10 Views On What To Look For In An Investor

Money - most startup founders need it at some point. But when you're raising outside capital, cash can come at a very high price if you're not on the same page as your investors.

Where many startup founders go wrong in the fundraising process is focusing more on the offer than on who's making it. Thinking about the cash instead of who's investing it. So We asked 10 entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to weigh in on what exactly they expect from their investors, and why.

1. Domain, Demand And Delivery

While closing a VC-led investment this month, I learned to focus on three key factors when searching for investors: domain, demand and delivery. First, make sure you add domain experts to your team early. At LabDoor, we compete in the complex digital health field, so adding a strategic partner like Rock Health was very valuable for us. Thousands of investors have the money you need, but only one to five will be lucky enough to be a part of your next funding round. Get investors to fight over you, and find the investors that demand to be a part of your team. Finally, think of your investors like UPS: what can they deliver for you? Whether you need connections to an important business partner or access to a big institutional customer, find the investors that provide the highest value. - Neil Thanedar, LabDoor

2. The Network

It's relatively easy to get your hands on money: If you've got an appealing investment, you'll have to beat them off with a stick. But it's almost impossible to meet the right people to move your business forward without personal introductions. I'll always consider the connections that an investor (or anyone else) can bring to the table over anything else. It works the other way around, as well - I've gotten the most interest from investors who I've been personally introduced to by someone I know. - Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

3. Integrity

I want to know that the investors I work with do what they say they are going to do. Those types of people are hard to find. It's exciting when you're offered a great deal, but it's important to look at the big picture and examine who you're going to be working with, what others say about them, and what your gut is telling you. Investors do a lot of due diligence on the entrepreneurs they are working with but I don't see enough entrepreneurs doing the same intense due diligence on their potential investors. Admittedly, I've made this mistake too. What I want to know without a doubt is that the investor I'm working with has a lot of integrity and their investees and peers sing their praises. Rave reviews from others is very important to me. - Natalie MacNeil, She Takes on the World

4. A Silent Angel

I no longer seek the multimillion-dollar Series A round that will lead to a Series B and C. Our startup was built with a user-acquisition model vs. an actual "generates-profits model." The larger the investment, the more control you're going to give up, and the larger the exit needs to be. Instead, I look for opportunities with a clear profit model from the beginning that leverage a skill set or network that I currently have. And I don't take funding for them until I'm ready to scale the company, which means that I've built the product and proven that it makes money. I therefore look for an angel investor that is looking to invest $50,000 - $100,0000 and will leave my team and I alone. We know what to do; the added funding is there to help accelerate the process. - Jun Loayza, Passport Peru

5. A Smaller Portfolio

If you're looking to earn startup capital, you should always scrutinize investors. An investor should be as energetic about, and invested in, your organization as anyone. I recommend someone who has a smaller portfolio, filled with businesses similar to your own. When I started, I looked for outside investment. My search took me to an investment bank I'd interned with in college. The owner's portfolio was huge and successful, and I thought that's what I wanted. I realized, because of his portfolio, that he didn't care at all about my business. I decided to retain full ownership. Don't be too quick to jump on startup money. Find the right fit. - Brian Moran, Get 10,000 Fans

6. Experience - And the Wisdom Not to Rely On It

It's a cliche to say you are looking for an investor to bring experience into the board room. But the reality is that investors are a great voice to have around if they can offer their experience and pattern recognition to help you avoid missteps. Our company was fortunate to have Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO and current HP CEO, as an investor and board member. What is most impressive about Meg is that she brings incredible and relevant experience in building a marketplace - really the most powerful peer online marketplace in the world. But she's also wise enough to temper her advice with the knowledge that things have changed. And that's the standard I look for - experience that is telling and useful, but the wisdom to color that experience with new realities. - Eric Koester, Zaarly

