Mereja

Blog

  • Applebee’s Waitress Fired Over Receipt On Reddit

    The Applebee’s waitress who posted a customer’s check on Reddit because of a note explaining why there was no tip has been fired, and the company has posted a lengthy explanation of the story and their decision on Facebook.

    The waitress, identified as Chelsea, says she thought it was funny when she found the guest check on the table with the note, “I give God 10%, why do you get 18%?” and the tip line scratched out. The guest, as it so happens, is a pastor, and the incident has caused an uproar online as both Chelsea and the pastor, identified as a Ms. Bell, receive attention, support, and negative feedback.

    “I originally posted the note as a lighthearted joke,” says Chelsea. “I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical. I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it entertaining.”

    Bell–and Applebee’s–didn’t find it entertaining at all, and terminated Chelsea for exposing a customer’s check since her signature is clearly visible at the bottom. But she insists it wasn’t done out of ill will, and that after the photo went viral, she did everything she could to keep Bell from being exposed.

    “All throughout the comment thread on the Reddit post, I withheld any identifying information,” Chelsea said. “I had already started receiving messages containing Facebook profile links and blogs and websites, asking me to confirm the identity of the customer. I refused to confirm any of them, and all of them were incorrect. I worked with the website moderators to remove any personal information. I wanted to protect the identity of both my fellow server and the customer. I had no intention of starting a witch hunt or hurting anyone — I just wanted to share a picture I found interesting.”

    She was fired nonetheless, and as of now several online forums are backing her up. HuffPost Comedy has even started a petition to get Chelsea rehired.

    As for Applebee’s, this was their response to the situation, via Facebook:

    We appreciate the chance to explain our franchisee’s action in this unfortunate situation.

    Please let us assure you that Applebee’s and every one of our franchisees values our hard working team members and the amazing job they do serving our guests. We recognize the extraordinary effort required and the tremendous contribution they make, and appreciate your recognition and support of our colleagues.

    At the same time, as we know you will agree, the guests who visit Applebee’s — people like you — expect and deserve to be treated with professionalism and care in everything we do. That is a universal standard in the hospitality business. That includes respecting and protecting the privacy of every guest, which is why our franchisees who own and operate Applebee’s have strict policies to protect personal information — even guest’s names.

    With that in mind, here is what happened in St. Louis:
    – A guest questioned the tip automatically attached to her large party’s bill by writing: “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” on the check.
    – A different server, who did not even wait on the group, photographed the receipt, posted the photo online and commented about the incident.
    – The guest subsequently heard from friends who identified her from the posting, where her name is clearly visible, and the restaurant was notified. There was no further communication with the guest.
    – The team member was asked about posting the receipt and admitted she was responsible.
    – When she was hired, the team member was provided the franchisee’s employee hand book which includes their social media policy and states:
    “Employees must honor the privacy rights of APPLEBEE’s and its employees by seeking permission before writing about or displaying internal APPLEBEE’S happenings that might be
    considered to be a breach of privacy and confidentiality. This shall include, but not be limited to, posting of photographs, video, or audio of APPLEBEE’S employees or its customers,
    suppliers, agents or competitors, without first obtaining written approval from the Vice President of Operations. The policy goes on to specify: Employees who violate this policy will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.
    – As a result of her admission to violating a clear company policy intended to safeguard guests, the team member is no longer employed by the franchisee.

    Our franchisees are committed to acting in the best interests of guests and team members. This is a regrettable situation and we wish it had never happened. However, the disregard for an important policy left the franchisee no choice but to take the action they did.

    We hope this provides you with some additional insight. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to explain the facts involved.

  • God of War: Ascension Live Action Trailer Released

    Though they rarely have anything worthwhile to reveal about their games, the live action video game trailers seen in the past few years have been memorable. Who can forget the celebrities battling it out in the Call of Duty trailers, or the strange Assassin’s Creed version of America?

    Today, Sony released its live-action trailer for God of War: Ascension. Earlier in the week, Sony teased this trailer as a commercial that will play during the upcoming Super Bowl broadcast. That’s a lot of money for a game commercial, showing that this may be Sony’s last big marketing push for the PlayStation 3 before it announces the PlayStation 4 on February 20. The God of War PlayStation 3 bundle announced yesterday is also part of that push.

    It’s less bloody than you might imagine, though Kratos looks just as grumpy as ever. Since Ascension is a prequel to the original God of War, it focuses on Kratos’ fall and his motivations behind his epic quest for vengeance against the gods. As the trailer teases, memories of the Spartan’s family and the ash that covers his body will be large themes throughout the game.

  • Should Your Business Be Nonprofit or For-Profit?

