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For almost a year, Google Now has remained an exclusive feature of Android. The service may very well be coming to Chrome in the near future, but an iOS version seemed unlikely. Well, it’s not unlikely anymore if a leaked video is to be believed.

Engadget reports that a video announcing Google Now for iOS popped up on YouTube, and then quickly disappeared. The authentic-looking video shows that Google Now would be integrated into the Google Search app for iOS. In the app, users would just swipe up to access Google Now and all the info cards contained therein.

If the video is legitimate, we might be seeing an announcement of Google Now for iOS in the near future. I highly doubt that the video would leak this far ahead of Google I/O so a pre-I/O announcement seems the most likely. Still, the video could always be an elaborate fake that just so happened to hire an actress that sounds exactly like the narrator from the original Google Now announcement video.

While the video does indeed look legitimate, we’ve reached out to Google for comment. We’ll update if we hear back.

Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks saw its shares soar by close to 30 percent in early morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Late last night the company priced its shares at $17 (the mid point of its range), and its stock reached a high of $22.49 in morning trading. By 11:00 AM EST, the stock had dropped a bit and has been hovering around $21.

Silver Spring also last night decided to make 4.75 million shares available, which was 1 million shares more than the company had originally planned. Silver Spring raised $81 million in the process. In addition, longtime investor Foundation Capital also plans to purchase $12 million worth of stock at the IPO price in a private placement.

Silver Spring sells wireless networks and smart meters to utilities that can be used to run power grids more efficiently and offer news types of grid services. The company counts large utilities as customers like PG&E, Florida Power and Light, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, and Baltimore Gas & Electric.

The company filed to go public back in the Summer of 2011, and waited out the entire year of 2012 before actually going public. The company’s lead investors include Foundation Capital and Kleiner Perkins.

Silver Spring Networks CEO Scott Lang told me in a phone call from the New York Stock Exchange this morning that the company “couldn’t be more pleased” with the IPO and that the process was “oversubscribed.” In response to my question of why it took so long to go public, Lang said that there were external market conditions and volatilities that were outside their control.

“We had a strong year in 2012 and we were patient,” said Lang. Lang owned 2.8 percent, or 1.04 million shares, before the IPO. At $21 per share, that percent is worth $21.84 million. Typically investors and executives have to hold their shares for at least six months before selling them.

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When, eventually, sequestration has passed and Washington and its watchers have moved on to the next big debate, alongside all the recriminations there will be this: the familiar calls for government to demonstrate more of the effectiveness that we see in the most successful private sector companies.

The clamor won’t be altogether misguided. After all, the best-run companies might have a thing or two to teach this D.C. drama’s main players about leadership, negotiation, and protecting our (national) brand.

Of course, government has long looked to business for new ways of managing. Benchmarking was a key feature of President Clinton’s effort at Reinventing Government. Public variants of outsourcing were pushed as part of George W. Bush’s President’s Management Agenda, and President Obama appointed the country’s first Chief Performance Officer.

So it’s a fair bet that when the sequester’s dust has settled, government may once again turn to (or have thrust on them) the latest business bestsellers as “how-to” guides for avoiding the next crisis. Though positive results cannot be guaranteed, it is good when private sector ingenuity is offered up — amidst other solutions — for consideration by the public sector. American business remains the country’s most vibrant source of innovation.

Problem is, where government is now most likely to look — and where the private sector seems most poised to push — is in the wrong place. Government has traditionally looked to business for tools and techniques to help improve productivity and cut costs through greater efficiency. Lean Six Sigma, which even made its way into a candidate pledge in the last presidential campaign, is one in a series of such business-to-government waves. Big data is rolling in after it. But these are the wrong tools for the job that now needs doing. What government needs most right now — what it will need especially after the sequestration debacle — are tools that build trust.

Pew’s January 2013 poll drives this point home — their survey found that a mere 26% of Americans trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time. Post-sequestration, the only thing harder to envision than trust numbers climbing rapidly is that government officials can lead without it.

The failed deficit dialogue over the last year has shown us that staggering budget deficits at the federal level and huge unfunded pension and health liabilities in states and cities can’t be bridged by squeezing the next nickel (or even 10 trillion of them) out of government operations. Addressing these challenges will require reasonable dialogue, debate, and, ultimately, decision-making about the scope of what we want as a country and how we want to pay for it. Business strategies focused on process and efficiency won’t help the country manage that.