7. Deep Experience in Your Industry

As a former management consultant, I learned that the number-one benefit that major companies found was that their consultants had worked with competitors. This is not about taking proprietary information, but rather about knowing industry best practices, how to apply them, and what non-obvious questions to ask. Unless you are an incredibly seasoned entrepreneur or someone with deep industry expertise (i.e. a PhD or 20 years of experience), you don't know what you don't know. Having investors who can teach you and ask you tough questions is incredibly valuable. - Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

8. Would You Have A Beer With Them After Work?

Investors should be experts in their focus industries, but should also be capable of admitting when they don't know something. I place extra value on humility and candor, which can sometimes be hard to come by in the investment community. When we were raising money for RJMetrics, we focused on investors who could step up when they were subject matter experts and yield to others when they weren't. For me, these are also the same kind of people that I enjoy having a beer with after work. This is critical to building a healthy, honest relationship with your investors. - Robert J. Moore, RJMetrics

9. Everything But The Money

Find someone you can trust. Picking an investor is like picking your spouse. Sometimes it's even harder to get out of a bad investor relationship than a bad marriage - make sure it is the right choice. When AdVentures made an investment in my company I looked at everything but the money. Did the investor have knowledge, connections, and experience to help take my company to a new level? All of the answers were yes, so it was a no brainer for me. - John Hall, Digital Talent Agents

10. Do They Walk The Talk?

In our most recent funding round, our new investors came to us because they saw the enormous growth potential for smart parking. They are an LA-based fund that specializes in intelligent transportation investment. After taking a few meetings with them, we quickly realized how excited they were to potentially join our business. Engagement is of the utmost importance. Investors should do more than talk the talk; it's crucial that they demonstrate knowledge of the industry and show why they believe the product will succeed. - Sam Friedman, ParkMe

#Me: Instagram Narcissism And The Scourge Of The Selfie

Those of us who use Instagram everyday like to think of it in glowing terms. Not only is it a rapidly-growing social media success story, but it's a place where we can go to see gorgeous, often creatively composed imagery. Our friends are there, documenting their world for us and reliably tapping the Like button every time we share our own photos. It's awesome.

That is, until you take a step back and look around

As it turns out, Instagram is a breeding ground for many people's most narcissistic tendencies. It's a reality that comes into sharp focus as soon as you step outside of your circle of friends and look at what everybody else is posting. Turns out that as a group, Instagrammers are a pretty self-absorbed bunch. 

Sure, you might say, we knew this. Mirror-shot, pouty-faced self portraits of teenagers find their way to the "Popular" (now called "Explore") tab as often as sunsets, celebs and food pics. But Instagram narcissism is more than a stereotype. There's actually data to back it up. 

90 Million Selfies... And Counting

Consider this: The third most frequently used hashtag on Instagram is #me. Under it, you'll find more than 90 million self-portraits taken primarily by younger users, very few of them with any irony, or even much creativity. 

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with publishing self portraits. After all, your appearance is very significant part of the life you're documenting using social services like Instagram. Taken tastefully and periodically, the "selfie" can add personality and context to oyur never-ending streams of lattes, power lines, cats and skylines. And sure, just like in the real world, everyone likes the ego boost we get from the compliments. 

Scrolling through the #me photos, you see images of varying quality, all displaying faces of different people. In a way, it's kind of fascinating to peruse. Here are all these people, broadcasting their own image to the world. In one photo, you'll see an American kid with his collar popped and earbuds in, probably shirking some school-related responsibility. In the next, there's a Saudi Arabian man dressed in a traditional gutra headdress, snapping a self-portrait in the mirror. Some people have new haircuts. Some have new babies. One guy has several large nuggets of marijuana.  

Some of these images feel a little too intimate. As you scroll through, you start to get the feeling that you're peeking through a window of a world you're not quite supposed to have access to. But mobile and social technology have given us millions of little windows into the worlds of others, so we keep scrolling.

The stream exposes nothing explicit, but it's peppered with what feels like far too many young, teenage girls laying in bed. Or 15-year-old boys standing shirtless in front of a mirror. Some of these kids are showing skin. Just about all of them - male and female alike - are seeking some kind of approval from their peers and the larger community, which thanks to the Internet, is now effectively infinite.