    Social entrepreneurs often grapple with the decision of whether to establish their organizations as nonprofit or for-profit in order to reach their goals. But what if you don’t know which model to use, or which would best suit your mission? I’ve stood at this crossroads myself, and share my own experience here in the hopes that it will help inform other social entrepreneurs facing the same decision.

    When I was a graduate student at Stanford University in 2007, a team of students and I first conceptualized the Embrace Infant Warmer — a low cost way to regulate the temperature of vulnerable newborns, without the need for constant electricity, and at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions. We were eager to take this product to the disadvantaged communities who desperately needed it. We needed to build an organization by which we could carry out this vision, and inevitably, the question arose: Should we be a for-profit or a nonprofit entity?

    We debated at length the merits of each type of structure, and came to the conclusion that the fundamental difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit organization is where it can source capital. A for-profit can raise money from private investors, for which it must give equity or dividends to shareholders; ultimately, a return on investment is expected. A nonprofit, on the other hand, can seek donations from individuals, foundations and corporations. Such stakeholders generally expect a “social return” on capital.

    Given the inherent risk associated with what we were attempting to do (an untested management team bringing to market an unprecedented medical device) and the uncertainty of the commercial viability of the product, and given the type of customers we wanted to serve, we decided the best option was to go down the nonprofit route and created a 501(c)(3). However, even as a nonprofit, we believed in running the organization as a business; we would sell the product at a margin, and any “profits” would be reinvested back into the company to fulfil our longer term goal: to create a line of affordable medical devices that could save the lives of millions of at-risk babies.

    I believe that to be an entrepreneur, one must be truly idealistic — almost naïve — and even more so to be a social entrepreneur. We started Embrace with a bold vision, ready to change the world in our own way. Little did we know the time and capital it would require for us to get from a concept to a manufactured and clinically tested product — not to mention what it would take to build a distribution channel to sell our product. Nor did we realize the amount of management time it would require for us to raise this capital as a non-profit organization; precious time that would be taken away from building the product and the infrastructure needed to deliver the product, and to make impact at the scale we had envisioned.

    In order to raise the capital that was needed to achieve our mission to save as many babies as possible, we decided to spin off a for-profit arm of the company. We would run two separate organizations: the nonprofit arm, Embrace, would own the intellectual property for the technology, take philanthropic contributions to donate the product to the poorest communities through NGO partners, and build an eco-system around which we could help promote newborn health, through things beyond the technology, like education.

    The for-profit arm, Embrace Innovations, would raise money from venture capitalists — though our first screening criteria would be investors who were aligned with our social mission. It would license the technology by paying a royalty for every product sold. The for-profit arm would be responsible for the capital-intensive aspects of the work, including manufacturing, clinical testing and R&D. And, importantly, it would set up the sales and distribution infrastructure to sell the product to those who could afford to pay for it, while still focusing on bottom of the pyramid markets.

    Our hope is that these two organizations, together, will most effectively meet the goals of Embrace: in the short run, to give every child a chance for a healthy life with our infant warmer, and in the long run, to empower the disadvantaged to improve their lives through a line of affordable healthcare technologies. Having both a for-profit and a nonprofit organization working side by side allows us to leverage private capital, in addition to philanthropy, to ultimately serve all segments of the market with our product.

    Furthermore, this allows the for-profit entity to develop and focus its competencies to sell and distribute products, as well as to conduct research and development. At the same time, the nonprofit is able to focus on broader issues around newborn health, through training, education, and monitoring and evaluation. Early last year, we were able to close a Series A round of financing from Khosla Impact Fund and Capricorn Investment Group, giving us a launchpad by which to try this new structure. Thus far, through this approach, Embrace and Embrace Innovations have helped over 3,000 babies with our product. While our primary focus is in India, Embrace is doing pilot projects with NGO partners in 10 countries, and we hope to further scale this year.

    Making social impact requires innovative thinking, not just in terms of developing a new product or service, but also in terms of organizational structures and mechanisms for raising capital. The challenges that social entrepreneurs are trying to solve are some of the most formidable problems in the world, in areas with significant market failures, poor governance, and a complete lack of infrastructure. Effectively tackling problems in this environment may require leveraging both capital and expertise from grant makers and private investors alike. Ultimately, social enterprises should not be confined to a single type of legal structure. The most important part of choosing the right structure is starting with your mission, and then adopting a structure that allows you to best achieve it.

    Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and register to stay informed and give us feedback.

    Scaling Social Impact
    Insights from HBR and the Bridgespan Group

  • HBO Go Coming to Apple TV [REPORT]

    Starting some time this year, you may have another incentive to go out and grab an Apple TV box.

    According to Bloomberg, two people familiar with the plans say that Apple is in negotiations to add HBO Go, HBO’s streaming service, to their Apple TV devices. If finalized, the deal could see and HBO Go app appear on Apple TV by mid-2013.

    That would bring over 600 hours of HBO content – TV series, movies, documentaries, and more to Apple TV customers.

