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Google Play has always lagged behind Apple’s App Store in terms of pure revenue since its inception. That trend has not changed, but Google Play is at least starting to show signs of major growth after months of very little.

App Annie recently released a study that compares revenue growth between Google Play and Apple’s App Store. The findings show that the iOS App Store is still by and large the dominant force in mobile revenue, but Google Play is starting to show some serious growth of its own.

As you can see, both Google Play and iOS App Store saw a marked increase in revenue during Q4. The growth of Google Play was far more impressive, however, as app revenue doubled between Q3 and Q4. iOS App Store revenue only increased by one-fifth, but it still made plenty more considering its already sizable lead in revenue.

So, who’s responsible for app revenue growth on these platforms? The iOS App Store’s five biggest contributors were the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada in that order They note that China is quickly closing in, however, and the nation is now ranked sixth in overall revenue contribution.

As for Google Play, the three biggest contributors were the United States, Japan and South Korea. The U.S. was pretty consistent since the beginning of 2012, but the market in Japan and South Korea really exploded near the end of the year. The increase in Google Play revenue in these countries may correlate to increased sales of Android devices, especially in Japan where the Nexus 7 beat out the iPad during the holidays.

These numbers make it easy to label winners and losers, but doing so would distract us from the real winners here – the app developers and consumers. Increased revenue across the board means more developers will be willing to develop apps for more mobile platforms. The more mobile platforms supported means more consumers buying apps. It’s a cycle that leads us to even more revenue and more app development. In short, everybody wins.

By Shyam Sankar and Gabe Rosen

The Internet is the new Wild West, a frontier big enough for every pioneer and outlaw to roam free. Today, The New York Times revealed that hackers in China had spent the last four months infiltrating its computer systems and pilfering employee passwords. As in the old West, it’s not a question of if you’ll be hit — but when and how. Online, primitive DDOS attacks rain down like arrows, while artful hackers can steal the data equivalent of 5,000 head of cattle before any breach is detected. There’s no choice but to defend the homestead as best you can – and retreating to civilization is no longer an option.

According to Mandiant, the infosec firm that conducted the investigation, the Times was first compromised on September 13. The attackers established at least three backdoors and installed 45 pieces of malware, only one of which was detected by Symantec security software. After two weeks, the attackers found the domain controller that contained all staff passwords. Times executive editor Jill Abramson maintains there is “no evidence that sensitive emails or files” were accessed, yet the investigation found that the attackers “created custom software that allowed them to search for and grab [Times journalists] Mr. Barboza’s and Mr. Yardley’s e-mails and documents.”

As the TED Blog recently recounted, we know a bit about this sort of thing at Palantir. Our platform was used to investigate “GhostNet”, a Chinese cyber espionage network. In 2008, an unnamed country received an email from China warning them not to host the Dalai Lama for a scheduled visit. The email was startling because this visit was not public knowledge. The country sought to find out how this sensitive information had been leaked. Not only the Dalai Lama’s personal computer been hacked, but 1,300 computers across the globe had been infected in the same way. This network had been operating for two years without notice.

Naturally, when we heard about The New York Times hack today, we looked for parallels. The Dalai Lama’s office was infiltrated by “spear phishing” — where hackers research a person and create an email, with an attachment, that looks like it came from a confidant. Spear phishing is suspected, though not confirmed, in the Times attack. Like GhostNet, the Times attackers covered their tracks through intermediaries in numerous countries, and employed remote access tools (RATs) and malware. The attacks also appear related to Chinese political sensitivities, though the exact loyalties in play are murky.

While it’s important to resist easy conclusions, Occam’s razor and common sense shouldn’t be ignored. The difficulty is that positive attribution is rare in cyber warfare, so when something looks like the work of someone who was never actually identified, it may not be exceptionally meaningful. As open-source sleuth Jeff Carr points out, there are several doubts. Beijing’s time zone includes numerous other cities. The attacks were ultimately traced to Chinese IPs, though their geo-locations encompass millions of people. The attackers used RATs, but these are widely available and hardly confined to China. According to Richard Bejtlich, Mandiant’s chief security officer, “When you see the same group steal data on Chinese dissidents and Tibetan activists, then attack an aerospace company, it starts to push you in the right direction.” Given the vast spectrum of potentially interested parties, it’s a very general direction – but it’s a start nonetheless.

The lack of clear answers notwithstanding, Mr. Bejtlich is certainly correct that cyber defense “requires an internal vigilance model.” You have to sleep with one eye open, and preoccupation with one mode of attack leaves you vulnerable to others. As in the old West, it’s essential to make common cause with your neighbors, however distant. During the recent spate of suspected Iranian DDOS attacks, two global Top 20 banks shared threat data in real time with each other as well as US law enforcement, and collaboration across public/private lines is essential to countering the matrix of state and non-state combatants.