The Rise Of The Narcissistic Social Media Star

Some are getting the approval they're seeking in a big way. Michael Saba is a 15-year-old from Boca Raton, Florida, whose Instagram photos often find their way to the app's Explore tab among teen pop stars, professional athletes and professional photographers. But despite his 45,000 followers and hordes of teenage fans, Saba is not a celebrity. He is, as his Instagram profile says, "just a kid who takes pictures." 

Saba's photo stream is comprised entirely of self-portraits, each one garnering between three and five thousand likes and hundreds of comments, mostly from adoring teenage girls who fawn over Saba with almost Bieber-esque intensity - and shower him in heart-shaped Emojis. The pictures are not particularly interesting or varied. It's just him, in similar-looking outfits, day after day. Sometimes in the mirror, sometimes making well-rehearsed "cute" faces directly into his phone's camera. Quite often, Saba poses with two other friends, also heartthrobs. Every photo is a massive hit. Meanwhile, he follows only one other user. 

In our weird new world, it's not uncommon for young people to achieve this new type of psuedo-fame, fueled solely by social media. And we're not just talking the type of notoriety you can get from a viral YouTube video, which tends to require at least a sliver of talent, humor or skill. Instead, these kids are amassing huge followings just for being attractive. It's like a high school popularity contest on digital steroids, but this homeroom has more than 45,000 kids in it. 

Instagram And Self Image: Is The Impact Good Or Bad? 

Is this necessarily a bad thing? One has to wonder what this kind of existence must do to the ego of a 15-year-old kid. Or the weird new social dynamics it could produce at school. But some psychologists think that the self-image boosts offered by social networks like Instagram could be a good thing. 

It used to be that most of the photographs of other people we encountered were carefully crafted images of the flawless-looking individuals portrayed in popular media and advertising. Psychologists have long had concerns about the distorted effect that's had on normal-looking people's self images. Instagram and mobile photography more generally may be changing that. 

"I like to think that Instagram offers a quiet resistance to the barrage of perfect images that we face each day," writes Sarah J. Gervais in Psychology Today. "Rather than being bombarded with those creations' we can look through our Instagram feed and see images of real people ' with beautiful diversity." 

Of course, as Gervais acknowledges, there hasn't yet been much research into what sort of impact Instagram in particular is having on self image or anything else. Indeed, when I reached out to Microsoft's Danah Boyd and several other academics who study social media and its affect on society, I wasn't able to turn up much. 

The psychological impact of technology more generally has been a popular topic for a few years now. Narcissistic personality disorder has been on the rise for 20 years, according to a paper coauthored by Dr. Larry Rosen, who also wrote a book called iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession With Technology and Overcoming Its Hold On Us. 

Some research suggests a correlation between social media and narcissism, but the condition's increase long predates the rise of smartphones, says Jean Twenge, a researcher at San Diego State University who studies issues related to social media.  

"It's probably both that higher narcissism causes people to use social media in narcissistic ways, and that some social media causes higher narcissism," says Twenge. "But it's definitely a two-way street."

Favorable Ruling For Lyft A Small Win In War With Taxi Industry

California regulators have shown that they are open to shaking up the taxicab industry. The state Public Utilities Commission has lifted a cease-and-desist order imposed on ride-sharing service Zimride and withdrew a $20,000 fine. The action was taken after the PUC reached an agreement with the company that allows it to operate while the commission considers permanent rules for operating services that use mobile apps to match motorists with people needing a ride.

Over the last year, e-hailing services have battled regulators, politicians and the taxi industry in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and San Francisco. While regulators have said rider safety is the priority, skeptics have claimed resistance has more to do with protecting the taxicab industry.

The Deal

The PUC-Zimride deal reached Wednesday shows that California is willing to work with the new ride-sharing services. It's also in line with the position of the International Association of Transportation Regulators, which has said all along that  rule makers were not in the pocket of taxi companies.

