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Ranking in search engines, particularly Google, is not getting any easier, but how often are you considering the search engines around the globe? Many in the industry see international SEO as only gaining in importance.

Do you think it’s more important for marketers to optimize for different search engines around the world than it used to be? Share your thoughts in the comments.

A recent report from BrightEdge indicates that the majority of search marketers think that it is becoming more important for sites to rank in global search engines. According to the firm’s survey, six out of ten believe it will become either “more” or “much more” important this year, compared to last year. 36% said “more,” while 27% said “much more.”

“SEO marketers at global companies aspire to reach customers worldwide, and drive leads, revenue and traf!c through global SEO initiatives,” says BrightEdge in the report. “Looking beyond a single country also helps them demonstrate a greater ROI on marketing investments. Not only does this boost marketing ROI but also maintains global brand consistency while accommodating local nuances. A global concerted approach to SEO marketing addresses these needs.”

Respondents were specifically asked about Chinese search giant Baidu, with 31% saying it would be much more important to rank in Baidu in 2013, and 10% saying “much more important”.

“With roughly 540 million internet users, 900 million mobile users and 388 million mobile internet users, China is the world’s largest internet market,” says BrightEdge. “Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, is one of the most valuable gateways to this large internet user base.”

You can download the report in its entirety here. It deals with numerous topics, far beyond the topic of global SEO.

Another recent report (via MarketingCharts) from Covario found that Baidu generated three times more global paid search clicks than Yahoo/Bing in Q1.

“I no longer believe it makes sense for any company to roll out an international SEO programme to multiple countries without also having a PPC campaign in place,” writes WebCertain CEO Andy Atkins-Krüger in a post for Search Engine Land about multinational SEO. “In some cases, we would recommend leading with PPC and landing pages first, rather than full blown (and relatively expensive) international SEO.”

He adds, “There are a number of reasons why we recommend this, but one is that user satisfaction on your site can be measured much more quickly with PPC than with SEO. Behavior really matters — so if you can study it first and quickly with PPC, your SEO efforts later will work out to be much more successful. I do worry that the association of search engine warnings with SEO being ‘bad’ are beginning to stick with people who are newer to the industry, and therefore, SEO is having a health warning attached.”

Dave Davies has a great article on international SEO considerations at Search Engine Watch, in which he concludes, “While expanding one’s market is generally a good thing, what people often forget is that you still have to maintain what you have, so make sure you have the resources. Many wars have been lost simply by trying to fight them on too many fronts.”

“If you have just enough resources to dedicate to a successful SEO strategy in your own country, it doesn’t make sense to expand in that you’ll be drawing resources away from the strategy that’s keeping the lights on,” he adds. “You need to make sure it’s the right decision for your business and if it is, make sure that you’re picking the right strategies to maximize your odds of success in the shortest period of time.”

In your international optimization efforts, you may also want to keep in mind some recent changes Google has made to its indexing systems. They’re now treating some country-code TLDs differently in terms of geography vs. generic. The list will change over time, but right now, these are the ccTLDs Google is considering generic: .ad, .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .gg, .io, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .su, .tv, .tk and .ws.

Are you increasing your focus on international SEO, or are you simply focusing on your own region? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier this week, the tragic death of rapper Chris Kelly stunned music fans. The 34-year-old Kelly was found dead in his Atlanta home Wednesday evening. He was later declared dead at a nearby hospital.

Now, a police report has surfaced showing that Kelly had been taking hard drugs the night before his death.

An Access Hollywood report on the police document states that Kelly’s mother, Donna Kelly Pratte, told police that Chris had taken both heroin and cocaine Tuesday night. She stated that she and others had left Chris, who had complained of nausea and had passed out, at his home on Wednesday morning to sober up.

A drug overdose is suspected as the cause of Kelly’s death, but an official cause of death will have to wait for toxicology reports. According to family members and friends, Kelly had a known history of drug abuse.

Kelly was best known as one half of the rap duo Kross Kross. He and fellow rapper Chris Smith gained fame in the early 90s through their hit single “Jump.” The pair also became infamous for wearing their clothes backwards.

Pratte on Thursday released a statement regarding her son’s death, stating that he was the “fun-loving life of the party” and that “his legacy will love on through his music.”

TED Senior Fellow and architect Mohammad Tauheed runs ArchSociety.com, a nonprofit community resource for architects and designers in developing nations. When the Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed last week, killing hundreds of garment factory workers, Tauheed supported the rescue efforts. Here, he tells us his experience of the disaster, how corruption and greed can quickly lead to tragedy, and what’s being done to prevent illegal building practices.

What happened?

