT&T, nearly half of polled commuters admitted to texting while driving, while 43% of those polled called it a habit. Oh and don’t think this dangerous “habit” is limited to just teenagers too— in fact, adults are even worse offenders than teens. AT&T claims that 49% of adult commuters are texting and driving, compared to 43% found with teens. Additionally, despite the number of ads we’ve seen out there and new features found in smartphones, it appears texting while driving is growing in popularity as six in 10 commuters say they never texted while driving three years ago.

Fortunately AT&T (which has long been an advocate of safe driving practices) is encouraging individuals to take action against unsafe driving habits for April. By calling on employers to help end texting while driving by taking action during National Distracted Driving Awareness Month in April (and beyond), AT&T has begun a full-fledged assault on the significant issue. It’s also asking businesses to join the more than 165 organizations already engaged in its Texting & Driving-It Can Wait movement.

Hopefully we will see those numbers come down a bit in the future.

source: AT&T

Come comment on this article: Nearly half of all commuters admit to texting and driving

When I read that three men in a dinghy had been arrested for planning to cut a submarine optical cable, I shook my head and went back to sleep. I mean, this sounded like the plot of a really bad television show, at best. I have covered optical networks (and the industry around it) for about a decade and a half, and I have never come across anything remotely similar to this claim.

According to the claim, these guys were planning to take down the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable, which had accidentally been cut by a ship anchor about a week ago and caused wide-scale Internet slowdown in parts of the Middle East and South Asia, along with slowing down the traffic on SEACOM, the African cable that rings the continent. The SEA-ME-WE-4 cable, which is owned by a consortium of international carriers including Telecom Egypt, connects Marseille, France, to Tuas, Singapore, via the Middle East.

In its news release, Telegeography, a market-research company, notes:

If the Egyptian military’s claims are accurate, the cause of the most recent damage to SEA-ME-WE-4 would represent a highly unusual event. Deliberate damage to undersea cables is extremely rare—anchors, fishing, and geological events (such as earthquakes) are by far the most common causes of cable cuts. While there are more than 100 reported submarine cable faults each year, most damage goes unnoticed by end users, as carriers can usually route traffic around outages on other systems, both submarine and terrestrial.

The arrests are bringing up more questions than answers. For instance:

• Is this a new kind of ransom scheme/spin on the piracy that plagues the waters off the African coasts, especially near Somalia?
• Was this terrorism, and if yes, what does it mean for the world’s communication infrastructure?
• Why didn’t they get a ship and drop an anchor, drag it across the cable and say, oops, we did it again.

There will be more to this story, and we will follow up accordingly.

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Although Calibre has been designed as an ebook library management tool, its abilities stretch beyond neatly organizing digital books so you can easily find any of them. The application can also convert between different ebook formats, send them to your reading device or read them on the computer.

It is free of charge and there is also a portable version if you do not… (read more)

Nearly 30 years ago, Stephen Brand made one of the more prescient observations about the unfolding data revolution: “On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

This assessment is spot on. Data promises a lot of new value, from insights that lead to better-targeted advertising, to ideas for new products, to “this changes everything” discoveries — the “expensive” half of Brand’s observations. But realists fully appreciate the “free” half. Translating those insights into profitable new and improved services and sustained competitive advantage is another matter altogether.

So how can a company spend more time on the valuable, expensive side and less on the free side? The key lies in developing and exploiting “proprietary data” — data that you and you alone possess. Without such data it is simply too easy for competitors to let you do the hard work of innovation, then copy your insights and erode your competitive advantage.

I use the term “proprietary data” after the 2003 HBR classic, “IT Doesn’t Matter,” by Nicholas Carr. There, he introduced the contrasting notions of “infrastructure” and “proprietary” technologies. An infrastructure technology diffuses throughout the economy in support of numerous industries and, in time, becomes available to all. It is difficult to sustain a competitive advantage via infrastructure technologies.

Proprietary technologies, on the other hand, can be protected, at least for a significant time. Because they are protected, their owners can gain and sustain a strategic advantage. This logic applies directly to data. Unless you can create and protect a measure of “proprietary data,” your path to riches will be fraught. You probably don’t need a lot of proprietary data. Just enough to distance yourself from the other guy.