"The regulators are pushing change and they're pushing technology," Matthew Daus, president of the IATR, says. The IATR is a professional association of municipal, county, state and federal transportation regulators.

Zimride operates the Lyft service in San Francisco. Its drivers are recognizable through the large, wooly pink moustache attached to the front of their cars.

The PUC agreed to let Zimride operate for the time being, as long as the company continued with the safety measures it already had in place. Those included $1 million in excess liability insurance covering each of its drivers, who also have to undergo a criminal background check and have a clear driving record with the Department of Motor Vehicles. In addition, Lyft conducts in-person screening and vehicle inspection.

Unaffected by the agreement are Zimride rivals SideCar and Uber. Each of them still faces a $20,000 fine and a cease-and-desist notice the PUC imposed on all three companies last November for running unlicensed taxi services.

Taxi Industry Gripes

The Zimride agreement is only temporary and no one can predict the PUC's final rules. However, they are likely to take under consideration the gripes of taxicab companies.

To the taxicab industry, whether a company owns a fleet of cars or not, if it dispatches vehicles to pick up passengers, then it's a taxi service. As a result, the same rules and regulations that apply to a taxicab company should also apply to e-hailing services.

The IATR is sympathetic to that argument. "That's not American," Daus says of favoring one competitor over another. "Everybody should have a level playing field."

Who plays in that field will depend on how regulators eventually define a taxicab service, in light of companies like Zimride. E-hailing services do not want to be a part of that heavily regulated industry.

Don't Call Me A Taxi Service

Indeed, Zimride does everything it can to not appear like a taxi service. Instead of fares, the company collects voluntary "donations" from passengers to give to drivers after Zimride takes its cut. The company also likes to talk about the "community" of people helping it provide transportation alternatives.

Don't let all this happy talk fool you. Zimride is a business that has raised $7.5 million in funding since it was founded in 2007. Investors include Mayfield Fund, Floodgate Fund and K9 Ventures.

On Wednesday, AOL's TechCrunch reported that Zimride had closed a new, $15 million round of funding led by Founders Fund. The company has declined comment.

Investors spend money on businesses, not communities, and Zimride holds the promise of solid returns. On the same day of the PUC deal, the company said Lyft would start operating in Los Angeles on Thursday.

If regulated as a taxi service, Zimride will find it much tougher to grow than if it is seen as only a mobile app maker that arranges rides. While the PUC has given it a temporary green light, the potentially game-changing decisions for the taxi industry have yet to be made.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Top 7 Most In-Demand Tech Skills For 2013

If you promised yourself you were going to beef up your tech skills in 2013, now is the time to get moving.

But where to start? With so many languages, platforms, protocols and other technologies, it's hard to know what's worth spending your limited free time to learn. Based on surveys and data from a variety of sources, ReadWrite has put together a list of seven of the most sought-after tech skills for this year. 

7. All Things "Cloud" 

The cloud computing craze is still going strong, if tech job hiring trends are any indication. Specifically, companies are looking for software developers who specialize in things like virtualization and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) development, with familiarity with Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technologies. 

According to one survey of IT execs, 25% of companies are planning on hiring people with SaaS and related cloud-computing expertise in 2013.  In general, SaaS and virtualization are both buzzwords often cited as being on-the-rise on job search sites. 

Of course, SaaS and PaaS (not to mention whatever-else-as-a-service) can utilize any number of specific programming languages and technologies (more on those below). Suffice it to say that if a given skill helps companies utilize cloud infrastructure or virtualize any aspect of their computing needs, it's in high demand.

6. IT Project Management

One of the most sought-after tech job skills isn't all that technical. Slinging code, maintaining infrastructure and designing software are all really important, but their kind of useless without somebody to see the project through to completion. That's why certified project managers can pull in six figure incomes and why 40% of IT executives are looking to hire project managers in 2013. 