There is, however, a new wave of business techniques more suited to the job. In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino has embraced these lessons with an engagement-driven strategy dubbed New Urban Mechanics. Companies that have learned how to foster community, cultivate trust, and engender participation — they hold the real lessons government needs now.

There is, of course, a certain irony here. After all, community, trust, and participation are (or were) the tools of the trade of government in the first place. Cities and towns — with their squares, community groups, and network of relationships — knew the value of “social” centuries before Facebook figured it out. It turns out that what the public sector can learn from the private sector, the private sector actually learned from the public sector.

Government would do well to look at businesses that are innovating best and fastest in the area of engagement. And as they do, business managers should take note. Millions are being invested by Cisco, IBM, Phillips, and other global companies to help cities and countries operate efficiently. Some of these efforts look too tech- and operations-laden to solve the biggest challenges. The next wave of successful public-private partnerships won’t be top down, process-driven, and systems-heavy. Businesses that learn to help government cultivate and harness its own strength — in community — will serve our democracy best and succeed for their own stakeholders.

Over the past couple of days, “SimCity” has eclipsed “Pope” in global search volume. Electronic Arts has finally created something that has captivated the world with an intoxicating melange of drama, tragedy and sick humor. Too bad all of these elements emerge from EA’s project management, not the game itself. The first stage of the SimCity fiasco stemmed from how EA’s servers spectacularly failed to cope with the entirely predictable launch week traffic. But the next stage is potentially even more damaging. On EA’s Answer HQ website, one of the most heated discussion threads is now about whether the entire pathfinding and traffic management systems of the game are badly broken.

Continue reading…

Just how big is too big? In late-August, last year, I made the case for 15-inch tablets being suited for resource-intensive tasks, as well as lying on the couch to catch up on the newest episode of my favorite show, but somehow I sense that manufacturers have taken things too far.

The latest entry in the mammoth touchscreen genre comes from American company Dell which, on Wednesday, unveiled the XPS 18 AIO (All-In-One). As you might imagine judging by its name, the XPS 18 features an 18-inch touchscreen display, with a resolution of 1920 by 1080, or as Dell likes to call it “twice the screen size of Apple’s iPad” (like the two are in some sort of competition — which they are not).

Dell pits the XPS 18 as a versatile device capable of media streaming and “gaming for families” in a lightweight package. The company says that weight comes in under 5 lbs (2.3 KG), making it 6 lbs lighter than Sony’s Tap 20 that was unveiled in mid-October, last year. However, that device features a larger 20-inch display.

The XPS 10 is powered by “third-generation core processors” from Intel (which suggests a Core i5 or Core i7). The AIO sports an aluminium back panel and adjustable stand and Dell’s Wyse PocketCloud app for creating and managing a personal cloud, among the most noteworthy features.

The Dell XPS 18 will be available from Dell.com in US and select European markets from $899.99, starting April 16.

Blink and you missed it. Registration for Google’s developer conference opened at 10 a.m. EDT this morning and sold out fast. With so much candy to offer — Android Key Lime Pie, Chromebook Pixel, Glass and Google Now — I’m not exactly surprised. Google I/O 2012 was big, and this year’s event promises to be even bigger. I got the “Google I/O is sold out” on the registration page around 10:48 a.m.

Google charges $900 for general developer admission and $300 for students or school faculty. The event takes place in San Francisco from May 15-17. Considering the goodies Google gives attendees, some people might sign up just for the hope of free Glass or Pixel (don’t hold your breath). Last year, attendees got Galaxy Nexus, Nexus Q and Nexus 7. Oh yeah, Train performed live.

Uh-Oh

Like the launch of Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 tablets, Google could not handle the demand, which shouldn’t be the case for a company which primary products are all in the cloud. Many developers report timeouts trying to register or problems processing registration or payment. For a highly-anticipated event, the last thing Google should want to do is leave developers feeling angry or frustrated.

Armando Ferreira posted to Google+ at 10:21 a.m.: “Couldn’t get a ticket the right way. OK, so I cheated! Still couldn’t get a ticket using multiple devices on different networks with different IP Addresses I give up!”

Anders Johansen: “I pressed accept and buy, then it loaded for a while with spinner. Then the spinner disappeared and the 5 minutes passed. But if i go to the wallet i can see the payment as pending”.

“I now have two pending transactions in Wallet”, Taylor Matthews comments on Google+. “Got a confirmation email from the second attempt and a verification code. Sounds like I’m in, not sure what to do about the second $900 charge though”. Idrialis Castillo asks: “Hey, did you got the 2 tickets? I want one of those”.