Above all, we need to adopt a Wild West approach of our own. The sheriff’s only hope is to become as swift, resourceful, and adaptive as the outlaws.

Shyam Sankar is the Director at Palantir Technologies. He gave the TED Talk “The rise of human-computer collaboration” at TEDGlobal 2012, as well as the talk embedded above at TED2010. Gabe Rosen works in Business Development at Palantir.

Roseanne Barr has been slowly making her way back into the mainstream after years of staying low on the celebrity radar. After “Roseanne” went off the air in 1997, she had a few, mostly short-lived projects which unfortunately didn’t showcase her talents enough to keep her around.

But the comedienne is working on a new sitcom idea for NBC with her “Roseanne’s Nuts” partner, Steven Greener. Coincidentally, she’s also about to make a three-episode appearance on the network’s long-running comedy “The Office” as a talent agent who sets out to help Andy break into show biz.

Roseanne made headlines last year after announcing she was on the ballot for presidency and becoming a regular user on Twitter, where she posted about the election and her reasons for running. She also aligned herself with Anonymous after the highly publicized and controversial Steubenville, Ohio rape case.

Though she’s been seen as somewhat quirky over recent years, many of her old fans would love to see her back in a successful vehicle so many years after “Roseanne”. Until the NBC deal is finalized, however, we’ll just have to settle for watching her work her magic on “The Office”.

Now that EA has revealed to investors that its third quarter revenue was down compared to one year ago, the publisher has been taking the opportunity to reveal bits of news that might not have gone over well before the financial release. It admitted that Medal of Honor: Warfighter was a disaster, and announced that the Medal of Honor games are now “out of the rotation.” EA also announced that the upcoming sci-fi shooter Fuse will be delayed anywhere from one to three months.

Among the bad news, EA has seen fit to tease something that is probably great news for the company. The EA sports website now contains an announcement for Madden 25.

What is Madden 25? That’s a straightforward question, but EA hasn’t released any details at all concerning the title. All that is known for sure is that Madden 25 will be released on August 27, 2013. That date is almost exactly one year from August 28, 2012 – the day that Madden NFL 13 was released. With that in mind, it’s likely that Madden 25 is a rebranding of the franchise for its anniversary, though it could also represent an event or downloadable content of some kind.

The teaser logo shows that it celebrates the 25 year history of Madden video games, from 1989 to 2014. The original John Madden Football for the Commodore 64 was actually released in 1988, but since Madden 25‘s release date is in 2013, the math still works out.

The Madden NFL series is one of EA’s most consistently profitable series. The publisher’s latest earnings report stated that Madden NFL 13 saw both unit sales and revenue increase over last year’s numbers.

In many ways, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan and alternative musician Amanda Palmer couldn’t be more different: the former writes about the Obama administration and the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy, while the latter is the former lead singer of a punk band called The Dresden Dolls and sports hand-painted eyebrows, among other things. Their approach to their respective businesses, however — in both cases a very personal form of publishing — are similar in one crucial way: they succeed or fail based on how well they connect with and serve their fans. Is this the future of media?

Just a few weeks ago, Sullivan announced that he was severing his relationship with The Daily Beast and launching a standalone website, and asked for reader support in the form of a $19.99-per-year subscription. In just a matter of days, Sullivan managed to raise more than $300,000 and said recently that he has a total of almost $500,000 now — and that more than half of those who contributed to his campaign paid more than they had to (one anonymous subscriber contributed $10,000).

Fans don’t want content, they want a relationship

When I read this, the first thing that came to mind was the “pay what you want” music experiments of bands like Radiohead and Girl Talk, both of whom asked their fans to pay for songs that they could have easily downloaded for free, and got millions of dollars in response. Why did fans do this? Because they wanted to support those artists, not because they wanted music for free — just as readers who want to support Sullivan probably don’t care that they can get the content free via an RSS reader (Note: Sullivan will be discussing his new approach at our paidContent Live conference on April 17 in New York).

The Kickstarter campaign that Amanda Palmer ran last year to raise funds for a new album and a national tour falls into the same category (as does comedian Louis CK’s method of going direct to his fans to sell a concert tour): after quitting a deal with a traditional record label, Palmer initially wanted to raise $100,000 to fund her recording. Instead, she collected 10 times that amount, or more than $1 million. And the reason why her fans wanted to donate all of that money has very little to do with their desire to get an album, or even to see her perform.