    Apple TV already sports apps from other streaming video providers like Netflix and Hulu, but having HBO Go could boost the product’s attractiveness. Although HBO Go requires that users already pay for an HBO subscription through a cable TV provider, the allure of the HBO Go app is strong because of the popularity of the content offered.

    Although there are plenty of people out there who want HBO content, but refuse to also pay for a cable subscription in order to get it. HBO has given Nordic customers the chance to subscribe to HBO Go sans cable subscription, but they’ve pretty much rejected the idea in the U.S., where many are clamoring for it.

    Apple TV wouldn’t be the first Apple product to feature an HBO Go app. iOS users can stream HBO programming via their iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches.

    HBO Go is available on those iDevices, Roku, Microsoft’s Xbox, Amazon’s Kinde Fire, and various smart TVs.

  • Handler, Morgan Fight: Real Or Jokey?

    Talk show host Chelsea Handler isn’t known for being especially soft on her guests; the comedienne tends to dig right into the juicy stuff during interviews and doesn’t care much for glossing over anything. When you sit down with her, you expect to have some barbs fly your way.

    But in a recent appearance on her show “Chelsea Lately”, Piers Morgan traded insults with his host until it became uncomfortable for the audience, and some are wondering if the exchange was really meant to be hostile or if the two were just being facetious. Or, perhaps, flirtatious?

    “You’ve either had plastic surgery or a makeover, because you look really hot today,” Morgan said.

    “Oh, you’re so annoying. You’re so obnoxious — you wonder why everybody hates you! I specifically covered up so you couldn’t look at me and undress me with your molester eyes,” Handler fired back.

    So far, neither have commented on the strange back-and-forth, but they do have a history of being catty with one another.

  • Kim Dotcom Offers Cash Reward To Anyone Who Breaks Mega’s Security

    Mega has been under a lot of scrutiny since it launched over a week ago, and not just from the copyright lobby. The Internet security community has been claiming that Mega isn’t as secure as Kim Dotcom claims. Now Dotcom is offering a cash reward to anybody that can prove it.

    In a tweet, Dotcom offered a €10,000 ($13,500) reward to anybody that can crack Mega’s security:

    In a previous blog post, Dotcom addressed some of the initial concerns the security community had with Mega. One of the major concerns was that users could not change their password, which is required to decrypt your files. To allay that concern, Mega now lets you change your password. Users can also reset their password under the following scenarios:

  • You are still logged in
  • You are not logged in, but your account is empty (password resets with data present are considerably more tricky — we do not want a breach of your e-mail account to jeopardize the integrity of your files — and will be addressed at a later stage)

    • The change doesn’t address all of the concerns, but it’s a good start. For the other concerns, security researchers will have to break Mega’s encryption and prove that it needs work. From there, Dotcom and his team of developers will hopefully fix any problems found.

    [h/t: The Next Web]

  • Amazon makes it cheaper to move your stuff between regions

    It’s a truism among Amazon Web Services customers that it’s not the cost of storage or compute that gets you, it’s the data transfer charges. Thursday night, Amazon launched price cuts that will make it considerably cheaper for you to move your stuff between AWS regions. Amazon typically recommends that large customers distribute workloads between Availability Zones. Making it cheaper to move data between regions could encourage customers to distribute their workloads geographically.

    The new data transfer pricing, which takes effect Friday, applies to data in S3 storage, EC2 compute instances and Glacier archives. The discounts range from 26 percent to 83 percent off.  This may come as very good news to companies that want to spread their cloud loads beyond Amazon’s US-East data center, which is the focal point of virtually all of the AWS outages over the past year.

    awspriceusethis1

    The discounts also apply to Amazon’s Cloudfront Content Delivery Network (CDN). The cost of using CloudFront with static data stored in S3 or dynamic data coming from EC2 will also fall, according to the AWS blog post announcing the news.

    In other AWS news, Amazon also made use of its M3 extra-large high-CPU performance instances available in data centers beyond US-East. These 64-bit instances — which target batch processing and web serving applications — can now be sourced from both US-West regions, AWS GovCloud, Europe and Asia Pacific (Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney). M3 will come to the South America region soon.

    Amazon typically launches new features and functions in US-East because it is the largest and oldest of its data center facilities; it then broadens availability over time. One thing to keep in mind: pricing can be lower in US-East than the other regions — it was unclear if there was a price differential here, however.

    Finally, AWS also cut prices of some of its Linux On-Demand EC2 instances worldwide by 10 to 20 percent as of Friday.

    awstransfer

     

    Robert Shear, president of Greystone Solutions, an IT consultancy that does a lot of AWS work, said that as of now, “multi-region solutions are not as common in the wild as they are on paper. The [data transfer] cost reduction will give us more freedom in the ways we architect cross-region solutions,”  he said via email.