At 10:53 — that’s three minutes after I saw that “registration is closed” — Jessica Janiuk posted to Google+: “So, we just confirmed that the Google I/O ticket payments have cleared the bank, but I still am in limbo not knowing if I have a ticket or not. I really wish +Google Developers would provide some answers for those of us in this situation”.

Then at 11:04 she added: “The pending transactions for Google I/O tickets were just cancelled in Google Wallet. I guess that means I didn’t get a ticket. What a horrible way to get someone really excited and then pull the rug out”.

Ronald van der Lingen: “Thanks Google for messing up the registration system for I/O so badly. Got through once but Google Wallet kept failing”.

Alex Hernandez set up a Google+ Community to complain. As I update at 11:33 a.m., there are two members.

Oh, Yeah

As a journalist, Google I/O is among my favorite events to cover. I hate Consumer Electronics Show, for example. Microsoft’s developer conference typically isn’t as exciting and secretive Apple locks out press beyond the keynote and puts sessions behind closed doors. I/O typically has lots of energy and interesting technologies and sessions.

During last year’s event, Google:

• Unveiled Google Now
• Offered Google Glass for $1,500
• Launched Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• Introduced its first tablet, Nexus 7
• Showed off Nexus Q (which, sadly, Google later killed)
• Demonstrated Glass with parachute jump onto the venue’s (Moscone Center) roof

Those people who got tickets are generally excited.

Phillip Marlow is “going to Google I/O for the first time!” Alex Ford is “so excited to go to my first Google I/O!”

Then there’s divij durve: “IM GOING TO GOOGLE I/O 2013!!!!!! OH HELL YA!!!!!”

Hamid Marc Afsharieh is one of the lucky, early ticket holders, posting at 10:25 a.m.: WooHoo. I’m in to i/o 2013. It’s gonna be a blast!!!!!”

Some others are happy about getting a ticket but upset about the process.

“I have a ticket, so I’m lucky, but this entire registration mess is a cluster and Google needs to fix it”, Charlie Collins writes. “The site seemed to hold up better this year (props for that), but many people are complaining of getting a ticket slot and them timing out on Google Wallet. That’s unacceptable. That kind of stuff infuriates people, and rightly so”.

Did you get a Golden Ticket?

Ed. Note: This post is part of our Sunshine Week series on the blog. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to celebrate and focus on government transparency and open government. Macon Phillips will also discuss We the People in a Yahoo! News Chat today at 12:30 PM ET. 

We have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and the wisdom, energy, and creativity of the American public is the nation’s greatest asset. Sunshine Week seeks to encourage public participation in government, and the U.S. has worked hard to expand opportunities for civic engagement. As one example of this, We the People gives the Obama Administration a way to connect with the public on the issues that matter most to them. 

We the People allows anyone to create or sign a petition asking the Administration to take action on an issue. If the petition gets enough signatures, the Administration issues an official response.

Since its creation, 7.2 million people have logged more than 11.6 million signatures on more than 178,000 petitions on issues ranging from education to immigration to tax policy.

read more

Sometimes, you just have to ask people what they want. And sometimes, since people are really bad at getting out of their own way and telling you exactly what they want, you have to make them figure it out for themselves.

Thus is the story behind Facebook’s new news feed, which is currently rolling out to users very very slowly. Apparently, “user experience researcher” Jane Justice Leibrock used psychological and anthropological methods to figure out what Facebook users actually wanted in their news feeds.

And she used a bunch of index cards and a big white wall the do it.

First, she asked people about the biggest problem with their news feeds. A lot of people said “clutter.” It was quickly determined that “clutter” didn’t really mean that the visual space was busy, but that users were unhappy with the types of content that they were seeing from friends and pages.

That’s when she busted out the index cards and sticky notes.

From her blog post on the Facebook engineering page:

We came up with the idea of multiple feeds, each with its own focus on a particular topic, type of content, or type of friend. It was a good start, but crucial questions remained: which feeds to offer, and which stories to put into them? Those answers required a second round of research.

I didn’t simply ask people which feeds they’d like to see, because as any user experience researcher knows, it’s very difficult for people to predict what they’ll end up liking. Instead I needed to come up with a way for people to show me — not tell me — which feeds would be valuable. I chose a method known as a “card sort,” which researchers usually turn to in order to understand how people mentally relate different topics to each other. But as we often do in research at Facebook, I adapted the method for a different purpose: to get people to reverse-engineer the feeds they’d find interesting. I gave each participant a stack of recent stories from their feed, printed out on paper, and asked them to pick out the ones that interested them and discard the rest. Next, I asked them to sort the remaining, interesting stories by putting them into piles separated by what they liked about each.