Data earn proprietary status in two distinct ways — through structure and content. Think of a blank meeting calendar as a structure. It divides time into days and hours, and calls for details such as meeting place, duration, and attendees. A useful structure but with no actual meetings. Day-in and day-out, transactions populate the calendar. A phone call may yield, “Tuesday, March 20, at noon: lunch with Pete at Olive Garden” — actual content.

All data possess both components, and they provide companies tremendous opportunity to capture (and exploit) the subtleties of their environments. To appreciate the significance of this point, consider the many ways that you are known to those who do business with you. Your doctor thinks of you as a patient, your banker as an account, your lawyer as a client, and the department store as a shopper. You are the same person, but each employs a different structure because they are interested in different information.

Companies should seek to create advantage via proprietary data structures. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn have found ways to gather interesting data about people through their “friends” and “connections,” respectively, and secured an advantage. Others don’t have access to these data. And network lock-in may help them maintain that advantage for some time. Another example is the CUSIP, a means of identifying securities and process trades efficiently. It is owned by the American Bankers Association and administered by Standard & Poors and has provided a long-term advantage to S&P.

Even without a proprietary data structure, companies should still seek to create advantage through their content. Only you have the specific transaction, “John Smith bought peas, bread, and grape nehi at 9:27 AM on March 11, 2013,” and the tens of thousands like it each day! Retailers, such as Amazon, Kroger, and Target, use this data to tailor their advertising for John Smith. Further, they can combine John Smith’s transaction with others to better understand buying patterns, improve their supply chains, lay stores out more effectively, and so forth.

It is easier for competitors to copy your successes with transactional data. One retailer develops an insight into customer behavior and others follow suit. But don’t avoid this avenue on that score alone. After all, you conduct transactions every day, enriching the base of “things the competitor doesn’t know” each time. And there can be solid advantage therein. For example, pharmacies build a patient’s prescription history to better identify possible drug interactions, suggest cheaper generics, and get customers into their stores. It is no coincidence that patients must walk all the way to the back to get to the pharmacy!

The key to exploiting proprietary data lies in identifying which data offer the most potential for profit and sustained advantage. All data are not created equal; some are far, far more important, especially, into the future. It is vital to develop a deep understanding of what is essential for the future. Thus, innovators may seek competitive advantage in their product and service data; the low-cost providers on operations and process data; and those aiming for customer intimacy on customer data.

Finally, you must give data on the intersection of proprietary and important special attention. Ensure they are of the highest quality, enrich the data associated models, and keep them safe from the prying eyes of competitors and pirates. These data must capture the lion’s share of the dollars you devote to data. And, more than anything else, you must constantly look for new ways they can help distinguish you from your competitors.

Those who appreciate history will find something age-old in the recommendations above. After all, since time immemorial, the general who knew something the enemy didn’t had a better chance in battle; just as today every salesperson knows she gains an edge when she learns that a special pinot noir over lunch helps seal the deal. Proprietary data don’t guarantee success. But those who find such proprietary nuggets on a large scale have a huge leg up.

Isn’t it great how seeing a little act of kindness has the ability to make the whole world feel a little bit better…

Check it out after the jump.

Source: Youtube.com

Toshiba has managed to create the world’s thinnest 13 megapixel camera sensor and will start shipping samples to manufacturers in May. Measuring just 4.7 mm thick, we could see it in Android devices starting this holiday shopping season. As technology advances, so does the size of smartphones and tablets. Having a super thin camera sensor will help to better fit inside the next generation of devices. Toshiba was able to get the camera sensor so small thanks to a dedicated signal processing unit and four plastic lenses. They also used a used a flip chip structure in place of a wire bonded structure. In non-technical terms, it’s incredibly small. Toshiba plans on manufacturing one million of these per month and should cost around $74 USD.

Source: Unwired View

Come comment on this article: Toshiba Launching Thinnest Ever 13 Megapixel Camera Sensor

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would stretch 1,700 miles from Western Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. And it has become a touchstone for the bitter fight over America’s energy future. Opponents say the pipeline — designed to bring oil from Canadian tar sands down through the United States — would further bind future generations to outdated oil-based energy policy. Meanwhile, supporters say it represents a step toward America’s energy independence.