The Savar tragedy is a matter of great sorrow and grief. The saddest reality of the whole thing is that it was avoidable. It is not a case of a plain accident. Cracks were detected in the building a day before the collapse. According to news sources, the tenants were advised to stop all activities in the building and to evacuate. That instruction was not followed, so TV reporters went there and interviewed the owner, Sohel Rana, a local politician, and asked why. He declared the cracks were nothing serious, that the building was safe. While a bank and shops in the first two floors were closed once the cracks were found, several garment factories on the upper floors of the building stayed open. The garment-factory managers forced their fearful workers to resume work the next day, and the building collapsed within a few seconds, with thousands of workers inside. It has taken more than 500 lives so far. There were around 2,500 survivors rescued alive from the debris, and many are still missing. The second phase of the rescue work is currently running. Heavy machinery is clearing the rubble, with no more hope of finding anyone alive. Days after the collapse, Sohel Rana was arrested.

What was your firsthand experience of the disaster?

I went there with medical supplies to deliver to the onsite health camp. It was an overwhelming experience. Thousands of people were waiting in tears to hear the news of their relatives among the victims, a private hospital nearby was dedicatedly busy round the clock to receive wounded survivors, frequent sirens of rushing ambulances and other emergency vehicles, many small voluntary booths giving away drinking water, snacks and free phone calls. In those few days, I’m sure everyone in Bangladesh thought and wished they could come to help in some way, wished they could contribute something to save a life. I was standing amid the crowd and crying.

I heard that the rescue workers needed light tools like cutters, drills, and so on to make holes in the concrete, so I called up architects and construction companies I knew, asked them to stop work for a day or two and send their equipment and men to the rescue site. Everybody responded positively and tried their best.

People from all walks of life did their best to help. General people, construction workers, unknown volunteers joined actively in the rescue work hand-to-hand with the firemen and a support team from the army. Their dedication, love for people and bravery were extraordinary. They risked their lives to go inside the rubble and take someone out alive. Hundreds of people donated blood in long queues in different camps in Dhaka. People sent support whatever and however they could. Social networks and news channels were busy with the live updates of ‘what is currently needed onsite’ messages. Hundreds of people actively collected those things and sent them to Savar — food, water, medical supplies, rescue equipment, tools and machinery, flashlights, canisters and cylinders of oxygen, funeral supplies for the deceased, cash, and so on were supplied mostly by the general public. And most often the amount of supply that came arbitrarily met the need. It was heartwarming and all the way an amazing effort that we saw from the citizens.

In your view, who is responsible?

The biggest thing that is responsible here is corruption. From my knowledge as an architect, I can tell you about the building construction-related law and its known flaws. To build in the Dhaka area — the boundary covers nearby suburbs and towns beyond Dhaka metropolitan, including the incident area of Savar — you need permission from the main authority RajUK (Capital Development Authority), as well as permits from 13 different organizations to get permission for construction and approval of architectural design (and, in the case of large projects, structural and other designs), including the municipality, environment department, fire service, electricity and gas distribution authorities, and so on. The approval process and construction are overseen by RajUK. When building a factory, you need to get additional approval from a factory-building construction-related authority, and if it’s a garment factory, you need a license and permission from the non-government organization BGMEA, an association of garment owners that regulates the industry in Bangladesh. If corruption plays any role at any point in this process, incidents like the collapse of Rana Plaza and fire at Tazreen Garments may happen any time. And many of these organizations are infamous for institutionalizing corruption. Allegedly, often this paperwork is done or overlooked by political influences and bribery.

In the case of Rana Plaza, the problem might have happened in a few different layers. Allegedly, the building was designed to be six stories, and the owner built an additional two floors without permission. There could be a fault in the structural design. Then there was the usage of the building: it was architecturally and structurally designed as a commercial complex, for small shops and offices. Counting the number of people per square foot and the weight of the heavy machinery, the dead load and live load of a garment factory is far higher than a commercial building. Even if the initial structural design was okay for commercial use, using the building for garment factories might have made the structure fail. It is difficult to tell what exactly happened without extensive engineering investigation. It was the responsibility of the architects and engineers involved in designing this building to check its legal status.

All the organizations that let the owner make this building without following the rules and let them use it for unapproved purposes are responsible. And along with the building owner, the owners of the garment factories are responsible for accepting the corruption. They are especially responsible for forcing workers to go inside that building that day.

The responsibility also falls upon the foreign companies – including Joe Fresh, Bonmarché, El Corte Ingles, Primark, Mango and Benetton – whose products were being made or had been made in those factories. They must take responsibility for checking the physical conditions, legal aspects and working environment of the factory buildings before they put an order to a third-party supplier. After all, their names and logos are all over the collapsed building, soaked in blood.