Apparently, there were overarching themes to how people organized the stories: photos, posts from close friends, and (surprisingly to Leibrock) posts related to their interests.

And that’s where the multiple feeds were born, from this reverse engineering. Check out the full post here if you want to go a bit deeper into Facebook’s thinking behind the new news feed.

If you feel like Samsung’s smartphone advertising was everywhere last year, you weren’t imagining things. A new report on ad spending for U.S. smartphones in 2012 says Samsung far outspent all of its rivals — paying $401 million to promote its Galaxy line of phones, which is a gigantic leap from the $78 million it spent in 2011. And it appears to have helped the company: its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S 4, has been highly anticipated in the run up to its planned introduction on Thursday.

The report by Kantar Media also found that Samsung outspent the company it frequently mocked in its ads: Apple. The iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in the U.S. during the last three months of the year after the iPhone 5′s launch, but Apple didn’t increase its spending nearly as much in 2012 as its rival did. Kantar reported that Apple spent $333 million on iPhone ads in the U.S. last year, up from the $253 million the company spent the year before. HTC, which was third behind Samsung, spent $46 million, followed by BlackBerry, which spent $35 million, and Nokia, which spent $13 million on U.S. ads.

Samsung clearly has a lot of money to spend and it spreads it around too: The Wall Street Journal, in talking to unnamed wireless carrier executives, found that Samsung also helps to foot some bills for its strategic partners:

The heavy ad spending is only the most visible of Samsung’s investments. Some wireless carrier executives said the South Korean company also spends more on “below the line” marketing than any device maker. Those funds help pay for in-store advertising, promotions and training for carrier sales representatives that help close the sale.

The discrepancy in spending between the only two companies who are making any money at all in smartphone sales wasn’t just in quantity of dollars spent. In terms of quality, Samsung’s television advertising got people talking, especially “The Next Big Thing” ads that poked fun at Apple’s typically long lines on iPhone launch days and the people who wait in them.

Apple, meanwhile, had an ad campaign that got people talking in 2012 (remember the “Genius” ads?) — but for another reason: for how surprisingly un-Apple-like they seemed in quality of execution and tone.

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As the continued hype machine builds for the Samsung Galaxy S IV, analysts are concerned with over-hype. Right now they are projecting that Samsung will move 10 million units during the first month, but they are also concerned that we could see a repeat from last year’s supply issues. Last year, there was a manufacturing defect in handset cases that resulted in a loss of 2 million units of the Galaxy S III during the first month of release.

“There could be, again, a supply bottleneck due to tight supply of components… but I think any such disruption will be very brief, as Samsung is making a bigger bet on the S IV than on its predecessor with a backup plan to avoid such disruption,” said Greg Noh, an analyst at HMC Investment and Securities.

Of course you don’t expect that Samsung would sit back and allow it to happen again do you? Well you can never guarantee anything, but it looks like one analyst feels Samsung has done everything they can to make sure we don’t see any delays.

“Based on checks we had with suppliers, Samsung has already done significant work to ensure smooth supply and not to repeat what they had to deal with last time,” said Lee Seung-woo, an analyst at IBK Securities.

There’s no question that Samsung will sell a lot of these bad boys, the only question is how fast they can churn them out?

source: Reuters

Come comment on this article: Sales of Samsung Galaxy S IV to top 10 million units in the first month assuming no production issues

It’s been 16 years since Notorious B.I.G., born as Christopher Wallace, was gunned down in L.A., but it now appears that his spirit will live on. In cartoon form, at least.

A company called Ossian Media this week announced a new animated series starring Nororious B.I.G.’s children, C.J. and T’yanna. The cartoon will be named House of Wallace, and will follow C.J. and T’yanna as they attempt to keep their father’s studio from being turned over to some bland music conglomerate. The ghost of their father will be a major character in the series, guiding them with advice.

“It’s been 16 years since our Dad was murdered and we miss him dearly,” said T’yanna and C.J. Wallace in a statement released this week. “It is such an honor for us to be able to carry on his legacy, not only through his music but also by channeling him through our own creativity. This project, House Of Wallace, is a great opportunity for us to bridge the gap between our parents who loved his music and the kids and young adults our ages, that were not around to really appreciate it,”

C.J. and T’yanna will be voicing their own characters, and the statement also promises that “a bevy of musical artists” will appear as guests on the show. The show will also feature “advertising integration,” meaning that Ossian brand partners could be incorporated “directly into the narrative.”