Steve Mufson, author of the new TED Book Keystone XL: Down the Line and a reporter at The Washington Post, has journeyed along the entire length of the proposed pipeline. He suggests that its real story is twofold: about the American frontier spirit, and about just how far we are willing to go to feed our oil addiction. In the book, Mufson asks readers to consider the Keystone XL debate — beyond the issues of climate change, tar sands and U.S. energy trade policy. He unpacks issues that don’t get as much play in the press: the ups and downs of the North Dakota shale boom, prairie populism in Nebraska, drinking-water concerns near the Ogallala aquifer, Native American communities’ desire to protect their land and burials sites along the Trail of Tears, and ranchers’ objections to the use of eminent domain by Canadian companies.

In many ways, the Keystone XL pipeline serves as a larger metaphor, Mufson says, illuminating the vast energy infrastructure it takes to sustain the American lifestyle. It underlines the choices we make in pursuit of short-term comfort. Which risks are we really willing to take?

To give you a taste of this riveting read, check out an excerpt from the book’s preface:

In spring 2012, I proposed an unusual road trip, one that would trace the full 1,700-mile route of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. The pipeline project, which I was covering for The Washington Post, had aroused intense controversy. TransCanada, a Calgary-based company, had applied for an international permit from the U.S. State Department, something that had never raised many hackles before. But activists had turned the pipeline into an environmental litmus test for President Obama. In late August and early September 2011, pipeline foes protested outside the White House; more than 1,250 were arrested. The police carted off the likes of Middlebury professor Bill McKibben, actress Daryl Hannah and renowned climate scientist James Hansen. Later that fall, thousands of protesters surrounded the White House.

What made this pipeline different from the more than 2 million miles of existing oil and natural gas pipelines that had been built in the United States with little fuss or fanfare? A journey by car would provide a window onto what this policy debate looked like at the ground level.

The first stop: The gaping black pits at the oil sands, or tar sands, of Alberta, Canada, the source of the oil that would flow down the Keystone XL. Then a quick flight — to avoid driving a perilous highway full of sleepy truck drivers — to Edmonton. There in a rented car — a Ford Flex that made up in roominess what it lacked in grace or style — I set out, accompanied by Post colleagues photographer Michael Williamson and videographer Whitney Shefte and my 18-year-old daughter Natalie, who jumped at the chance to see those vast stretches of America.

From Edmonton, we drove through Alberta and part of Saskatchewan, then down the spine of America to the Texas Gulf Coast. We visited spacious corporate headquarters and crammed trailer parks, ranches and farms, boomtowns and dead towns, a border town of nine people and a century-old oil refinery. We attended a Nebraska cookout and an Oklahoma pow-wow. And along the way, this inanimate pipeline came to life.

It became clear that the real story of this pipeline permit was one about American frontiers — the lengths to which we go for oil supplies and the intrusive effects that quest causes all the way down the line.

Each segment of the trip touched on different issues: climate change and the oil sands; the U.S. energy trade with Canada; the North Dakota shale boom and its woes; prairie populism in Nebraska and pipeline politics; the Ogallala aquifer and the threat of leaks; Native Americans and their desire to protect land, water and burial sites along the old Trail of Tears; the fight of ranchers and farmers against a Canadian company’s right to eminent domain; and why both oil sands producers and Texas refiners want to see the pipeline completed.

Since the journey, the Keystone saga has continued. The Army Corps of Engineers approved the pipeline’s southern leg, and when construction began protesters in east Texas turned to civil disobedience. The new Secretary of State, John Kerry, has said he would rule soon on the permit needed for the northern segment.

As a journalist for The Washington Post, I take no position on whether the pipeline should be built. But I can paint a picture of the trade-offs. The United States stands at the brink of a sharp increase in oil produced at home and in neighboring Canada. The supplies could upend long-held economic assumptions, slashing our oil import bill, reviving domestic industries and creating jobs. But these resources come with risks. And concerns about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions have tempered any celebration of these newly accessible troves of fossil fuels.

Which risks are we willing to take? As long as the world relies on fossil fuels for transportation and industry, we will face unappealing choices. Drill in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s Arctic coast? Or drill in the Gulf of Mexico where a BP well spilled nearly 5 million barrels into the water? Drill thousands of holes in half a dozen shale plays, using vast supplies of water and producing hazardous waste? Or buy more oil from abroad, where most governments don’t agonize over development trade-offs? If nothing else, the Keystone XL pipeline illuminates the vast energy infrastructure it takes to sustain this American lifestyle and the choices we have made about that without really thinking.