    Most of his customers will see  more immediate benefit in the reduction of on-demand instance pricing.

    Amazon makes a habit of rolling out new features fast and furiously and then slicing prices; it looks like that trend will continue. What’s different this year is that more companies are offering cloud infrastructure that will compete with AWS for business workloads, although none of the rivals — with the possible exception of Google Compute Engine – are expected to come close to Amazon’s overall scale and capacity any time soon.

    This story was updated at 7:36 a.m. PDT with user comment.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

  • Marlin Equity Buys Sycamore Networks Biz

    Marlin Equity Partners acquired the optical networking business of Sycamore Networks Inc., the firm announced. Sycamore is publicly traded and based in Chelsmford, Mass. No financial terms were disclosed.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Marlin Equity Partners has acquired the optical networking business of Sycamore Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCMR), a Chelsmford, MA-based provider of intelligent optical networking and multiservice access solutions deployed in fixed-line and mobile networks around the world. Its solutions improve utilization of network capacity, increase operational efficiencies and cost-effectively transition from circuit to packet services, while ensuring the highest degree of service availability. The new Marlin entity will be called Sycamore Networks Solutions. No financial terms were disclosed.

    The post Marlin Equity Buys Sycamore Networks Biz appeared first on peHUB.

  • The Employment Situation in January

    While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we pursue the policies needed to build an economy that works for the middle class as we continue to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007.

    Today’s report is a reminder of the importance of the need for Congress to act to avoid self-inflicted wounds to the economy.  The Administration continues to urge Congress to move toward a sustainable Federal budget in a responsible way that balances revenue and spending, and replaces the sequester, while making critical investments in the economy that promote growth and job creation and protect our most vulnerable citizens.

    With today’s release, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has finalized its benchmark adjustment, and the latest data show that the economy has now added private sector jobs for 35 straight months, and a total of 6.1 million jobs have been added over that period. In 2012, private businesses added 2.2 million payroll jobs.  The first report of private sector job growth for January is that businesses added 166,000 jobs. Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 157,000 jobs last month. The average first report of monthly job growth in 2012 was 142,000, that is now revised to 181,000 jobs per month.

    read more

  • Parthenon Capital Backs Envysion

    Parthenon Capital Partners has put an undisclosed amount of money into Envysion Inc., a provider of managed video as a service. The money will be used for growth. Parthenon Capital is based in Boston and San Francisco.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Envysion®, Inc., (www.envysion.com) the leading Managed Video as a Service (MVaaS) provider, today announced Parthenon Capital Partners, a growth oriented private equity firm with offices in San Francisco and Boston, has completed an investment in Envysion. Proceeds from the transaction will be used to provide growth capital for the company.Envysion’s CEO, Matt Steinfort, explained the decision to raise capital, saying, “Envysion has a tremendous opportunity to extend our leadership position in the video-driven business intelligence industry. Over the past several years we have continued to experience remarkable growth, have expanded into new vertical markets and have added numerous marquee national customers. We sought additional capital to enable us to further accelerate this growth and to meet the growing demand from our customers for new and differentiated services to support their cross functional uses of our application. We are thrilled to team with Parthenon, who shares our passion and excitement about this opportunity and will help us accelerate our business.”Envysion will work with Parthenon to advance the shared goal of delivering material profit improvement for the company’s customers. Parthenon brings deep expertise in business services, corporate strategy and operations that will help Envysion expand its platform and value proposition for customers, as well as improve operational efficiencies.”We are thrilled to partner with Matt and the Envysion team,” said Andrew Dodson, partner at Parthenon Capital Partners. “Having spent years in and around the security and video surveillance industries, we believe that video-driven business intelligence is revolutionizing how owners and operators manage retail and restaurant locations. With cloud-based solutions like Envysion’s, operators can dramatically enhance their loss prevention efforts, improve operational efficiency and increase profitability by combining data with video. We believe Envysion is the clear industry leader providing these capabilities.” David Ament, a managing partner at Parthenon, added, “Since its founding, Envysion has partnered with some of the largest, most sophisticated operators within the retail, restaurant and cinema industries. By providing these customers with powerful, easy-to-use, cloud-based solutions, Envysion has substantially increased the profitability of these customers, reduced losses, increased operational efficiency and driven the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Parthenon is excited to partner with the Envysion team to build upon its track record of growth and lead the industry into its next phase of expansion.”Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. served as Envysion’s financial advisor in the fund raising process.About Envysion
    Envysion enables large, national retail, restaurant, cinema and convenience store operators to increase profitability 10-15% by putting easy-to-use, video-driven business intelligenceTM into the hands of the entire organization. Envysion created the Managed Video as a Service (MVaaS) model, which transforms video surveillance into a strategic management tool that provides instant and unfiltered business insights to users across operations, loss prevention, marketing and human resources. The MVaaS model enables Envysion to accelerate innovation by rapidly responding to market opportunity and making new capabilities immediately available to all users. Envysion’s platform quickly scales to 1,000s of locations and 10,000s of users without straining the IT department or network. For more information, visit www.envysion.com or call 877.258.9441.About Parthenon Capital Partners
    Parthenon Capital Partners is a leading mid-market private equity firm based in Boston and San Francisco. Parthenon utilizes niche industry expertise and a deep execution team to invest in growth companies in service industries. Parthenon seeks to be an active and aligned partner to management, either through recapitalization transactions or by backing new executives. Parthenon has particular expertise in business services, financial and insurance services and healthcare, but seeks any service, technology or delivery business with a strong value proposition and proprietary know-how. Parthenon’s investment team has deep experience in corporate strategy, capital markets and operations, enabling the firm to pursue complex, multi-faceted value creation opportunities.