Microsoft (MSFT) is the only major vendor that hasn’t yet announced any details surrounding its new console, but some industry watchers are already convinced that the new Xbox will dominate the next generation of video game consoles. Among them is Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who believes Microsoft is set to win the next console generation — and his reasoning has little to do with video games.

Continue reading…

Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital has put an undisclosed amount of money into MineSense Technologies Ltd. The company is a provider of “sensor-based sorting systems to pre-concentrate low-grade ores in the metal mining industry.”

PRESS RELEASE
Today, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital (“Chrysalix EVC”), the world’s most active cleantech venture capital firm and a member of the Chrysalix Global Network (CGN), announced its investment in MineSense(TM) Technologies Ltd, providers of sensor-based sorting systems to pre-concentrate low-grade ores in the metal mining industry. The Series A round was done exclusively by Chrysalix EVC and marks the first time the Firm has invested in a startup dedicated to mining technology.

“Mining has always been a highly energy-intensive industry. However, it faces mounting challenges with declining ore grades and less favourable ore bodies, further exacerbating energy use and squeezing margins. Now is a great time for Chrysalix EVC to identify step-change mining innovations and to help build some great companies. We hope MineSense will be the first of many mining technology investments,” said Charlie Haythornthwaite, a Partner at Chrysalix EVC. “MineSense is led by an experienced team that really understands the need for delivering integrated practical solutions. Its robust sensor and systems designs have been optimized for specific challenges of the metal mining application, especially related to sensor sensitivity and scalability. We are also pleased to be able to bring in John Thompson, the President of the Canadian Mining Innovation Council as an independent Board Director.”

“After receiving strong financing interest from other funds and mining companies, we were pleased to move forward with Chrysalix EVC based on their company-building experience, technical knowledge, and industry connections,” stated Andrew Bamber, MineSense Technologies’ CEO. “We really appreciated how they quickly understood our vision and how the due diligence process with Chrysalix helped us better understand our own business.”

The rapid decline in ore grades seen in base and precious metals mining is a trend seriously challenging the sustainability of the industry. Ever greater quantities of rock need to be moved and processed to maintain output capacity leading to falling productivity relative to energy use and capital expenditure. Water intensity and the quantity of tailings also increase for similar reasons. The benefit of ore upgrading approaches is that barren waste rock can be sorted and rejected, leaving only the valuable rocks to be processed. The technology essentially reverses this decline in grade, leading to reduced costs and reduced environmental footprint. Moreover, when pre-concentration unlocks a capacity bottleneck in the mine-mill process, revenues can also be increased, significantly enhancing the sustainability of the operation.

For more information on MineSense and its technology and products, please visit www.minesense.com.

About Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital
Chrysalix EVC is a venture capital firm investing in technologies that will drive the new energy economy. The Firm provides early-stage financing, hands-on assistance, and strategic connections to innovative companies confronting the world’s most important energy and environmental issues. For the past two years, the Firm has ranked the most active clean energy technology venture capital firm in the world and today, is a member of the Chrysalix Global Network (CGN). The Chrysalix EVC team has an exceptional track record in this emerging industry. Collectively, it has over 120 years of experience in the energy industry and over 120 years in the venture capital business. The Firm is backed by a strong group of international blue-chip industrial and financial Limited Partners, and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a supporting office in Calgary, Alberta.

The post Chrysalix Energy Backs MineSense appeared first on peHUB.

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the network industry:

Juniper selected by PEER 1.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that PEER 1 has deployed Juniper’s integrated routing, switching and security technology in its U.K. data center. PEER 1 uses the Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches with Virtual Chassis technology as distribution devices beneath the core level handling most of its routing changes. The Juniper solution supported PEER 1′s backbone traffic and internal data center traffic, in addition to providing flexibility of 10GB hot-swappable modules which allows PEER 1 to run huge amounts of bandwidth within the data center network and over the backbone. Juniper MX 3D Universal Edge Routers interconnect to PEER 1′s FastFiber Network and to the London Internet Exchange (LINX) for high-speed Internet access. “Our rapid growth in the past few years means that we required support from a company such as Juniper Networks, ensuring that we remain on track to deliver the great hosting and great service that PEER 1 has become known for,” said Dominic Monkhouse, managing director, EMEA, PEER 1. ”Juniper’s innovation has enabled us to provide the highest level of secure user services at very low levels of energy consumption; and it supports our ‘Green’ mission with its high-performance network infrastructure built on reliable, high quality products that are environmentally friendly.”