5. JavaScript (And Related Technologies) 

On the Web, JavaScript is what makes things interactive, especially now that the rise of tablets and smartphones has bumped Flash from prominence. Whether it's the ever-popular jQuery framework or the JSON data interchange standard, companies need JavaScript-focused talent like never before. In fact, JSON is the most in-demand skill on CyberCoders.

It's worth noting that when people say "HTML5," they're often referring in part to JavaScript. That's because what makes Web apps look and feel so app-like is CSS and JavaScript, not just the plain HTML itself. 

If you're looking to learn Web programming, JavaScript is the place you want to end up. If you want to start slow, a framework like jQuery could be the way to go. 

4. Java / J2EE

Java and the J2EE development platform are popping up more and more on job hiring boards. Indeed, Java/J2EE developers are going to be in high demand throughout 2013, according to a survey from Dice. 

Unlike hot new technologies like Android development and HTML5, demand for Java skills has been fairly consistent over time, although it has been on the rise in the last few years. 

3. PHP / MySQL

It may lack the sexiness of mobile development or newer Web programming technologies, but PHP is still very important. The open source scripting language runs on more than 20 million websites and powers high-profile sites we deal with every day, including Facebook and Wikipedia. Any blog, news site or other website built using Wordpress or Drupal is making use of PHP as well. It's all over the Web, even if you can't see it by clicking "view source." 

PHP is currently ranked as the most sought-after skill on Elance, with MySQL and Wordpress also cracking the top ten. There are more than a quarter of a million PHP programming gigs listed on Elance alone. 

2. iOS Development

It comes as no surprise that iOS developers are sought after. Most sources that track job talent demand rank iOS development or related skills like Xcode and Objective-C programming very highly. As Apple's sales in both tablets and smartphones has exploded, so too has the demand for developers who can build apps for the iOS ecosystem. 

iPhone and iPad development have been trendy for a few years now, but it's actually accelerated pretty dramatically in the last two years. After years of slow but steady growth, demand for iOS development skyrocketed over the course of 2011 and 2012, according to data from the job aggregator site Indeed. If you've been meaning to try your hand at building apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, now is a good time to get into it. 

1. HTML5 / CSS

Where would the Web be without HTML? Nowhere, really. This simple markup language is literally what the Web is made of, with cascading style sheets (CSS) making everything look nice and JavaScript adding interactive functionality. 

It's only natural that the language at the heart of the Web would be in high demand, even as native mobile app development and back-end cloud technologies command bigger ad bigger chunks of IT budgets. In fact, as tablets, smartphones and cloud-hosted services proliferate, the importance of the Web grows along with it. Consumers still need to access their cloud-hosted SaaS services via their Web browser. And studies show that tablet owners still love the Web. 

After years of relative stagnation, HTML has made big advances in recent years with HTML5, which is now supported by the latest versions of all major Web browsers. Meanwhile, the design options available via CSS3 and the interactivity provided by JavaScript have pushed the Web even further, blurring the line between Web-based and native apps. 

HTML5 makes a 23-year-old markup language is cool again - and back in high demand. Elance and Indeed both rank HTML as one of their most sought-after job skills, while other studies routinely point to it being in strong demand.

As a bonus, it's relatively easy to learn compared to the other skills on our list.

 

PHP photo by Robert Agthe.

 

Why Do Americans Hate Technological Change?

Dan Lyons's provocative question about Why Do American's Hate Android And Love Apple?, got me to thinking about even larger questions involving my fellow countrymen's relationship to technology.

A.J. Schuler, in his 2003 paper, "Resistance to Change," lays out 10 reasons why people resist change. His first two points may help us understand why we cling to technology that might not be the best for us.

1. The risk of change is seen as greater than the risk of standing still.
2. People feel connected to other people who are identified with the old way.

Why Did Macs Never Rule America?

Dan suggests one reason Americans support the iPhone is because "Apple is an American company, and Americans like to root for the home team." He also says "lawsuits against Android phone makers have been an effective form of marketing" and that Apple fanboys have depicted Android users as "low-class people who are uneducated, poor, cheap and too lacking in `taste.'"