Keystone XL: Down the Line is available for Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone. A subscription costs $4.99 a month, and is an all-you-can-read buffet.

“Content engines” are little known to those outside the media sphere even though nearly everyone has used one – typically by clicking on a story in the “read next” or “Recommended for you” boxes that are springing up around the web. The companies, such as Outbrain and Taboola, are flush with tens of millions in investor money and are in a growing battle with each other for space on publishers’ pages.

While content engines have been around for a while, their growing presence is influencing how readers explore the web. They are also taking on a new importance as vanguards of “native advertising,” a trend that many hope will reinvigorate the online ad economy.

Here’s an overview of the content engine industry and what it means for publishers, advertisers and readers. (To learn more about the latest publishing strategies, be sure to attend paidContent Live, April 17 in the New York).

Keeping readers close to home

New York magazine uses a variety of tactics to increase visits to its website and to induce readers to stay on the site. These include boxes showing its most-popular stories as well as cross-promotion arrangements with other news sites.  New York has also recently signed on with content engine nRelate, which uses algorithms to display other stories a reader may find interesting; the stories come from New York’s own site or one of its affiliates.

nRelate promises publishers more pageviews but also a new revenue stream as a result of “sponsored stories” it inserts in the list of recommended content – if a reader clicks on the advertiser’s “story” (typically a promotional article written like a news story) the publisher and nRelate share the money.

Michael Silberman, the GM of digital media at New York, says he welcomes the chance for extra revenue but that the main purpose of the nRelate experiment is to get readers to stay on the site. And, like so much in publishing these days, the outcome will be data driven. “We’ll do A/B testing to see if there’s an overall lift. If all it does is redirect traffic we would have had anyways, it’s not worth it. If it leads to more pageviews per visit, then yes,” said Silberman, adding that publishers have to take care that tools like nRelate don’t clutter or slow down the site.

Tools like nRelate promise more money or traffic but they also represent a growing strategic importance for publishers. The reason is that, in age of the social media, fewer and fewer readers arrive at a website directly through a publisher’s home page; this means that publishers are doing more than ever to persuade them to stick around.

“We find [Outbrain] quite useful as a tool to drive traffic to our sites and circulate traffic through our sites.  The numbers suggest that our users find it useful as well,” said John Lerner, CEO of Breaking Media, which owns sites like Above the Law. (see screenshot at right). He did not provide specific numbers.

Meanwhile, the content engines are also a source of money. Joshua Albertson, the President of Curbed Media, says in a good year, they can bring in six figures of revenue through its sites Curbed, Eater and Racked.

Rivals collide on a new advertising frontier

While tools like nRelate hold promise for publishers, they’re also being pitched as a way for advertisers to break through to readers who tune out conventional online ads. The idea is that, by packaging the ad as a story to “read next,” a reader is far more likely to click on it and digest the marketing message.

This ad format – call it “native advertising” or “content marketing” or whatever you wish – has produced a growing list of companies that want to serve up sponsored stories. The biggest of these is Outbrain, which has already received $64 million in funding and claims to be on more than 90,000 blogs and websites like Slate, whose editor, David Plotz, says he has been pleased with the three-year partnership.

“We’ve been really happy with it. We needed to provide related links and Outbrain combines it with a tool that makes quite a lot of money for us.”

Outbrain’s hold on the market is far from firm, however, as competitors have been peeling away some of its clients. According to Curbed’s Albertson, the company decided to switch after it found Outbrain’s performance declining and rival Taboola offered it a bigger share of advertising revenue. Here is a screenshot of Taboola, which serves both stories and video and recently received $15 million in new funding:

As the rivals move in, Outbrain has begun slapping its logo on its boxes of recommended stories in an effort to be seen as a brand. It also recently fired a quarter of its advertising clients because of the poor quality of their story content. The company explained the decision this way:

“If companies coming into this space are not respectful of the audience who are clicking on these links, then the user trust will decline over time. That means this space — which is currently so valuable to the audience and publisher — will be just like the the display ad market. People will become ‘content link blind,’ just like they became ‘banner blind.’”

Meanwhile, other companies are pivoting from their core business to get into the content engine game too. These include dictionary company Reverb, which believes its experience with syntax will make it good at finding content, and the commenting platform, Disqus.