Is there any hope for conditions changing for the better? This is not the first time such a thing has happened in Bangladesh’s garment factories.

A few good things have happened recently with building codes and laws in the country. Bangladesh has a national building code, BNBC, first drafted in 1993. In 2006 it became mandatory to follow the code, with a penalty of seven years’ imprisonment. In 2006, a new construction law came out with the help of years’ worth of efforts by architects and related professionals. These codes and laws aren’t entirely perfect yet, but they are under constant practice, observation and development.

And following the Savar incident, the government has declared a few reforms to improve the situation of the garment industry in the country.

Why are the government and authorities not supportive of such changes?

Many of these ideas and proposals will cut corruption and the power of authority of different organizations. And no one wants to mess with the garment industry in Bangladesh, because it’s the highest foreign-currency-earning industry in the country, at more than $19 billion a year and supports the also highly lucrative real-estate industry. So any law that has the potential to reduce the profits in these two sectors will likely not get support.

This business is extraordinarily profitable – it makes people greedy and turns them into beings who can easily force their workers into a known death trap, because the stakes of shutting down a factory even for a few hours is huge in account of profit and loss. The factories are always desperate to keep running, as the supply of garments to Western countries is a highly time-sensitive business, for the frequent changes of fashion in seasons, special occasions and brand campaigns. Western fashion houses also should look into this issue of “time sensitivity” – which may cost human lives.

Of course, not all garment factories in Bangladesh are in bad condition. There are thousands of factories properly designed and maintained, and many foreign companies who procure their products from Bangladesh with commendable responsibility.

One great thing that has resulted from the West’s outsourcing of work to Bangladesh is that thousands of workers have pulled themselves out of extreme poverty. This flow must continue to produce more jobs and opportunities. With a little more responsibility and humane sensibility, we could save hundreds of lives and feed thousands more.

How does the work you do with your nonprofit ArchSociety prevent tragedies like this?

ArchSociety.com focuses on helping architects with open source resources and information. However, following the deadly fire at Tazreen Garments in November 2012, we started working on a new project: an information package that will contain easy-to-understand booklets, posters, stickers, and so on, with fire-safety information and instructions targeted for garment factories. Now it looks like we have to consider adding basic construction safety and law information to that package.

Thanks to the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights for use of their photo. Learn more about their work here.

As Samsung’s newest flagship device starts to land in the hands of retail buyers, some of them are discovering a nasty surprise lying in wait. New owners of the 16GB version of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 have discovered the device only has about 8GB of useable memory available. The other half is eaten up by the operating system and built-in apps. In a statement released in response to the criticism, Samsung says:

“For the Galaxy S4 16GB model, approximately 6.85GB occupies [the] system part of internal memory, which is 1GB bigger than that of the Galaxy S3, in order to provide [a] high resolution display and more powerful features to our consumers… To offer the ultimate mobile experience to our users, Samsung provides [a] microSD slot on Galaxy S4 for extension of memory.”

Many buyers of smartphones look for the availability of a microSD card slot when making their buying decision, which gives Samsung a big advantage with those buyers versus a device like the HTC One. However, Samsung does not permit the installation of apps onto the SD Card, only files, photos, videos and music. If a user wanted to install something like Wikipedia Offline, which clocks in at 3.6GB, they could quickly run through their internal memory. Popular games also tend to be large in size, which could force users to become selective in which apps they install.

Since the discovery of this memory limitation, responses have varied from users. Some have been extremely irate going so far as to describe Samsung’s actions as amounting to a “scam.” Others are nonplussed as they “never got close to filling the internal storage” on their previous devices.

Do you think this is a major problem with the Galaxy S 4? Would it cause you to look at other devices or wait for something else to be released later this year?

source: CNET

Come comment on this article: Samsung responds to criticism of lack of usable storage on 16GB Samsung Galaxy S 4

Most of the 89,000 leadership books offered on Amazon.com focus on traditional interpersonal leadership: the relationships between leaders and followers. Interpersonal leadership sets up an expectation that leaders must be in dialog or at least in view of their followers. Yet this style of interaction is less likely as work stretches across locations and company boundaries as we telecommute, crowdsource, and take on joint ventures. Modern leadership may be as much about facilitating strategy through hiring, training, technology, and focused tasks and goals, as it is about face-to-face interaction.