While we might like the home team and being part of the cool-guy club, there is more to iPhone love than Apple and its "superior" marketing.

For instance, when Dan asks, 'Why do such a huge majority of Americans go out of their way to choose Apple?' he is talking about smartphones - because as a country we are not really in love with Apple's computers. According to Ars Technica even at their peak of popularity, the computers of Apple have never even been one third as popular as the iPhone.

From 1996 until his death, Steve Jobs tried fairly unsuccessfully to get Americans public to embrace the Mac the way they now love, love, love the iPhone. (As a former Apple employee, this is a problem that I lived first hand.)

For many years after Mac OS X's initial release on March 24, 2001, it was arguably the best desktop operating system in the world. For one thing, OS X was far more secure than Windows XP. Whole agencies in the federal government could be taken down by a virus or worm attack, but their CIOs would cling to Windows XP like they were married to it.

Many businesses were even worse. And it isn't all about not liking Apple. Many companies still cling to Windows XP when almost anyone with computer experience will tell you that Windows 7 is a far superior operating system. And let's not even talk about Windows 8.

Because Everyone Else Is Doing It - And They Will Help You

So why are the 11-year-old Windows XP and the no-longer-clearly-superior iPhone still so beloved?

It could be because they were the first widely accepted products of their type. While the Macintosh brought us the first graphical user interface, it was never as widely accepted as Windows. People got used to Windows, and the risk of going to something different became greater than the risk of sticking with XP.

In a similar fashion there were smartphones before the iPhone - but Apple's breakthrough was the first one to be widely accepted.

In technology, "being connected to other people who are identified with the old way" also means that you have a support system of people to call if you screw things up.

If you needed assistance when Windows XP broke, you probably knew someone who could help. And if you have a problem with your iPhone, how hard is it to find another iPhone user?

Fast Food - But Not Fast Internet?

It is not just Microsoft's operating systems or Apple's smartphone technology that Americans cling to. We seem perfectly happy with slow Internet access that even Russia and the notably technology adverse British wouldn't tolerate.

'Technology adverse British' is actually a slam our friends across the pond do not deserve. The Brits have adopted smartphones faster than the United States.

It's An American Thing, You Wouldn't Understand

Still, I wonder how America, birthplace to the personal computer and so many other technologies, has become so complacent when it comes to adopting the latest and greatest. I worry about the security vulnerabilities caused by our government's refusal to aggressively diversify its operating system portfolio.

But whatever you think of iPhones or Windows XP, there is one thing that we should all be able to rally around: faster Internet connections.

Once we see the positive results of forcing change even when we are comfortable hugging our cable modems, perhaps change will come easier to us the next time.

That's important, because a "good enough for me" attitude towards technology is not the best way to keep up with the global economy. And we might fall even further behind if our international competitors can see more on their larger smartphone screens.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Cash In Your Old Blackberry At uSell.com

This post is sponsored by uSell, a price-comparison website that helps you find the best price when it's time to sell your BlackBerry, smartphones, and other used electronics. Find reputable buyers for your used devices on uSell. #sellblackberry

If you're a BlackBerry user, you're no doubt looking forward to the release of Research In Motion's new Blackberry 10 operating system on January 30 - and the slick new smartphones associated with it.

Options For Your Existing Device

But what are you going to do with your old Blackberry?

You could keep it in a drawer as a backup, or maybe recycle it - but that's leaving up to $200 on the table, which could be enough to pay for your new Blackberry 10 device, if you're signing a 2-year deal.

There are tens of millions of Blackberry users around the world, and they'd love to take that Bold or Curve off your hands. The trick is how to sell it for a fair price without going nuts. That's where uSell.com comes in. It can do the grunt work of finding the deal and securing your payment for you. 

Most providers will accept trade-ins toward your new phone, but like car dealers, they won't give you what you could make on the open market. For example, an unlocked Blackberry 9790 is worth $90 to Sprint Buyback. That same phone, in used condition, fetches $120 to $200 on eBay.