In an interview, Disqus CEO Daniel Ha said the company has an advantage due to its existing relationship with thousands of publishers, and the ability to offer brands a way to reach hyper-engaged comment communities. Ha added that the Disqus strategy is based on the “independent web” and “the middle-tail of websites,” pointing to examples like a Toronto Maple Leafs fan forum and coupon site Southern Savers.

A boom or a bubble?

Content engines may be a hot topic but is there enough money and web real estate to go around? Neil Mody, the CEO of nRelate, says there is not. “There’s a classic network effect. You’ll get one big winner. Numbers two through five will do OK. Numbers 6 thru 20 will go niche or fail.”

Mody says there is already evidence of a coming shakeout. He claims some content engines are paying publishers to get on their sites even though they have no ad revenue. He also says the industry is over-capitalized and that there is risk of a backlash as some content engines flood the space with junky “lose your belly” type of articles.

Another challenge for content engines is the low cost of switching for publishers. The engines are built so that it’s easy for publishers to put them up, but also take them down — a situation that doesn’t favor long-term relationships. The result is that publishers can simply sign up with whomever offers the best content or most money. This means the winner is likely to be content engine with the best algorithms and the highest quality advertisements.

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Oh if I had a nickel for every developer who writes to me asking to check out their new joke app. I usually don’t bother, but a new one from SMSROBOT LTD just hit the scene. Their most recent app, Countdown Widget, was a hit so I thought I would check it out. It’s called Jokes HD, and it has a very clean and smooth interface.

As I mentioned, there are a number of joke apps out there, but Jokes HD is sure to have the best content since all jokes are approved by the Content Management team. Now that doesn’t mean that you are going to fall on the floor laughing at every joke because everybody is different. What it does mean is that you won’t find a lot of the crappy jokes that you find in other apps. Jokes HD even lets you favorite any jokes as well as share them via Facebook. The favorites feature comes in handy when you’re heading to a party, and you can’t remember that good one you read the other day. Lastly, you can vote and comment on any of the jokes. This means that you can quickly see what the most popular jokes are at any given time. For commenting, you will need to login to your Facebook account, which also lets you submit jokes.

The interface has the Holo theme and is very pleasing. The Home section lets you see jokes by category. You can swipe right or left to see the latest jokes for Chuck Norris, Blondes, One-Liners, Bar Jokes, Tasteless, Dirty Jokes, Misc, Little Johnny, Yo Mama, and Sex Jokes. For each joke, you will be able to see who submitted it and how many votes/comments it has. You will also be able to read the first 20 or so words, and if you can tap on it you will get the full text.  This is where you can favorite, share, flag it as inappropriate, comment, or vote on it. From here, you can also swipe right or left to see more jokes from the category that you’re in.

You can hit the menu icon at the top right, which allows you to quickly navigate to the Top Jokes and My Favorites. Top Jokes will show you all the highly rated jokes for the day, week, and month. They also offer a search icon if there is anything in particular you’re looking for.

The last really nice feature of Jokes HD is the widget. The widget will show you random jokes so you can get a good laugh at different times of the day. Unfortunately they only offer the 4 x 1 size and it’s not resizable. Hopefully that will change with a future update.

If you’re looking for some new jokes for that party or event you’re going to, or you just need a good laugh once in a while, then check out Jokes HD. It’s simple and the UI is top notch. Best of all, it’s Free so check out their demo video below and hit one of the download links to get started. As always, let me know what you think.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Play Store Download Link

Come comment on this article: Featured Android App Review: Jokes HD [Entertainment]

Family pets are,on the internet at least, normally shown as protective of their family, especially babies and children. One family in Georgia, however, learned that some pets don’t make friends with toddlers.

Local Savannah, Georgia news station WTOC is reporting that a 21-month-old girl was killed when seven dogs attacked her outside her home in Ellabell, Georgia. The seven dogs were all pit bulls or pit bull-mixed, and have now been put down.

The girl, Monica Laminack, reportedly crawled outside through a doggie door while her 12-year-old brother was supposed to be watching her. In total, there were a reported five people in the house at the time of the mauling. The family owned a total of nine dogs. A beagle and Irish setter were not involved in the attack, and were not put down.