    The post Parthenon Capital Backs Envysion appeared first on peHUB.

  • Temple Run 2 Downloads Break Mobile Game Records

    Imangi Studios, the developer behind the popular Temple Run games, this week announced that Temple Run 2 has broken mobile download records. The title, released on January 17, has been downloaded over 50 million times in only 13 days on iOS, Android, and Kindle devices. The previous record holder was Angry Birds Space, which reached 50 million downloads in 35 days.

    Imangi claims that Temple Run 2 saw over six million downloads in just its first 24 hours on Apple’s App Store. The original Temple Run has seen over 170 million downloads.

    “Temple Run has evolved into something so much bigger than us,” said Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Imangi. “The game has performed beyond our wildest dreams, and we are thrilled that gamers and fans have embraced Temple Run 2 in such a short period of time.”

    Much like Angry Birds before it, Imangi is capitalizing on the success of the Temple Run series with merchandise. Temple Run apparel, comics, and board games can be bought in addition to the mobile games.

  • Google Submits European Antitrust Proposal, Leibowitz Resigns From FTC

    Google has submitted its settlement proposal to the European Union Competition Commission, Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters. The details of the proposal have yet to be made public, so it’s hard to speculate on what this might mean for Google in Europe going forward. We should, however, find out soon enough.

    As you may know, Google has already settled its antitrust issues in the U.S., at least for the time being. The FTC ended its probe last month.

    Bloomberg reports:

    Google sent a “detailed proposal,” said Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for Almunia. He said he couldn’t anticipate if the offer was sufficient to allay antitrust concerns or whether it would be sent to rivals and customers for comments. If this market test is successful, the EU can make the commitments legally binding. Such a settlement would avoid possible fines against the Mountain View, California-based company.

    It will be interesting to see what the rivals make of it. These rivals were not all that pleased with the FTC settlement, saying that it did not go far enough. FairSearch, whose 17 members in the U.S., Europe and South America include Expedia, KAYAK, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, and represent the largest group of formal complainants to the EC, has already released a statement ahead of its analysis. You can read the whole thing at the end of this article.

    Meanwhile, Jon Leibowitz, the FTC Chairman who led the Google probe back in the U.S. has announced his resignation after four years in the role. He will step down on February 15. He’s been a commissioner since 2004.

    “I have been honored to head this extraordinary, bipartisan Commission and to work alongside the best staff in federal government,” he said. “Our small but mighty agency has safeguarded the privacy of Americans and stopped predatory financial practices by companies taking advantage of cash-strapped consumers. Our antitrust enforcement has helped contain health care and drug costs, and helped reduce prices and increase innovation for smartphones, computer chips and other high-tech products.”

    Google is mentioned several times throughout his lengthy resignation announcement:

    Most recently, the Commission announced a landmark agreement with Google to ensure consumers would continue to be able to buy a variety of high-tech devices from smartphones to games to tablets. The settlement gives competitors access to standard-essential patents, and ensures that companies that advertise on Google’s website will have more flexibility to use rival search engines.

    …

    During the last few years, Leibowitz has worked to raise the profile of privacy practices through law enforcement, consumer education and policy initiatives. FTC settlement orders against Google and Facebook let the companies move on and innovate for consumers while requiring comprehensive privacy programs and affirmative choice for material privacy changes, and prohibiting privacy misrepresentations.

    …

    The FTC also took steps to rein in the alleged misuse of standard-essential patents, which can lead to patent hold-up and ultimately higher prices for popular devices such as smart phones, laptop and tablet computers, and gaming consoles. The Commission made the case publicly – and through law enforcement actions such as the Google consent decree – that companies should be restricted from seeking injunctions on standard-essential patents if they are bound by prior commitments to license their standard-essential patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms.

    Some critics of the FTC/Google settlement indicated that they felt Leibowitz had rushed through the Google Probe and the decision, as to get it done before Leibowitz’s imminent resignation.