Part of what Palmer has done — in addition to detailing what she is doing with all of the money raised — is to turn what could have been a regular tour into a series of personal events. Some of those who contributed got invitations to private shows, in which Palmer would not only invite attendees to come on stage and play (something that caused some controversy because she asked for volunteers instead of paying people) and otherwise interact with her.

As she describes in a recent interview with Billboard magazine, the rise of the social web has made it much more feasible for an artist to reach out directly to his or her fans — and many of those fans are going to be willing to contribute something, regardless of whether they get a direct return or not (a theory that former Wired magazine editor Kevin Kelly has called “1,000 True Fans”). As Palmer puts it:

“I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is — which is that music has value, it’s subjective and we’re moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level. My theory is that things aren’t going to pick up until people … instead of saying people should want to pay for music, I think people should want to help their artists. I really think it’s a different way of thinking.”

Connect with fans and give them a reason to contribute

Getting up-close and personal with an artist like Palmer (who at some shows allows her fans to paint her body with washable paint) may or may not be your thing, but there’s no question that it inspires devotion in a fan base. And while Andrew Sullivan doesn’t go as far as Palmer, he is obsessively interested in what his readers want and how they are reacting to what he writes. As he described in his “declaration of independence” post, one of the reasons he decided to look at reader subscriptions instead of advertising was that he wanted to deepen his relationship with his readers.

“For the first time in human history, a writer – or group of writers and editors – can instantly reach readers – even hundreds of thousands of readers across the planet – with no intermediary at all. And they can reach back. We want to create a place where readers – and readers alone – sustain the site. No bigger media companies will be subsidizing us; no venture capital will be sought to cushion our transition (unless my savings count as venture capital); and, most critically, no advertising will be getting in the way.”

One of the most common responses to both Palmer and Sullivan is that very few people can get away with making a living from their fans or readers — in other words, that the two are the “one percent” of artists or creators who can do this. But whether it’s one percent or 5 percent or more, the fact remains that the tools that allow Palmer or Sullivan to do this are more readily available than ever, thanks to platforms like Kickstarter and the TinyPass paywall system Sullivan is using — or 29th Street Publishing, which allows writers to create their own mini-magazines.

Will this allow every writer to do what Sullivan is doing, or every artist to do what Palmer is doing? No. But their example (and others such as Jonathan Coulton) show that as Mike Masnick of Techdirt puts it, when an artist connects with their fans and gives them a reason to buy or contribute, they will almost always do so. All that’s required is that you have something valuable to offer — and that you are as fanatical about your devotion to those fans as Palmer and Sullivan and Louis CK are.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Christian Scholz and Andres Rodriguez

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People on YouTube are calling this clip racist. It’s not. But I can see how one might think that if they just kind of watched the first few seconds and didn’t really think about it.

Depressing is really the right word here. Watching people in a poor, developing country read the meaningless, inane bullsh*t spewed out by first-world celebrities is sad. I don’t know any of these Kenyans, but I think I’m safe in assuming that the woman reading Paris Hilton’s tweet about swimming, jet skiing, and working on her tan in St. Tropez doesn’t know much about swimming, jet skiing, and tanning in St. Tropez.

Remember that campaign that saw Haitians reading #FirstWorldProblems? Yeah, it kind of feels like that.

It’s kind of funny sometimes, I guess. But it mostly serves as a stark comparison between the first and third world. I don’t know if Jimmy Kimmel meant for it to come off like that, but it does.

If you want something with more funny and less sad but in the same spirit, check out Nick Offerman reading inane celeb tweets and celebs reading mean tweets about themselves.

Gmail users with a Windows Phone: you’ve got some good news. Google will be extending support for Google Sync through July 31, according to a Microsoft blog post. The service allows Gmail to be used on mobile devices through Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol, enabling support for multiple Gmail calendars and push email on smartphones and tablets. In December, Google said it would drop EAS support by today, Jan. 31.

The support extension is a boon for Microsoft because it without EAS support in Gmail, any Windows Phone users with Gmail accounts would experience a far more limiting experience for mail, calendar events and contact management.

Why is Google even dropping EAS support? For starters, it’s not free: Google — or any company that wants to use Exchange ActiveSync — pays a licensing fee to Microsoft. That’s not the primary reason though, else Google would cease all Sync support. Instead, it will still provide it to Google Apps for Business, Government and Education users.

Google does, however, use the IMAP mail protocol, CalDAV for calendar information and CardDAV for contacts. This trio provides much of the same support currently available through EAS but through a non-company standard; these are more open protocols used on the web. The extra time for Sync allows Microsoft to rework its mail client with these three protocols so that Gmail users on Windows Phone won’t see a service disruption.