Clear and meaningful tasks, goals, and technology tools that support the organization’s direction can supplement interpersonal leadership. This is a classic topic in the management field. In the 70s, Steve Kerr and John Jermier offered that leaders do many things beyond their interpersonal relationships with their followers. Talking about the history of substitutes for leadership research, Jermier said in 1997, “[Substitutes for leadership] pointed to unobtrusive and impersonal forces such as technology and task characteristics, professional standards, and formal regulations (policies, rules and procedures).” One of their conclusions was that some people don’t even need leadership in the traditional sense, or find leadership substitutes through interactions with other workers. Hiring for employees who can model the vision of the organization through their work can substitute for interactions with formal leaders.

Today, with work becoming more virtual and global, substitutes for interpersonal leadership can be powerful tools. Out of sight is sometimes out of mind, but great leaders are up to the task. Keith Murnighan’s recent book, Do Nothing: How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader illustrates leaders letting go to do more. Murnighan writes, “This is what great leaders do. They don’t work; they facilitate and orchestrate.”

Training, as well as hiring, can transmit leadership vision. In 2011, I talked with Doyle Hopper, general manager of Nucor’s Vulcraft Group and Nucor Cold Finish. Nucor is the largest U.S. steelmaker and the largest recycler in North America. I’ve been a fan of Nucor’s team-focused management style for years and was looking for an example of extreme leadership inside this unique organization. While they have had iconic leaders, especially the founder, Ken Iverson, they’ve built a company on culture and skills, not interpersonal leadership. Nucor has only five layers of management for over 22,000 employees.

Doyle told me how the Vulcraft site had responded to horrible flooding that took out a critical bridge and put two feet of water into their highly electrified plant. From sandbagging to dealing with dangerous electrical systems and arranging for cross-state transport of construction equipment, individuals from across the plant took charge.

“Nobody told them to do it. True Nucor people — culture just reacted to situation. I was blown away, but I shouldn’t have been.” “Who better to do the job than the people who own it? They’re in this together. I don’t want somebody else [e.g., contractors} in there fighting the battle. We know the result we’re looking for, and we’re prepared.”

They were prepared because they hire, train, and reward for their goals — not because of the interpersonal skills of their formal leaders.

Research on the efficacy of substitutes for leadership is mixed; technology may be the reason. From the 70s to the 90s when most of this research was done, we tended to be co-located with our leaders and we had smaller portions of our work online. Interpersonal leadership was easier and the technology tools to support alternatives were harder to come by. The need and power of substitutes may have been lost in that environment. The environment is very different now and so the benefits may be more apparent. My colleagues and I are digging into the growing role that technology plays in providing transparency and direction as substitutes for interpersonal leadership.

For example, it seems that organizational transparency broadens leadership substitute opportunities. Today, given access to data through normal work technologies, I expect it is easier to attain a high level of transparency. In their article (and book) on the power of transparency, James O’Toole, Daniel Goleman, and Warren Bennis quote a CFO from SRC Holdings, a diversified remanufacturing company, regarding the company’s 20-year program of sharing corporate financial and managerial data. The CFO said the net effect “is like having 700 internal auditors out there in every function of the company.”

Sharing like this would have been a challenge when SRC Holdings first started. Technology can pass along perspectives normally only visible to highly placed leaders. New eyes and new perspectives can give workers the ability to lead themselves.

Don’t stop working to be a great interpersonal leader. Do lead with all your resources. Consider how you can leverage your leadership efforts through better tasks, goals, hiring, training, and technology. Offer your own substitutes for interpersonal leadership in our modern, global, world.

Two of the greatest compositions ever written, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, apparently share a lot more that the word “rhapsody.” As YouTuber Scott Bradlee shows, they’re a real killer when you mash them up.

Simply beautiful:

While I kid a bit in the headline, this is actually pretty cool: Swatch, the largest manufacturer of mechanical watch movements in the world, has created a movement that is assembled entirely using automated systems. Why is this important? The watch industry was originally gutted by the rise of cheap quartz watches, making this piece quite ironic, and this means that more people will be able to own higher quality mechanical watches from a trusted brand.

The movement, called the Sistem51, is made of 51 simple parts and has a weight that winds the mainspring. It is made of a copper, nickel and zinc alloy called ARCAP and is anti-magnetic. It’s completely sealed inside the case (making it impossible to service) but a fact that ensures it can stay out of moisture and dust. Another cool thing? Quoth Hodinkee, who got a hands on, “instead of a regulator the special escapement is set by a laser during production and never needs to be touched again.”

Sure, the Sistem51 is basically a plastic watch that costs a little over $100 and will be sold at airports around the world. However, it is an impressive step forward for the company at a time when mechanical watches are making a resurgence. Swatch has been making mechanicals for a while, to be clear, but this is the first time they’ve reduced the price, manufacturing cost, and maintained quality in this way. While it’s easy to get much cheaper movements online (a tourbillon for $24, anyone?) it’s far harder to find a solid, high quality mechanical movement from a trusted brand.

