None of it is funny, and while sometimes you are surprised, the surprise almost never feels good, or right. – Dave Winer on why fake news on April Fools Day is the “worst tradition of the Net”
Read MoreIn a blow to broadcasters, a federal appellate court on Monday refused to block Aereo from delivering TV streams over the Internet.
Read MoreCompanies that monitor Internet traffic said Wednesday that an intensive cyber attack against a European spam-fighting organization has ended. The attack against the Spamhaus Project Ltd., a nonprofit group that tracks spammers, was massive enough to slow some of the traffic on the Web to a crawl. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreApple and Samsung spend a fortune on ads aimed at convincing their customers that they are different from the people that buy those other phones. But a new study suggests that owners of the iPhone and the Galaxy S III really aren’t that different from one another, especially when it comes to the types of tasks one is looking to do. “Hate all you want, you’re all just the same,” screams the headline on a new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. “Use for calling, texting, email, and Internet access was the same for both phones,” the company found when comparing separate surveys it did in January and February. “Use differed only for gaming and photos, with iPhone owners using their phones somewhat more frequently for these.” One thing people aren’t doing much of on either device is making phone calls. Both Galaxy and iPhone owners use their phones more to access the Web and send text messages than they do for phone calls. Phone use outpaced email, but only slightly. That said, devotees of Apple or Samsung are likely to argue their device does those same tasks oh-so-much-better. And of course, when one looks a little deeper, there are demographic and other differences. Galaxy S III buyers are most likely to have owned an Android phone in the past, with three-fifths of those surveyed having owned a prior Android compared to just 9 percent that switched to the Galaxy S III from an iPhone. By contrast, only 37 percent of iPhone buyers had a prior Apple phone, with fully one-fifth being switchers from Android. Just under a third of iPhone buyers were moving up from a standard phone, versus only 18 percent of Galaxy S III purchasers.
Read MoreJonathan Aizen and Paul Knegten created Dapper, an ambitious startup that set out to restructure atomic units of Internet content. After years trying to explain what they were doing and why it was useful, Dapper turned itself into a dynamic advertising company, started bringing in significant revenue, and was acquired by Yahoo for $80 million in 2010. Jonathan Aizen For their next startup, Amitree, Aizen and Knegten want to do something much more specific, where people can clearly see its value from the start. So they’ve built a tool to help people manage real estate transactions, especially during the 30-day closing period after an offer is accepted. “Dapper was everything to everybody and nothing to anyone,” said Aizen — who was previously a teenage intern at Alexa and later created the Internet Archive’s first website — in an interview this week. Amitree’s first service, Closing Time — which is opening to the public today — is a to-do list tool for buyers and agents to coordinate paperwork and inspections. It is a vertical, narrow and specific idea aimed at helping people get through what’s often a stressful and unfamiliar time of their lives. While I can see the appeal of Closing Time’s clean and simple approach — it has a timeline, checklists, daily emails and sharing tools — it does seem to be a sort of glorified Google Docs. Aizen, however, said the secret sauce is customizing the experience for a specific user and doing so in plain English. So after a user signs up and fills out a very basic questionnaire, Closing Time automatically creates a granular personalized set of tasks. Aizen compares this to TurboTax — except where tax software can replace an accountant, Closing Time is meant to be used with an agent. (And later, if and when Closing Time starts charging, it will be the agents who pay.) The self-funded Closing Time is now available in much of the U.S., but not the 11 states who use an “attorney review” process, which includes New York. Aizen said he anticipates making similar services for other complex life processes, like pregnancy and applying to college.
Read MoreChinese online gaming and social-media company Tencent Holdings Ltd. said its fourth-quarter net profit rose 37 percent from a year earlier on rising revenue from a number of online services including gaming and sales of virtual products. Tencent, China’s largest listed Internet company, has in recent quarters buffeted a slowdown in ad spending in China with its diverse online services such as online and mobile gaming. The company also has a widely watched mobile application, known as WeChat, which it has been using to attract the growing number of Chinese users who are using smartphones instead of computers to connect to the Internet. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreIt’s absolutely true that the Internet is getting bigger and bigger and more ubiquitous, it’s going to be in just about every appliance we can think of. The question is, does that mean it’s all going to collapse? I don’t think so… This is not a static system. –From Vint Cerf answering questions from the audience at TED2013 after Danny Hillistalk, which was entitled “The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B.”
Read MoreTime for Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf, Louis Pouzin, Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen to book a trip to London to go see the Queen: The five men are sharing the first-ever Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, honoring their contributions to the Internet and the World Wide Web. More details about the designation, which comes with a one million-pound grant, here .
Read MoreAs most of the free world knows by now — from the ubiquitous media coverage that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her new book , “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” has gotten of late — there are some nagging issues of women in the workplace. That was also underscored by the huge debate that arose over Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s new rule for the Silicon Valley Internet giant that eliminated work-from-home employees . Now, Cisco CEO John Chambers is weighing in, after a meeting with Sandberg last week, ordering each of his top managers to come up with new women-focused initiatives and put them into their development plans. More interestingly, in an internal email I obtained, he also noted that his own leadership in the area had been lacking. “While I have always considered myself sensitive to and effective on gender issues in the workplace, my eyes were opened in new ways and I feel a renewed sense of urgency to make the progress we haven’t made in the last decade,” wrote Chambers. He pointed out that only one-fourth of the networking giant’s employees and top execs are women, and only 20 percent out of one million networking academy students are women. Currently, Cisco’s highest-ranking woman is Padmasree Warrior, its CTO and strategy officer, and it has three women board members. Still, wrote Chambers: “After reading Lean In and listening to Sheryl, I realize that, while I believe I am relatively enlightened, I have not consistently walked the talk … What we have been doing hasn’t worked, and it is time to adjust.” Here’s the whole memo: From: John Chambers Date: March 8, 2013, 6:21:49 PM PST To: John Chambers Subject: International Working Women’s Day … Cisco Resolution To my leaders: I had the opportunity yesterday to discuss Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In with Sheryl and a group of my CEO peers. While I have always considered myself sensitive to and effective on gender issues in the workplace, my eyes were opened in new ways and I feel a renewed sense of urgency to make the progress we haven’t made in the last decade. The data is startling. Women hold less than 14% of CEO positions, 17% of board seats globally, and 18% of congressional officials … and these numbers have not changed in a decade. At Cisco, less than 25% of our employees — and our leaders — are women.
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