Also of note: I noticed in passing the BlackBerry Z10 handset that runs BlackBerry 10 already supports IMAP, CalDav and CardDAV, in addition to the standard Gmail account setup. That means Gmail users considering a new BlackBerry don’t even have to worry about Google Sync.

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We just spoke with David Pann, GM of Microsoft’s Search Network, and he tells us that we can expect Bing’s version of product listing ads sometime this year. This may raise a few eyebrows, considering Bing’s heavy campaigning against Google’s PLA-based Google Shopping model, but rest assured, Bing’s not about to start doing what it’s been criticizing Google for.

We don’t have much in the way of details about Bing’s coming product listing ads (even their official name), but Pann says it’s not going to result in a pay to play system for Bing Shopping the way Google Shopping is set up. Google Shopping (as of October in the U.S. and since in other countries) is based solely on PLAs, but Bing will retain free listings as well. Pann says there is room for free and paid to co-exist.

Pann expects the product listing ads to come to market sometime this calendar year.

Bing product listing ads have been spotted in the wild in the past. Last summer, RKG shared some screenshots of what Microsoft was testing at the time.

It’s unclear at this point if the finished product will look just like these. Pann did say the product would be similar to Google’s PLAs. He also noted that some “alpha testers” have been using them.

There has pretty much been nothing but positive data coming out about Google’s PLAs lately (positive for Google and for advertisers). In fact, Adobe recently shared some data with us indicating that Google PLA spend alone is nearly that of Yahoo Bing Network spend in the U.S.

Still, Yahoo Bing Network continues to take away market share from Google piece by piece. Microsoft points to independent data from firms like RKG showing that Microsoft’s Bing Ads and the Yahoo Bing Network have seen positive momentum already this year, and that Bing Ads have gained paid search spend share from Google for the fourth quarter in a row.

Pann attributes the Bing Ads momentum to a variety of factors. One is new ad formats like its version of sitelinks, which Pann says have seen rapid adoption. According to Pann, advertisers come over with the mentality of “It performs well over there [Google], so it will here too.”

Another factor, Pann says, has been Microsoft’s efforts in reducing friction for advertisers and making the system easier to use. He says Microsoft has adopted the philosophy of “what takes 45 minutes in AdWords should take 15 minutes with Bing Ads”. He also says the Google Import Feature has been a key factor, in its availability for the desktop tool, the API, and the user interface. Adoption of the feature, he says, has taken off.

Similar capabilities will likely be implemented in other tools in the future. He notes that Google’s agreement with the FTC (the part related to ad campaign data portability) is an important step in that regard.

Microsoft and Pann appear quite pleased with the level of success Bing Ads have seen in recent months, but Pann says, “We’re not finished by any means.”

The new product listing ads are just one thing Microsoft has up its sleeve for the year. We’ll discuss a couple of others in an upcoming article.

ZocDoc may be the big kahuna when it comes to booking a doctor ASAP but BetterDoctor believes it can make a name for itself as a service for finding a quality doctor in general.

Launched by the former head of Nokia’s App Studios after a frustrating personal run-in with the health care system, the startup provides easy access to a searchable database of about 600,000 doctors nationwide.  It launched on the web and with a mobile optimized last fall but on Thursday released its first mobile app for the iPhone.

“What we focus on is the discovery problem – it’s not always about needing to find a doctor today,” said founder and CEO Ari Tulla, referencing ZocDoc. And, he added, that when it comes to mobile, “If I learned anything [at Nokia], it’s that mobile has to be very simple – there has to be one thing that it does well.”

For BetterDoctor, he hopes that one thing is helping people find a good doctor in as little time as possible.

To streamline the process, the service only helps people search for a general practitioners, dentists, pediatricians, OB/GYNs and optometrists (as opposed to the endless array of specialists available on ZocDoc and other sites).  And it only lets people search by location and insurance company. The service is free to consumers but earns revenue through lead generation.

Similar to ZodDoc, the app then returns a list of relevant doctors, with biographical and contact information, specialties, affiliations and reviews (supplied by Yelp). But Tulla said the company pays special attention to evaluating doctor quality. While other doctor discovery marketplaces may give prime real estate to those willing to pay for it regardless of how good they are, he said BetterDoctor uses big data and machine learning algorithms to attempt to validate each doctor.

In addition to the basics – a doctor’s education, board certification and experience – the startup looks at patient reviews, malpractice history and referral data that can indicate whom other doctors hold in high esteem.  Doctors that meet all of its criteria surface most visibly in searches and get a special designation as a validated physician; doctors that have don’t pass malpractice screenings or have other issues end up closer to the bottom of the list.