It’s great to see some affordable watches come out of Basel this year and this is definitely step forward in terms of nanomechanics.

Facebook Home has its fair share of critics. But while I personally can’t stand Facebook as a service, I am not one of them. Home takes over the user’s Android smartphone and replaces the home screen with an unending stream of full-screen Facebook photos and status updates posted by friends. The first version of Facebook’s new Android software clearly has some kinks that need to be ironed out, but Facebook has more incentive than it could ever need to get the job done.

Continue reading…

Acer just announced the Aspire R7, a strange hybrid of a desktop all-in-one, laptop, and a tablet that was previously teased in some promotional Star Trek commercials. It’s honestly really, really weird.

We always expected that Windows 8 would lead to some really strange convertible touchscreen devices, but the Aspire R7 is a whole new kind of crazy. The first thing you’ll notice about the Aspire R7 is that Acer seems to have forgotten how laptops are made. The trackpad sits behind the keyboard, which is a bit perplexing until you realize that Acer doesn’t really want you to use the trackpad at all.

That’s because the Aspire R7 has something called an Ezel hinge that gives the 15.6 touchscreen display an amazing agree of flexibility. You can lie the 15-inch, 1080p touchscreen display completely flat with the device, turning the Aspire R7 into an oversized tablet. You can also angle the display so that it sits flush with the keyboard and covers the trackpad completely. I’m honestly not sure why the trackpad is there in the first place.

As a whole, the Aspire R7 seems to be incredibly well built. It’s made of some type of aluminum-like material, and there’s virtually no flex to the device. On the other hand, it’s very large and very heavy, which means that it won’t be very portable. It’s probably one of the nicest pieces of hardware Acer has ever built. But I don’t know who would use something as crazy as this.

Other key specs for the R7 include:

• Intel Core i5 1.8GHz processor, with Turbo Boost to 2.7GHz
• 6GB Of DDR3 RAM
• 500GB SATA HD, paired with a 24GB SSD
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• HD webcam with dual mics
• 2 USB 3, 1 USB 2 ports
• 5.3 lbs and 1.1-inches thin

Acer also announced the Aspire P3, an ultra book convertible with a detachable display, and the Iconia A1, a 9.7 inch Windows 8 tablet. But it’s the Aspire R7 that stole the show here. It’ll be available for sale exclusively at Best Buy retail locations starting May 17th, and can be pre-ordered now at the Best Buy online store for $999.

(and a friendly shout out to Stefan over at LaptopMemo, who was kind enough to let me borrow his camera for these shots)

It shouldn’t be a shock to anyone with two working eyes and a brain that Mila Kunis has been voted “Sexiest Woman In The World” by FHM Magazine.

The 29-year old has been a favorite of guys (and girls) everywhere since her early days of acting on “That 70′s show”, earning funny-girl cred with her turn as the voice of Meg on “Family Guy” and nerd-cred with her performances on “Robot Chicken”. She eventually landed full-on H.O.T. status in “Black Swan”, after showing off her dancer’s body in a steamy scene with co-star Natalie Portman, and last year she was named Esquire Magazine’s “Sexiest Woman Alive“. She went on to star in this year’s acclaimed Disney film, “Oz The Great And Powerful”.

FHM named Mila Kunis the Sexiest Woman In the World. That’s a far better choice than Gweneth Paltrow. See who… fb.me/2RIpkciqY

— 101one, WJRR (@1011wjrr) May 3, 2013

15 GIF reasons why Mila Kunis is the sexiest woman in the entire world fhm.com/girls/100-sexi… via @fhm @jeffreegee

— Karen Castillo ✌ (@_alwaysKaren_) May 3, 2013

Wow. Rihanna. FHM’s 2nd sexiest woman in the world. @vicegandako

— imeejane. (@imeeeesyow) May 3, 2013

Mila Kunis “Sexiest Woman in the World?” Rated by the readers of FHM. Primarily white males. I see.

— Lotys(@lotyslove) May 3, 2013

Have you ever wanted to send and receive SMS text messages from your tablet? There are a number of apps available in the Google Play store that will allow you to do this, but I wanted to tell you about a newer one called Dinamotxt. It was developed by Openmind, and it syncs your tablet with your phone so that your tablet will receive SMS text messages at the same time as your phone.

Dinamotxt is a full texting interface so you will have all the same capabilities as if you were using your phone. You can not only reply to current texts, but you can also create new conversations from your contacts or any phone number. You can also change the look with the included themes. They have eight colors to choose from along with a nice looking paper and vanilla theme.  You can delete any threads you no longer need, and they will be deleted from your phone at the same time.