    Here’s the statement FairSearch emailed us about Google’s settlement proposal in Europe:

    What to look for in Google’s offer to the European Commission

    European Commission Vice President Joaquín Almunia said only weeks ago that the key to Google’s abuse of dominance is that the search giant, with more than 90 percent market share, is diverting traffic in the way that it presents its own services.

    “They are monetizing this kind of business, the strong position they have in the general search market and this is not only a dominant position, I think – I fear – there is an abuse of this dominant position,” Commissioner Almunia told the Financial Times on 10 January 2013 (click here for article<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b5bead6-5b3c-11e2-8d06-00144feab49a.html##axzz2JSz87To1>).

    Google’s biased display of results in favour of its own products was also the first of four concerns Commissioner Almunia listed publicly on 21 May 2012 (click here for full statement<http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-372_en.htm?locale=en>). We are optimistic that Commissioner Almunia will make sure that Google’s proposal meets the test he set of truly restoring competition to the marketplace.

    A settlement will achieve Almunia’s goal of restoring competition to Internet search and related markets if it delivers positive answers to the following questions:

    *   Does Google apply the same rules to its own services as it does to others when it returns and displays search results?
    *   Does Google always provide the user with the most relevant results at the top of the search page, even if those come from non-Google sites?
    *   Is Google prevented from blacklisting competing companies or categories of companies from appearing in the top search results (for example, online travel agencies or metasearch sites)?
    *   Is Google prevented from using the quality scores and minimum bids it assigns to each website as a pricing mechanism to exclude competitors from appearing in the top display of search results?

    The deal should also include a fast-track dispute resolution mechanism administered by a third-party monitor, to ensure that the settlement ends Google’s search bias and other practices identified by Commissioner Almunia as potential abuses of dominance.

  • ‘House of Cards’ Is Now Available for Your Streaming Pleasure (All 13 Episodes)

    The wait is finally over. Today, Netflix drops all 13 episodes of the David Fincher/Kevin Spacey political drama House of Cards. Although it’s not the first Netflix original series to premiere (think Lilyhammer), it’s definitely the biggest budget series to debut on the streaming platform.

    As is becoming tradition, Netflix has made all 13 episodes available at once. Anyone up for a marathon?

    House of Cards stars Kevin Spacey as a the House Majority Whip, a master politician who sets his sights on much higher office. Here’s the official synopsis:

    Based on the British miniseries, ruthless and cunning, Congressman Francis Underwood (Oscar® winner Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (Robin Wright) stop at nothing to conquer everything. This wicked political drama penetrates the shadowy world of greed, sex, and corruption in modern D.C. Kate Mara (“American Horror Story”) and Corey Stoll (“Midnight in Paris”) costar in the first original series from David Fincher (“The Social Network”) and Beau Willimon (“The Ides of March”).

    House of Cards is the true first punch to the traditional cable model for Netflix, but it’s definitely not the only one they have in store. In May, the long-awaited new season of Arrested Development will debut on Netflix – you guessed it, all at once. And just a few weeks before that, the original series Hemlock Grove from horror master Eli Roth will make its debut.

    Yesterday we learned that Microsoft will unlock the Netflix app to all Xbox LIVE users (not just GOLD members) this weekend with the expressed purpose of getting House of Cards into more living rooms.

  • Olivia Wilde As A Showgirl And A Magician

    Olivia Wilde is amping up the sexy factor in two new photos that have just hit the web; one is for Vanity Fair’s “Hollywood Issue”, in which she’s depicted as a gorgeous, feather-clad showgirl, and the other is the promotional poster for “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone”.

    The film also stars Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, Steve Buscemi, and James Gandolfini and focuses on the relationship between Carell and Buscemi, two magicians who have built a successful career in Vegas only to end up despising one another over the years. Wilde plays “The Amazing Jane” and is featured on the poster in a sassy little Victorian-inspired costume–complete with top hat–with a bunny.

    “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” hits theaters March 15th.

    oliviawildeshowgirl

    Image: Bruce Weber for Vanity Fair

    burt wonderstone

  • Sony To Reveal The PlayStation 4 On February 20

    Well, this was unexpected.

    After numerous leaks and a suggestion that the reveal would happen in May, Sony is now teasing that the official unveiling of the next PlayStation will happen sooner than anybody thought.

    In a blog post simply titled “See the Future,” Sony posted the following video teasing an announcement for February 20:

    Of course, we could all be looking far too much into this. Maybe this is the future of the PlayStation 3, or Sony will announce some kind of reboot for the Vita to make up for struggling sales. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however, as the Wall Street Journal reports that Sony will indeed be unveiling the successor to the PlayStation 3 at the conference.