BetterDoctor is definitely not without competition – besides ZocDoc, companies like HealthTap, PokitDok, HealthInReach and others fall somewhere on the spectrum in the doctor discovery space. But I like their data-driven approach to validating doctors (HealthTap also attempts to rank doctors by quality although it uses slightly different variables), and I appreciate their stance on reviews. Tulla said patient reviews are only a part of how doctors are ranked because “consumer reviews are tricky in healthcare.”  Studies have shown that on most doctor review sites, there aren’t enough reviews for them to be reliable and that they tend to skew positive.

Unlike many doctor discovery sites, BetterDoctor doesn’t let patients leave reviews and comments of their own because Tulla said they don’t yet have a way to verify that a patient actually met with the doctor.  But he indicated that it’s something they could roll out in the future.

Tulla declined to share too many details on user activity or revenue, but said the company, which has raised about $525,000 in seed funding so far, has been used by hundreds of thousands of people.

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Atlanta officials have confirmed a shooting at Price Middle School this afternoon, where a teacher was injured and a 14-year old student was shot in the head.

While the student’s condition is not being reported at this time, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution says one suspect has been taken into custody. The school is apparently on lockdown and authorities are only allowing school personnel on campus; parents have been advised they will not be allowed to pick up their children yet.

The incident is the latest in a string of public shootings, including one at a Phoenix office building yesterday and one in front of a Texas courthouse today that left a prominent prosecutor dead. After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in December, President Obama has spoken at length about gun control measures, a controversial topic at best.

This is a developing story; please check back with us for updates.

Japanese publisher Kadokawa Games today announced that Killer is Dead will get a global release sometime in the summer of 2013. The title will launch for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

Killer is Dead is being developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio headed by Goichi Suda, also known as “Suda51.” The developer is famous for quirky and unapologetically juvenile titles such as Killer 7, No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw.

The release window announcement is probably meant to reassure fans that the game is still on track, and hasn’t been disrupted by recent events. Yesterday it was announced that Grasshopper Manufacture has been purchased by GungHo Online Entertainment, a Japanese publisher known for the Ragnarok Online series of games.

Killer is Dead puts players into the shoes of Mondo Zappa, a James Bond-type “executioner” who is tasked with eliminating criminals in a not-to-distant noir future. He wields a katana in his right hand and his bionic left hand can become a number of interchangeable weapons. The game features a unique, contrast-heavy art style that can be seen in the first trailer for the game, which was released earlier this month:

How many painters do you know? Not the kind with drop cloths and coveralls who will refresh your old basement bathroom with a splashy Buckland Blue, but true artists? The ones who toil away in their studio — day and night — trying to create their lifetime masterpiece?

For centuries, the vast majorities of fine artists have done what thousands of artists have before them: starve. While the Internet has brought with it many media disruptions, it has also created a truly global marketplace for fine artists. Now these artists no longer have to toil away in their studio hoping to impress an influential gallery owner, or praying that their local cafe will afford them the privilege of a vernissage. Suddenly, through online marketplaces like eBay and Etsy, individual artists have a global audience and are able to sell their creations to anybody and everybody who takes the time to discover them. In these instances, it has also become common for artists to work directly with their customers to deliver both the perfect size and look for their homes and offices.

When you walk into the home or office of individuals who have made purchases from these artists, you’re not immediately pointing to them and saying, “Cezanne! Picasso! Warhol! Renoir!” These are — for the most part — unbranded works created to be both customized and personalized. It’s part of a larger trend — instead of taking the time and resources to beat a brand into the modern consumer’s mind, many new entrants are producing these customized and personalized — nearly unbranded — products for an ever-growing global consumer-base that is interested less in the label and brand experience and much more in something that can be uniquely “them.”

This movement has deep roots. In Naomi Klein‘s controversial 1999 book, No Logo, the author looked at various anti-corporate movements that sprung up during the 1990s, from the publication Adbusters to sweatshop labor protests. Ultimately, it generated activism, culture jamming and public discourse that has become a more broad-based movement. Today, some major mainstream brands are even removing their logos voluntarily. Take Selfridges & Co. The UK-based company was voted Best Department Store in the World at the Global Department Store Summit in 2012. With stores in London, Birmingham and the Manchester region, they are experimenting (and succeeding) with a very counter-intuitive brand strategy of creating silence. As part of their “No Noise” initiative, they’ve launched something called The Quiet Shop, a store-within-a-store for which some of the world’s most respected brands have actually removed their logos. These “de-branded products” includes the very-well-known brands Levi’s, Creme de la Mer and Beats by Dre — just without their signature logos.