Juniper also announced that its next-generation core routers have been deployed by the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) to establish the country’s first 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) backbone network.

Ciena selected for submarine upgrade. Ciena (CIEN) announced that communications service provider SEACOM has selected Ciena Corporation’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and OneControl Unified Management System for the upgrade of its submarine network across the Southern and Eastern African coastlines. The upgrade includes key countries in SEACOM’s 17,000km undersea network, including India, Egypt, Dijbouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. The solution will allow SEACOM to deliver its capacity in very short timeframes and provide for future demands. The deployment will initially use Ciena’s 40G coherent transport technology, with ultra-long distance 100G wavelengths planned for future upgrades. “Connectivity services in Africa are booming due to the growing needs of business IT users, the rise of ”cloud” based services, and growing requirements for the processing and storing of personal data,” says Claes Segelberg, chief technology officer at SEACOM. “Ciena’s technology will enable us to cost-effectively scale our capacity to address this growing demand for connectivity throughout the continent. The company’s future-proof network design has mitigated the risks associated with the upgrade project, ensuring a seamless transition for SEACOM’s carrier customers and end users.”

Ciena also announced that the Utah Education Network (UEN) and the University of Utah have deployed Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors, to provide high-speed, high-capacity 100G connectivity between the University and its new downtown Salt Lake City data center, and to UEN member organizations.

Windstream expands Carrier Switched Ethernet.  Windstream (WIN) announced a nationwide expansion of its Carrier Switched Ethernet service. This expansion will allow Windstream to have ubiquitous availability within its entire footprint through existing network interconnects. The increased coverage area will enhance the current service offerings to include major metro areas across the United States such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix. With the solution, interconnect ports of 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gbps are available, and end user loops from 3 Mbps to 1 Gbps are supported. “By expanding our Carrier Switched Ethernet solution, our customers now have a broader ability to reach businesses with dependable Ethernet access,” said Don Perkins, Windstream senior vice president of Business Marketing. “Ethernet expansion represents continued network and product integration, resulting in greater efficiency, consistency, and reliability for many organizations. This growth further positions Windstream as a key service provider in the carrier Ethernet industry.”

This time next year, millions of people will be drinking themselves stupid by 10:00 am on St. Patrick’s Day. The only difference between this year and next year is that next year, thousands could be living the experience through Google Glass.

Here’s what that might look like (NSFW language):

[stuntbear]

Yesterday we found out the UK release of the HTC One would be delayed by two weeks. Of course when it rains it pours so everyone is wondering if: 1) there will be further delay and 2) will it effect the U.S. market? Well I’m not sure we can give you an answer on any further delays just yet, but HTC did say the UK delays have nothing to do with the U.S.

“The statement doesn’t apply to US models. The US carriers are on a separate timeline”

Unfortunately this doesn’t tell us that the U.S. market won’t have a separate delay at some point. It is our understanding that these delays are due to component shortages regarding the UltraPixel camera. We can only hope that things will get rectified soon, and we won’t see any more delays. We are expecting to see the HTC One hit U.S. carriers by early April. It’s a lot like the weather in that it’s beyond our control and we will just have to wait and see.

source: HTCsource

Come comment on this article: HTC One delays won’t effect the U.S. market

The New York Times Company last year unveiled an ad tool called Ricochet that allows brands to staple their online ads to stories as they move across the internet and social media. Now, other prominent publications like The New Yorker and Forbes have signed up to use the tool too.

If you’re unfamiliar, here’s how Ricochet works: a brand pays the New York Times for special versions of its story links in which a certain ad will always appear next to a given story. The brand can then distribute those stories on its website and on social media in the hopes of generating buzz. In practice, this might involve a blueberry seller paying for its ads to appear beside Times’ stories that discuss antioxidants or healthy eating.

The ad tools appear to have proved popular as, in a Wednesday news release, the Times said that Forbes, Condé Nast, AdAge and People will begin to use Ricochet too.

For the publishers, Ricochet offers a way to make money from long-tail content. Meanwhile, the tool offers brands a way to use content marketing to spread the word about a topic in the news or about one of their own products.

Michael Zimbalist, VP of R&D operations at the New York Times Company, told paidContent last year that Ricochet is a “very simple product” that clients will be able to use in an off-the-shelf fashion.

Content from the new titles, which also include sites like Ars Technica and Vanity Fair, will be available on Ricochet as of May 1.

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