Dinamotxt has a couple of features that you won’t find on stock SMS text message apps such as the ability to backup all your texts. Popup notifications are also cool because you can read the full text of the message without going into the app, but you can also reply to it from the popup. You can choose whether you want popup notifications or not, but notifications will still appear in the notification panel either way.

Syncing your tablet and phone are a piece of cake. All you need to do is install the app on both your phone and tablet. Make sure Bluetooth is turned on for both devices and pair them like you would any other device. After they are paired, go back into the app on your tablet and link them. The good news is that you don’t need to leave Bluetooth on because it’s only used for the initial syncing process, so you can turn it off to conserve battery consumption. As long as both devices are connected to the internet, your tablet will receive all SMS texts.

If you’re looking for a way to send and receive SMS text messages on your tablet then give Dinamotxt a try. Not only does it work great, but it’s absolutely Free. What more could you ask for? Check out my hands on video below and hit one of the download links to get started. As always, let me know what you think.

Complete instructions for linking:

1. Download onto your Android Tablet
2. Download onto your Android Phone
3. Start the App on both devices
4. Click through to the Bluetooth Menu on each device and pair them
5. On the Tablet, select the newly paired Phone and click Link
6. Once Linked, Bluetooth can be disabled again if necessary
7. Enjoy Sending/Reading/Deleting SMS Text Messages on your Android Tablet

Click here to view the embedded video.

Play Store Download Link

 

Come comment on this article: Featured Android App Review: Dinamotxt [Communication]

They say that every problem has its solution. For users that want to monitor changes made to files in a folder, there is definitely more than one solution available. But one of them is File Watcher Simple, a freebie that can be easily handled even by beginner users.

The application is portable, which eliminates the installation procedure and, together wit… (read more)

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, so naturally everyone wants to know what his plan is where a love life is concerned.

The 39-year old actor has been linked in recent years to Blake Lively and supermodel Gisele Bundchen, but hasn’t come close to walking down the aisle yet. He says it’s not out of the question, but he just doesn’t know what the future holds for him.

“I take it as it comes,” the actor said. “We’ll see what happens in the future. We’ll see what happens. … I don’t try to determine what the future will be. I take it day by day.”

He also said that, for an actor who is so dedicated to his job, it’s not easy to work and have a relationship.

“Six months of being on location or being off in Morocco or someplace like that is not the best thing for a relationship,” he said. “There’s a certain price to everything, but every time I listen to myself talk about those prices I get sick to my stomach because I’m so fortunate to do what I do, really I’m a lucky person.”

DiCaprio, whose turn as a controlling, wealthy Southern aristocrat in “Django Unchained” was quite a departure from his past roles, also talked a bit about his latest film, “The Great Gatsby”. The movie is based on the popular book and was helmed by Baz Luhrmann, who also directed DiCaprio in “Romeo + Juliet”.

“When you make a movie, you have to be much more specific about everything you do. You have to make choices as an actor and as a storyteller that dramatize these brilliant chapters. I think it’s a risk, just in the sense that it’s so beloved, and you’re almost setting yourself up for criticism in a lot of ways,” he said.

The Associated Press is reporting that hip-hop producer Abraham Orellana, who performs as AraabMUZIK, has been shot. He has not died and is currently hospitalized.

A spokesperson for Orellana told the AP that the artist was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and was shot Wednesday night while “hanging out with friends. The spokesperson further stated that Orellana is “alive and well” while recovering.

Orellana’s manager, George Moore, known as rapper and producer DukeDaGod, tweeted out a request for well-wishes over his Twitter account:

DukeDaGod also posted a dour photo of friends and family crowding around the Orellana’s hospital bed. Orellana appears to have been sleeping at the time the photo was taken.

The Wii U is in a spot of trouble. What is Nintendo going to do about it? Well, not much at the moment. The company has delayed many of its biggest titles into the latter half of the year, and that was entirely intentional according to a new rumor.

CVG reports that retailers in the UK are saying that Nintendo held back many of its biggest titles into the latter half of the year for a revival of sorts. In other words, Nintendo plans to release a number of high-profile games later this year to renew interest in the console. One of those games is reported to be the new 3D Mario game that Satoru Iwata promised back in January, with retailers saying it will be out by October.

Aside from a new Mario game, the report says that Nintendo intentionally held back Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101 and Wii Fit U to help populate the latter half of this year with more Wii U game releases. There are some that refute that claim, and Iwata himself said the games were delayed after developers were taken off of games like Pikmin 3 to help finish launch games like Nintendo Land.