Of course, a brand is more than a logo. All too often, something that does not have a logo is often misperceived as lacking brand. Any Marketing 101 course will tell you that a logo is but one important component of what makes a brand. For instance, the “unbranded” items at Selfridge’s are all well-known brands despite their lack of logos. In that sense, the ultimate cachet is having such a famous brand that you don’t need a logo.

But this “unbranding” movment goes deeper than missing swooshes, polo players, or apples with little bites taken out of them. If you look at some of the most interesting coverage of this past year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, the vast majority of gadget geeks were not paying that much attention to what the mass manufacturers were coming out with (bigger TVs, louder sound systems and thinner smartphones). The true attention was going to some of the newer initiatives that were launching courtesy of Kickstarter. Look no further than the Pebble e-paper watch. While it scored tons of attention for generating over ten million dollars in sales on Kickstarter in under thirty days, the product is without traditional brand markings. No logo. No nothing. The majority of the goods available on the contemporary flash sale site, Fab, also lack any brand unique markings.

The maker movement is giving rise to a new industry of individuals who are creating products that are both completely individualized and brand-less — and, thanks to the Internet, available worldwide.

These massive shifts in how we buy (online, peer-to-peer and with a vast, global selection) coupled with modern technology (crowdfunding platforms, 3D printers, ability to manufacture fewer products while maintaining margins) bring us to a crossroads, where what we have previously defined as a brand (design, experience and how it makes us feel within our social class) gets trumped by a new generation of brands that are without logo, built on pure utility and function, and are intentionally unbranded. That’s changing what big stores like Selfridge’s carry, and what big brands like Levi’s produce. The more unbranded these traditional brands become, the more humane and interesting they seem to be.

Do you have a friend you value because that person is good with book or movie recommendations? Outbrain wants to be that friend to the whole internet by suggesting related content when people read a story. The company has huge reach and deep pockets but still faces a big problem: competitors are coming and, even though vast numbers of people on the internet have used Outbrain, almost no one has heard of it.

paidContent caught up with CEO Yaron Galai in Outbrain’s office near New York’s Union Square this month to hear about his plans to stay on top. In the (likely) event you’re not sure what Outbrain does, here’s a screenshot from Time that shows how and why people and publishers use it:

The business model is pretty simple.  Outbrain helps publishers keep readers on their websites by giving them a tool to surface related content that they’ve published in the past. The company’s “From Around the Web” tool also provides a way for publishers to buy and sell traffic — in the example above, if someone clicks on one of the related stories links, Time might get a referral fee from the outside publication (of which Outbrain would take a cut). Small publishers can use the service for free to surface their own content but once they reach a certain volume of traffic, they’re obliged to add paid links. Outbrain claims its tools are installed on more than 90,000 blogs and websites, including big names like CNN, the New York Post and Slate.

So far, Outbrain has done pretty well. The company is backed by $64 million in venture funding and claims its recommendations are clicked on billions of times a year.

But now competitors are arriving, including comment site Disqus , which has relationships with millions of websites, and Wordnik, a dictionary site that says its semantic knowledge lets it offer better recommendations. The would-be rivals could undercut Outbrain by copying its service and offering it for a lower price or even for free. Meanwhile, Outbrain must also contend with the enormous referral power of little companies with names like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Yaron, however, has had to defend his turf  before (most famously while closing a funding deal as an officer in a combat zone). In doing so, he’s made some very bold decision such as firing legions of his own customers for furnishing spammy content. The decision may eliminate up to 25 percent of the company’s revenue but Yaron thinks it will pay off as a long-term strategy. ”A lot of the clones will show good results for the short term [but will soon fade],” he says.

Yaron believes Outbrain has deeper relationships with major publishers and advertisers like GE that make higher-quality ad content– and that that will allow Outbrain to become the go-to place for industry leaderes to do business with each other. To boost the effort, Outbrain is also starting to brand the recommendation with its logo in the hopes readers begin to notice it.

Yaron compares Outbrain’s situation to the early days of search advertising when dozens of competitors scrambled for a piece of the action until Google AdWords finally blew them all out of the water. It’s an impressive vision — but, at this point, it will be at least a year before we know if it can come true.

(Image by ollyy via Shutterstock)

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Amazon.com’s web page is down and there is no explanation as to what is going on. Pinging the site for the last 15 minutes yielded an “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” message on an otherwise white screen.. The mobile app appeared to work fine and if users know which subsite they want, say books or video , they can get there by plugging in the appropriate URL.

We have calls into the e-commerce giant and will update this story when we hear back. Gizmodo was first to report on this at 11:25 p.m. PDT. As of 12:05 p.m. PDT, there were no indications of problems with Amazon Web Services on the AWS status page.

Update: As of 12:34 p.m. PDT, the main Amazon.com page was accessible again.