    Sony is also sending out invites for the event with many industry figures placing their bets on a console reveal:

    The event will reportedly be live streamed as well so Sony fans will be able to see the future of the PlayStation brand first hand. Expect new hardware and a few new games to go along with it. Don’t hold your breath for a price or launch date. Those will come closer to or at E3 in June.

  • Tim McGraw: Sobriety Helped Creativity, Energy

    Tim McGraw, whose country career is still going steady after nearly 20 years, says that when he made the decision five years ago to stop drinking, it was for his family; but the effects that decision have had on his creativity and energy are extra benefits, as well. After replacing alcohol with weight training and exercise, he says the change in his body was huge.

    “I felt quitting was something I needed to do. I didn’t feel I had any moral high ground with my kids in the long run. Working out is a great way to go out on stage,” he says. “When I hit the stage, my adrenaline is going and I’m ready.”

    McGraw, whose wife is country starlet Faith Hill, says he feels he’s in a good place in his life and is excited for the release of his new album, Two Lanes Of Freedom, because it represents not so much a continuation of his career but the beginning of a new chapter.

    “I really feel like this new album is not a culmination of the things I’ve done, it’s a new beginning of the things I am going to do. I want to enjoy my career and having my family. I have a busy life, but it is a fulfilling life,” he said.

    The country crooner and Hill have enjoyed a 16-year marriage and have three daughters together. Two Lanes Of Freedom is due out on February 5th.

  • Sony Likely To Unveil PlayStation 4 On Feb. 20, But We’ll Need To See More Than A Spec Show

    PlayStation

    Sony is gearing up for a big announcement on February 20, according to invitations it sent out to the media on Thursday. The smart money was already on a next-generation PlayStation console being the topic of discussion, but the Wall Street Journal came out and blatantly declared that’s what we’d be getting. But while we have a good idea of what, generally, Sony will be talking about, it’s the specifics that matter most for Sony’s long-term success.

    Sony said that we’d “see the future” at the special February event, and the WSJ’s sources say it’s definitely going to be a next-gen console, debuted ahead of a similar evolution of Xbox from Microsoft. The console will actually make it to retail by the holidays in 2013, just in time to compete with Microsoft’s offering, which is also rumored for release around that time. But video game and console sales aren’t at their best right now, with gaming-related device sales experiencing considerable dips ahead of last year’s holiday sales season.

    Rumors about what the console will actually look like so far include retaining an optical disc drive, said to be a concession made to ensuring that large-sized games are still convenient for customers to actually obtain and play, and a move from the Cell chip that powers the current PS3 to an AMD-based design, which might complicate things in terms of backwards compatibility with current games. That will annoy existing customers, but alienating those customers isn’t even Sony’s biggest issue with fielding a next-gen device; it’s attracting new users from a young gamer population that has grown up on mobile.

    Current console gamers have a hard time seeing how mobile could ever truly replace a home console gaming experience, especially when a next-generation console promises to improve considerably on the 10-year old tech found in the PS3 and really push the envelope in terms of graphics, performance and realism. But the spec race isn’t the key battleground in gaming anymore, like it or not. Apple famously shifted focus away from what was under the hood in computers and mobile devices and onto the end-user experience, and that had repercussions beyond its own primary industry. Gaming became a much more broadly defined category, one that includes teen and twenty-something males sitting in front of a TV with a controller in hand, but no longer one defined by that demographic.

    People underestimate the effect of mobile gaming on the industry at large I think, especially when you consider that an entire new generation of gamers is experiencing gaming first on touchscreen devices, with instant availability, downloadable titles and much shorter average gaming sessions. Those experiences will breed different expectations, resulting in consumers in key growth demographics who might not be all that excited to see what kind of ultra-realistic water effects a next-gen console can reproduce, even as those of us who grew up dreaming of in-game fog you could virtually feel on your skin eat up whatever Sony wants to sell us.












  • Get the Maximum Value Out of Your Big Data Initiative

    Companies have been striving to harness and leverage the power of their data assets for decades. Now major U.S. corporations and government agencies are finally realizing business value from Big Data.

    That is the finding of a survey (PDF) and series of follow-up interviews conducted by NewVantage Partners with C-level executives and function heads representing companies and government agencies during the second half of 2012. Over 50 executives representing leading Fortune 1000 companies, such as Aetna, American Express, Bank of America, General Electric (GE), and Wells Fargo, as well as large federal agencies including the Pentagon and the General Services Administration (GSA), participated in the survey. All participants were executives with budgetary and decision-making responsibility or direct visibility and influence for Big Data initiatives.

    Eighty-five percent of respondents indicated that a Big Data initiative was planned or in progress, with almost half using Big Data in an operational capacity. The primary reason cited by organizations for investing in Big Data is to enable better, fact-based decision making.

    reasonsforinvesting1.gif

    While 85% of the participating companies have Big Data initiatives underway with the stated reason of improving analytic capabilities and making smarter business decisions, our subsequent briefings highlighted that the real quantum leap for companies comes from the ability to accelerate the speed at which they can get to a decision.