Of course, the Wii U already has a number of titles that range from pretty good to fantastic. What’s stopping Nintendo from marketing the console based on those titles alone? The report says that Nintendo executives wanted to wait until all of the problems with the hardware and software, including long loading times, were sorted out. The Spring update helped to reduce said loading times, and a planned Summer update will decrease those loading times even more. Nintendo is expected to start marketing the Wii U in earnest after the Summer update.

A statement from Nintendo UK said just as much:

“From July onwards we will launch a succession of Wii U titles and we will promote these extensively until the end of the year. Marketing activity will include TV, print, online and PR as well as comprehensive experiential and social media campaigns”.

The Nintendo faithful had better hope the company start marketing the Wii U sooner rather than later. The next PlayStation and Xbox are expected to launch in November of this year. Nintendo’s console will soon look outdated compared to the competition so it needs to prove that the Wii U, much like the Wii, is capable of providing those unique experiences that you just can’t find anywhere else. Super Mario Galaxy succeeded in that mission on the Wii in 2007, and a new 3D Mario game on the Wii U could do just the same this year.

Unlike Twitter, Spotify isn’t looking to build an entire standalone music service – they already have that. But they are interested in discovery, like Twitter, and to that end the company has just acquired a Swedish music discovery app called Tunigo.

All Things D reports the buy, which is for an undisclosed amount. Tunigo is a music discovery app that is available on iPhone, Android, and as a Spotify app. Tunigo is playlist-focused, and features hand-curated selections from the Tunigo team as well as ones from the Tunigo community. Playlists are arranged based on moods, events, activities, and more interesting ways.

According to the report, all of Tunigo’s 20 or so employees will become part of Spotify’s team. The Tunigo apps should keep working as usual.

“The acquisition fits into our overall strategy around music discovery, basically helping our users make sense of over 20 million tracks,” a Spotify spokesman told GigaOm.

We mentioned Twitter because the social networking site just recently unveiled their own music discovery service, Twitter Music. That product came out of the acquisition of We Are Hunted, another music discovery app. It’s interesting that Spotify would make this purchase just a couple weeks after Twitter launched their new standalone service, don’t you think?

Apple’s mobile footprint in the U.S. is about to expand again. On Friday, regional carrier U.S. Cellular announced it will begin offering “Apple products” before the end of 2013. The carrier made the announcement with the publication of its first quarter earnings results. “Apple products” will obviously include the iPhone, but it could mean U.S. Cellular will offer LTE service for iPads as well.

From the earnings release:

“We have a number of strategies in progress to increase loyalty and attract more customers, including our announcement today that we will begin offering Apple products later this year. By further strengthening our device portfolio, we’ll give consumers another great reason to switch to U.S. Cellular, and enable our existing customers to choose from an even wider variety of iconic smartphones, and enjoy the outstanding U.S. Cellular customer experiences they deserve.”

This is not a case of Apple finally bestowing the iPhone on the carrier. It’s the opposite: Apple has made a smartphone that U.S. Cellular wanted to sell. You may remember the CEO of the carrier’s parent company, TDS, saying in late 2011 that he’d offer the iPhone when Apple made a more “cutting edge” phone — in other words, he was waiting for LTE.

LTE is a big priority for the carrier: U.S. Cellular said Friday it will bring LTE to 87 percent of its existing customers this year. But smartphones in general are where it can improve. Currently, less than half — about 43 percent — of its subscribers have a smartphone. That means there’s plenty of built-in demand for customers looking to upgrade to one for the first time.

U.S. Cellular customers may certainly go for the iPhone 5, which is Apple’s LTE phone, but the cheaper iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S have been proving especially attractive to late smartphone adopters.

 

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing
• U.S. Wireless Data Market: Q4 and Year-End 2008
• How to deliver the next-generation web experience

To my knowledge Google never has, and probably never will honor Slayer with a doodle, unfortunately. That doesn’t mean Google doesn’t appreciate Slayer, as we’ve seen.

Luckily, someone has imagined what a Slayer-inspired Google doodle might look like. The image was made to honor “Slayer Day,” which has been proclaimed by some to be June 6th. You know, 6/6. It made more sense in 2006.

I’m not sure if he created it or not, but Dan Bond posted this to Geeks of Doom back in 2011. We used the image in an article about Google’s Halloween Chromebook commercial, which used Slayer’s “Raining Blood” back in October, a commercial we revisited today in light of guitarist and songwriter Jeff Hanneman’s death.

You may not know this, but Big Data has a little brother. And together, Big and Little Data are far more powerful than Big Data alone.