Since the subsites appear to have worked all along, the inactive main page could be due to a DNS configuration issue, or as some have claimed on Twitter, a DDOS (distributed denial of servie) attack on the site, as reported by  BetaBeat.

While there have been quite a few instances of Amazon Web Services glitches over the past year, for the main site of the online store to disappear is quite a big deal, as evidenced by user reaction rippling through Twitter (which had its own issues today) and other outlets.

Amazon has not yet responded to requests for comment.

Update: At 2:06 p.m. PDT  An Amazon spokesperson issued this comment via email: “The gateway page of Amazon.com was offline to some customers for approximately 49 minutes.  Other pages of the site were accessible and AWS was not impacted.”

This story was updated several times during the day.

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One thing is certain: While traditional security products remain central to protection, by themselves they are not nimble enough to keep up with cybercriminals and hackers. By the time those products analyze events, the damage has been done. By one statistic, 85 percent of the time, hackers only need up to half an hour to get into an organization, either creating damage or stealing. But the damage isn’t usually discovered for weeks and months.

The situation is not hopeless, however. Real-time Security Analytics — big data analysis brought to the security space — can analyze events as they happen and identify a dangerous actor in the network who has just tripped a number of wires (that often go unnoticed) and is intent on inflicting damage.

For more on this emerging technology, join GigaOM Research and our sponsor Click Security for “Real-time security analytics: catching cybercriminals before it’s too late,” a free analyst roundtable webinar on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2013, at 10 a.m. PT.

Our panel of experts will discuss these topics:

• How do you look at a set of factors and realize that something is going to occur before it happens?
• How do you gain visibility to a hacker’s “kill chain” before a damaging event happens?
• How have virtualization, consumerization, cloud computing, social media and enterprise mobility increased security risk?

Speakers include:

• Davi Ottenheimer, president, flyingpenguin
• Derrick Harris, senior writer, GigaOM
• Bob Gourley, editor, CTOvision.com
• Brian Smith, CTO and founder, Click Security

Register here for this free analyst webinar.

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When Thorsten Heins introduced Alicia Keys, I know a lot of people were pretty confused. Why is RIM hiring someone with no tech experience to be the company’s Creative Director? Well, it’s probably just an advertising move and it’s not like she’s going to be telling engineers how to do their jobs. Regardless, I thought about it for a while and it dawned on me, Alicia Keys is so on brand it’s crazy. Here are 3 ways you didn’t realize Alicia Keys fits the BlackBerry brand.

1. Her last name is Keys! Get it?

Blackberry hires Alicia Keys as Global Creative Director. KEYS. GET IT? #OnBrand

— David Hicks (@ALL_CAPS) January 30, 2013

2. Keys was raised by her white, Scotch Irish mother since the age of 2. Get it? Okay, this joke takes a little more explaining. Here it goes: the BLACKBerry grew up on Wall Street, with its predominantly WHITE investors. Get it? Yes, I know there are minorities on Wall Street but when you think of Wall Street you typically think of “rich white men” types.

3. New York City is where BlackBerry 10 launched because the company has an Empire State of Mind.

This was all way funnier in my head. I’m done.

Verizon Wireless will now start selling Square’s card reader in its retail stores across the country. Though it’s really just a new distribution deal among many, moving closer to carriers puts Square in an ideal spot to target would-be entrepreneurs and small business owners right as they’re making their smartphone purchases.

Starting Thursday, Verizon stores will sell the device for $9.97, plus new users will get a $10 credit to their account, canceling out even that minimal up-front investment. Since Square only charges by the transaction (2.75 percent) and doesn’t require any minimum number of transactions, I can’t imagine it will take a very hard sell to convince a small business customer buying a smartphone to try out the reader.

AT&T also began selling Square’s card readers last year. In fact, the major carriers have been expanding their retail horizons beyond smartphones and modems. They’re marketing peripheral devices and gadgets that link to handsets, but don’t sport separate cellular connections. In AT&T’s new flagship store in Chicago you can find everything from smart watches to connected health and fitness monitors.

What’s more, Verizon and AT&T appear to have avoided their usual tendency to cash in on devices or services they distribute directly. Instead of trying to sell customers a “Square plan” or attempting to take a piece of each Square transaction, Verizon and AT&T seem content with the data traffic Square and other peripheral device makers drive over their networks.

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The Stanford Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) has set a new record in computational science, using the Sequoia supercomputer with more than one million computing cores to solve a complex fluid dynamics problem — he prediction of noise generated by a supersonic jet engine.  Installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)  Sequoia was named the most powerful supercomputer in the world on the June 2012 Top500 list, and moved to number two in November 2012.