    In order to achieve this goal, many of the firms interviewed have established a new business metric for measuring the value of their Big Data initiatives — Time-to-Answer (TTA). TTA reflects the speed by which executives can answer critical business questions and has become a common measure on Wall Street and among other leading firms. The Pentagon has established an equivalent metric known as Data-to-Decision, which is dramatized in the analyses conducted by the intelligence community in the Academy Award–nominated film Zero Dark Thirty.

    How are Fortune 500 companies going about realizing value from their Big Data initiatives? To achieve their objectives, chief data officers and chief analytics officers are undertaking a series of steps to accelerate the speed at which they can answer critical business questions and realize business value.

    1. Identify the Five Most Critical Business Questions to Answer. Companies must start somewhere. We see successful companies beginning by defining a set of the most critical business questions that require an answer. The initial set of questions should be limited and manageable. By addressing a small subset of critical questions, executives can demonstrate an initial set of quick wins that provide business value and enable additional funding to ask additional business questions. Starting small, and building from that foundation, is critical to ensuring successful business adoption.

    2. Create an Analytical Sandbox that Enables Data Discovery. Many companies are creating “analytical sandboxes” as an approach to establishing a Big Data environment. An analytical sandbox is a database environment (or test bed) that is set up to be independent of production processes and used for rapid analysis. The idea of an analytical sandbox is that it enables a discovery process, by which executives can play with their data and experiment in an effort to discern new patterns and detect critical new insights. The Pentagon and intelligence communities employ discovery environments to analyze immense volumes of sensor data, from satellites and other telemetry, to identify national security threats.

    costofbigdata.gif

    3. Refine the Questions through Iterative Analysis. Companies are using discovery environments to ask more frequent questions and to refine their questions more frequently. The result is a highly iterative process of constant questioning. One of the benefits of Big Data approaches is that the advent of new Big Data technology platforms makes the process of asking questions less expensive and more cost effective. The chart to the left illustrates the game-changing cost savings that result from Big Data technology versus traditional database approaches.

    4. Validate the Hypotheses through Test-and-Learn Techniques. Test-and-learn is a set of practices employed by marketers to test ideas in a small number of customer segments to predict impact and validate results before rolling out to a broader market. Organizations like Capital One have pioneered test-and-learn techniques to more effectively target their most valuable customer market segments and increase the response rates of targeted customer marketing campaigns. These techniques and processes can be accelerated and democratized through the power of Big Data capabilities, so firms can reach key customer markets faster.

    5. Incorporate the Analytics into Operational Processes. Lastly, companies can build a more robust analytic and data-based decision-making environment by integrating their data discovery environment with their operational systems. This enables companies to incorporate “new” patterns and discoveries with “known” algorithms that provide the background of their operational processes. As a result, companies are realizing value from Big Data establishing a dynamic environment that merges the “new” and the “known” to create a more intelligent and sophisticated decision-making infrastructure.

    Companies who are taking these steps today are outdistancing their competitors. These firms are capitalizing on the promise and excitement engendered by Big Data by building and implementing operational business environments. The result is that firms are able to realize new business insights — more rapidly than their competitors — and are able to seize the initiative and market advantage to leap ahead of the field.

  • Friday funny video: How to use a dual-screen Windows tablet in Starbucks

    Let’s face it: More often than not, the Apple logo is everywhere at Starbucks. You see it on iPhones, iPads, iPods and MacBooks. Heck, occasionally you see it on a “portable” iMac! But the ol’ Microsoft Windows branding appears from time to time, begging the question: How does one blend in with the Apple crowd with such a device?

    Here’s the simple answer from Steve Paine, provided you’re using an Asus Taichi 21 in your local coffee shop:

    I’ll be honest, I never really saw a use for the second touchscreen display on this Asus laptop. Now, I have. Of course, with the Asus Taichi 21 costing $1,300 or more, this is far more expensive than the old method of using an Apple sticker, no?

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

  • Let’s Learn Some Stuff About Our Brains, Shall We? [VIDEO]

    Today, our favorite YouTube science illustrators want to teach you about fast thinking and slow thinking with some cool brain tricks. I can see no reason why we shouldn’t oblige them.

    Long story short, your fast thinking mechanisms in your brain are always trying to parse out information as quickly as possible. This is fairly useful in day-to-day life. But sometimes, our fast thinking betrays us in its desire for speed. Slow thinking is what we need to use to solve certain problems.

    But then again, slow thinking engagement can make you blind to a bunch of other stimuli out there in the world.

    Basically, your brain is awesome and terrible. Have fun.

    [AsapSCIENCE]