Big Data is what organizations know about people — be they customers, citizens, employees, or voters. Data is aggregated from a large number of sources, assembled into a massive data store, and analyzed for patterns. The results are more accurate predictions, more targeted communications, and more personalized services. Big Data is what enables banks to predict credit card fraud by analyzing billions of transactions, marketers to understand customer sentiment by analyzing millions of interactions on social media, and retailers to target promotions and offers by analyzing millions of purchases.

In contrast, Little Data is what we know about ourselves. What we buy. Who we know. Where we go. How we spend our time. We’ve always had a sense for these things — after all, it’s our lives. But thanks to the combination of mobile, social, and cloud technologies, it’s easier than ever to gain insight into our own behavior.

As an example, consider the emerging field of mobile health. Portable devices like the FitBit or Nike FuelBand measure your activity level and sync with your smartphone. The associated mobile app gives feedback, encouragement, and rewards as you reach your goals. New research shows that people who use tracking technologies are more likely to be successful in losing weight and getting in shape.

A similar trend is underway in energy conservation. The company Opower partners with utilities to give customers visibility into how their electricity consumption compares with the average of their neighborhood.

Big and Little Data differ in three primary ways:

• Focus: The focus of Big Data is to advance organizational goals, while Little Data helps individuals achieve personal goals.
• Visibility: Individuals can’t see Big Data; Little Data helps them see better.
• Control: Big Data is controlled by organizations, while Little Data is controlled by individuals. Companies grant permission for individuals to access Big Data, while individuals grant permission to organizations to access Little Data.

Without Little Data, Big Data has a tendency to become Big Brother. We’ve all experienced that unsettling feeling when ads follow us on the web, a practice marketers call retargeting. And retailers have gotten into trouble when Big Data predicts things about people they don’t even know themselves.

On the other hand, Little Data without Big Data is incomplete. One complaint about portable fitness devices is that they aren’t sufficiently prescriptive. They don’t tell you what to do based on your behavior. How much activity should I be getting? If I’m not sleeping well, what can I do to sleep better? This requires a partnership with individuals and health care providers to combine tracking with advice and treatment.

Or consider the experience of grocery shopping. We are all familiar with the coupons we get when we checkout at the register. In the time it takes for you to sign your credit card slip, a massive database analyzes what you bought today, what you bought in the past, and what people like you tend to buy, then matches it to the available offers and prints out a personalized set of coupons. A classic case of Big Data.

But what does this scenario look like with Little Data? Start by applying the three steps:

• Shift Focus: How can we help individuals achieve their goals?
• Make it Visible: How can we give people visibility into their own data?
• Share Control: How can the relationship be more reciprocal?

Putting these together, we can imagine a different kind of shopping experience. The Little Data alone could be used to create a personal shopping assistant that lets you:

• Generate shopping lists automatically based on what you’ve purchased in the past. This feature could be used to send a reminder while you are right in the store, e.g. “Don’t forget the milk!”
• Bring promotions to you based on your interests. For example, instead of paging through the entire circular, you could find out if there are specials on any of your favorite brands.
• Provide useful information to guide purchasing decisions. For example, the assistant could alert you to foods with ingredients that might trigger food allergies.

Things get really interesting when we combine the power of Big Data with Little Data. For example, as a shopper, I’m interested to know which brands have the highest loyalty or what else people might have on their Thanksgiving shopping list. There might even be patterns that could predict which foods I am most likely to enjoy based on what others buy who share similar purchase histories. (Think of this as the Netflix of food.)

This connection between Big and Little Data applies in other areas as well. Consider the smart thermostat made by Nest, which automatically adjusts itself to your preferences and behavior. A utility company could connect the Little Data from Nest devices to the Big Data from its power grid. Nest customers could then benchmark their energy usage against others in the community. Furthermore, the sense of shared purpose and the greater transparency and control give individuals greater incentive to share information and participate in energy saving initiatives.

This partnership between Big and Little Data can apply to almost any industry, from travel and financial services to health care and government. While companies build up their business intelligence teams and hire (Big) Data scientists, companies should also look to create services based on Little Data that empower their customers. These services would enable customers to pull information towards them when they need it, instead of just trying to figure out what message to send and when to send it. They would enable customers to make better decisions themselves, instead of trying to figure it out for them. This is a new way of thinking, and a new way of engaging customers. Perhaps we need a new generation of (Little) Data scientists to figure it out.

There is no doubt that Big Data will transform business. But in an age of connected and empowered individuals, precision targeting must be balanced with personal value. If you want to build loyalty, spend less time using data to tell customers about you, and spend more time telling them something about themselves.