Bryan County Sheriff Clyde Smith told WTOC that the girl was found with multiple bites on her body and had apparently been dragged throughout the yard sometime during the hour-and-a-half after she crawled outside. Smith related that the girl’s body was cold when first responders arrived, indicating that she had been dead for some time. The sheriff indicated that he expects charges related to the death to be filed.

(Image courtesy Dante Alighieri/Wikimedia Commons)

Considering all the fitness apps already available — from Runkeeper and Nike+ to Fitocracy and MyFitnessPal, to name just a few — it’s hard to imagine that there’s still room for more.

But two former Microsoft product managers believe those apps cater to the more motivated fitness fiends among us. On Thursday, they rolled out Cody, a fitness app intended for everyone else.

“The way I observe the people who use existing apps today, I’d characterize them more as enthusiasts, and we hope that more and more of the mainstream will get into the space,” said co-founder Paul Javid. “[It’s the difference between] what do the enthusiasts want versus more casual consumers of fitness.”

While other fitness apps emphasize metrics — either through GPS tracking that automatically calculates the distance of a run or the number of steps taken or through manual input – Javid said that to reach casual fitness fans (those who might only exercise a couple of times a week or less) Cody is more about the “stories” behind the activity. The image-heavy app encourages users to share posts about why a given activity is important to them or what’s happening around them, as well as tag their locations and add pictures to build up their “fitness graph.”

Cody also acts as a kind of virtual coach. When users first load the app, they’re asked to identify their goals – from losing weight to building muscle tone to de-stressing. For now, the app just surfaces original content about workouts, healthy living and other topics that match up with those goals. But, ultimately, Javid said, the plan is for Cody to learn from users’ activity and recommend articles, workouts, people or places that fit their interests. In time, he added, the app could integrate with fitness tracking devices to get an even more comprehensive view of each user.

Prior to launching the app, the startup created a couple hundred pieces of original content but it soon plans to syndicate content from fitness and health site Greatist and could distribute content from other sources in the future.

When Javid and his co-founder Pejman Pour-Moezzi first left Microsoft about a year ago to focus on a startup, their plan was to build a social app that would help people accomplish their personal goals – in a manner not so unlike that of Lift, the Obvious Corp.-backed good-habit-building app.  But Javid said they soon observed that about half of the early beta users had fitness- or health-related goals, so they switched tacks to focus on those needs. To date, they’ve raised $200,000 in seed funding from Ken Irving, a member of a powerful oil family in Canada.

Given all the recent interest in digital health and quantified-self-type activity tracking tools, it’s not surprising that more entrepreneurs are hoping they can carve out opportunities with new tools. But while I think Cody’s highly visual design and clean layout could appeal to consumers who are just starting to get their feet wet in fitness, the crowded landscape could be a big challenge. While other fitness apps may not provide “coaching” and content, they’re already amassing tons of users’ fitness and health data and could, at some point, roll out data-driven recommendations as well. Also, when it comes to socializing around workouts, plenty of people already use Facebook and Twitter to share workouts, and Fitocracy already offers a dedicated social network for fitness.

Interestingly, among early beta testers, Cody’s founders have found that the app is especially popular among yoga, crossfit and bar method enthusiasts who don’t focus on metrics in the same way runners and bikers might. While the beta group has been small, it will be interesting to see if that trend continues.

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Arista Networks announced the next phase of its software defined networking (SDN) offerings by integrating its EOS (Extensible Operating System) natively with OpenStack.

“Arista continues to lead the way in data center network innovations,” said Paul Rad, vice president, Rackspace. ”This is the first real API integration of a broad-based data center network platform and seeing it connect with OpenStack and solve real customer provisioning issues is exactly what this industry has needed to scale cloud computing.”

With the latest release of EOS Arista offers an innovative suite of SDN capabilities, and makes the network programmable. The new release includes EOS application programmatic interfaces (eAPIs) for integration with leading orchestration and provisioning tools and customer applications.

EOS features a new modular hardware driver architecture in the Quantum OVS plugin, and an open source version of Arista’s driver. Arista also contributed code to the OpenStack Quantum project that enables unified physical and virtual network device configuration. Other new features include a native OpenStack provisioning capability, OpenFlow 1.0 support for external controllers, and enhanced data plane programmability via direct flow-based OpenFlow extensions.