With a total of 1,572,864 compute cores installed, research associate Joseph Nichols was able to show for the first time that million-core fluid dynamics simulations are possible—and also to contribute to research aimed at designing quieter aircraft engines.  Predictive simulations aid in the process of peering inside and measuring processes  occurring within the harsh aircraft exhaust environment that is otherwise inaccessible to experimental equipment. The data gleaned from these simulations are driving computation-based scientific discovery as researchers uncover the physics of noise.

“Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are incredibly complex,” said Parviz Moin, the Director of CTR. “Only recently, with the advent of massive supercomputers boasting hundreds of thousands of computing cores, have engineers been able to model jet engines and the noise they produce with accuracy and speed.”

Recently Stanford researchers and LLNL computing staff have been working closely to iron out the last few wrinkles. They were glued to their terminals during the first “full-system scaling” to see whether initial runs would achieve stable run-time performance. They watched eagerly as the first CFD simulation passed through initialization then thrilled as the code performance continued to scale up to and beyond the all-important one-million-core threshold, and as the time-to-solution declined dramatically.

Heed the stampede of Clydesdales: The Super Bowl, and its ubiquitous ad season, is upon us. The analysts at Kantar Media recently pulled together a pile of data on what the last decade of championship football has looked like on America’s TVs. Some of it is fairly well-publicized — ad costs have, for the most part, steadily increased to culminate in this year’s $3.7 to $3.8 million price tag for 30 seconds of airtime. But there are some other figures that reveal who is buying up the most ad time, and how it compares to years past.

Aside from the average cost, let’s begin with the most obvious: Beer and cars (and Mickey Mouse, but not all at the same time). Between 2003 and 2012, these companies made up 37% of all ad sales, with Anheuser Busch in the lead:

A beer company may come out on top of total cash spent, but the more interesting numbers lie in what car companies have been doing over the years. According to the stats, commercial time for all auto ads has increased, as has the number of parent companies and brands buying time:

Why the auto glut? According to Hyundai’s vice president of marketing in a recent New York Times article, it goes beyond the obvious need to make money — it’s all about when you make money. Super Bowl ads sell cars at the beginning of the year, making it less likely that an automaker will start slow and have to dig itself out for the next 10 or 11 months.

Moving on: we know what the commercial standbys are. But in 2012, spots that
weren’t bought out by Budweiser, Chevy and the like went to companies that are Super Bowl commercial virgins. Last year, 30% of all national Super Bowl ads were purchased by parent companies in the game for the first time:

Last year also set a recent record for the number of 60-plus second ads:

With all of this, it would seem like companies are spending more on Super Bowl ads than ever before. But the number of companies spending huge chunks of their ad budgets, which was increasing up until 2010, has actually decreased over the past two years:

Even so, Kantar Media notes that a couple of small players — Careerbuilder and Teleflora — invested a whopping 30% of their ad budget into one evening of television last year.

In general, though, companies spend far more on advertising during the Super Bowl than any other U.S. sporting event:

And as Slate’s Matthew Yglesias pointed out last year, it’s increasingly becoming the most-watched any event: four out of the top five highest-rated TV events at the time were Super Bowls (the other, of course, is the final episode of M*A*S*H). And Kantar explains that audience tuneaway rate during the average commercial for the 2012 Super Bowl was 0.7%, or seven out of every 1,000 viewers. A normal rate is around 3 to 4%.

So why wouldn’t you advertise if you could afford it? In theory, it seems like your money could be wisely spent elsewhere. Digiday did an experiment comparing how much $4 million could buy in digital ad sales. Instead of a minute of dancing hamsters, you could buy a week’s worth of homepage advertising on Yahoo, 200 pieces of BuzzFeed-sponsored content, or promote a Twitter trending topic for a month.

But what most companies are betting on is a combination of digital ads, viral marketing, and one big Super Bowl splash. It’s unlikely that you’ve missed at least one of the many attempts to grab your attention (and get you to grab your friends’ attention) over the past few weeks, as brands are increasingly releasing their campaigns early. They range from Axe raffling off a chance to go to space (seriously, and with the help of Buzz Aldrin); Budweiser joining Twitter (with not-so-subtle age disclaimers) to encourage you to name a baby Clydesdale; Pepsi’s crowdsourced halftime show; Doritos’ seventh annual “Crash the Super Bowl” ad contest; and the viral controversy over Volkswagen’s maybe-racist spot.

What matters is that we’re talking about, and sharing, all this information. Tomorrow, watch for more on the value of viral marketing and storytelling in addition to a pricey 30 second spot. And if you can’t get enough about the changing landscape of advertising, we’re kicking off a month-long Insight Center on that very topic Feb. 12.