“Extending Arista EOS for connection to cloud orchestration platforms provides programmability for building agile, self-service cloud architectures. This has been core to Arista EOS development from its inception,” stated Tom Black, vice president, SDN Engineering for Arista. “These software innovations demonstrate Arista’s increasing relevance and agility in addressing SDN for public cloud operators and private clouds.”

Ten years after the start of the Iraq War, we’re all familiar with the case for hiring veterans: they’re mature, responsible, have significant managerial experience, and are used to chaotic, ambiguous environments. Many possess skills that are highly transferable. So why is the gap between veteran and nonveteran unemployment rates 9.4% and 7.9% respectively?

Maybe it has something to do with this:

Black 6 this is Red 1. Class 1, 3 and 5 are now available at FARP Foxtrot, over.

To most of you, that’s a fairly inscrutable “sentence.” Yet to our veterans it’s clear — they know where they can get food, fuel, and ammunition. The military, of course, is known for its reliance on jargon and acronyms. But consider this equally inscrutable language:

The value is multiples of EBITDA, assuming the back-office cost synergy targets are achievable.

For veterans who are transitioning into the civilian workforce, there is just as much, if not more, confusion in trying to decipher the language of business than there is for you to decipher the language of the military.

This cultural gap is a significant driver of veteran unemployment. In the military, we all wear our resumes on our chests; it’s readily apparent what your position and function, not to mention additional areas of expertise, are at a single glance.

There’s some good news in all of this, however: veterans are really good at learning good business practices when given the opportunity. In a twist on more familiar models that consultancies like The Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company use, my organization, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), partnered with The Fullbridge Program to provide a business immersion experience, not unlike a business bootcamp, for veterans looking to transition to the civilian marketplace.

Co-founded by Peter and Candace Olson, this program provides a deep tutorial in the language of business, as well as extensive training in business and financial analysis, communication, and valuation. These skills are augmented by the help of Dr. Tim Butler’s CareerLeader, which helps students understand and plan for a fulfilling career, not just a one-off job. The result is a veteran who has the tools and confidence to immediately contribute, whether as an entrepreneur or in a company.

Nick Colgin, a former Army Airborne Medic, is one of 10 veterans who have just completed The Fullbridge Program. “Having spent 15 months in Afghanistan, I returned home with a significant traumatic brain injury (TBI).” he explains. “So it brings a whole different set of issues to an already complicated business world. Where I was unable to spell my own name or barely speak in 2008, I am now projecting revenue growth and cash flows in 2013.” Today, Nick is working to finish his bachelor’s degree in English and is helping to manage a multimillion-dollar capital campaign for IAVA. Both Nick and his manager credit Fullbridge for providing him improved analytical and presentation skills.

While there is great value from an intensive, offsite program such as Fullbridge, they can also be relatively expensive, running from $3 to $15K per student, depending on travel, infrastructure, and other costs. While that sounds daunting at first blush, consider that Society for Human Resource Management estimates that the replacement costs for an individual employee run from 50 to 200% of the employee’s annual salary. Business immersion programs and Employee Resource Groups can mitigate turnover and reduce those costs.

For small and mid-cap companies, in-house programs might be a good bet. To start, managers should take a hard look at their own onboarding programs and assess whether or not they’re meeting the needs of veterans. If you have veterans working for you now, help them organize a veteran ERG; then have a candid conversation with them about what they wished that they had known when they started at your company, what made their transition difficult, and how long it took them to adjust and feel like they were creating value. The answers to these questions should form the outline for what your own in-house training program should incorporate.

In addition, your ERG can prove invaluable in helping HR sift through — and translate — the applications of promising veterans.

For the veterans themselves, the payoff is pretty clear: Not only do they gain valuable hard and soft skills in addition to a working knowledge of business language, they also emerge with newfound confidence. And our early assessments show that employers benefit as well.

In longitudinal assessments conducted by The Fullbridge Program, graduates emerged “more developed, polished and professional.” In addition, nearly all graduates “were far more effective in their work than previous groups pre-Fullbridge.” Longer term performance statistics are still in development, but these initial results should be encouraging for employers: faster promotion vs. cohorts, greater retention, and, ultimately, higher productivity.

There has been a lot of attention recently paid to companies such as Disney, JP Morgan, and Wal-Mart who have pledged to hire veterans and help solve the employment crisis. I strongly encourage every organization, large or small, that hires a veteran take the extra step of investing in them and their careers as they transition — it’s something that will benefit the next greatest generation.