The extra cash makes eBay a popular choice, and you can certainly put your phone up for auction, but there are no guarantees. You might pick the wrong price. Phone values change every day, and last week's closing bids may be way off the mark by now.

You might not reach the right buyer at the right time. In fact, since Blackberry is so strong overseas, the best buyer may be on the other side of the world. Even if your phone sells, you'll still have to cope with flaky buyers, packing and shipping, and processing fees. If you just want to get paid and get on with enjoying your new phone, auctions can be a dicey bet.

That's why many people skip the auctions and sell their old phones to a reseller. Resellers quote you a fixed price, paid out when they receive the phone and confirm its condition. Resellers are faster and simpler than auctions, so you can get on with enjoying your new phone, but they raise their own questions. Can you trust them to pay? Could you have found a better deal somewhere else? Resellers are a step in the right direction, but they aren't perfect.

uSell.com Helps Find The Right Reseller For You

Enter uSell.com, a reseller metasearch. uSell partners with dozens of resellers and gives you the tools to make the best decision for your situation.

The selling process is simple. Select your carrier (or choose "unlocked"), select your phone and choose your phone's condition. uSell returns a list of guaranteed offers from participating resellers, which you can sort by price, user reviews and overall match. Once you choose a reseller, just fill out a form and hit Submit.

Since uSell searches a variety of sources, the prices are exremely competitive. For the 9790 mentioned above, uSell offered quotes ranging from $31 to $135, all with free shipping. uSell manages the entire process, from shipping to payment, and guarantees the quality of all participating resellers. It's easier and safer than rolling the dice on an auction, and you know you're getting the best possible price from a reseller.

Of course, if you don't have a Blackberry to sell, you can still cash in. uSell will also find you the best reseller deal for other cell phones, iPods and even your old game consoles.

Why Obama Should Open Source His Campaign Code Now, Not Later

President Obama's technical team wants to open source the technology that is credited with helping him win the 2012 election. The Democratic Party, however, has other plans, apparently intending to keep Project Narwhal and the rest of the software secret so as to give it an advantage over cash-rich but tech-poor Republicans. In so doing, the Democratic Party demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of open source and, indeed, how organizations benefit from technology.

Open sourcing Obama's campaign systems is actually in the Democratic Party's self-interest.

Open Is Good For Everybody

Some Democratic politicians like to think technology won them the election. Unfortunately, it's not true. Obama won because he ran a better campaign against a Republican candidate who looked OK on paper but was somewhat wooden in person.

Yes, part of Obama's "better campaign" was a crack team of data scientists who built what appears to be excellent system - dubbed "Narwhal" - "that acted as an interface to a single shared data store for all of the campaign's applications, making it possible to quickly develop new applications and to integrate existing ones into the campaign's system." This enabled the Obama team to divine and respond to voter preferences, among other things.

According to two of the Democratic National Committee's technical team, who want to see the software open sourced, the current plan is to "mothball" the software to conserve resources and protect the Democrats Big Data advantage. This, they argue, would be a mistake:

Right now, only presidential campaigns have the resources to build systems of this sophistication. The data and technology infrastructure from the Obama campaign cost millions of dollars to build, and even the most well-funded senate campaigns couldn't afford anything close to that.

But with some additional work, the data and tech infrastructure from the Obama campaign could be adapted to offer the same functionality to other progressive candidates and groups, giving them the opportunity to use these systems with their own supporters and volunteers. For smaller campaigns that would have no chance of creating these systems on their own, this could be a game-changing step forward.

The problem for the Democratic Party, however, is that even (gasp!) non-progressives could benefit from the technology if it were open sourced, which could lead to (double gasp!) Republicans winning. As The Verge reports, the Democratic Party has blocked efforts to open source the code, believing the software gives it and its candidates an advantage, and the Obama campaign is therefore keeping tight control of all campaign assets, including the software.

History Repeats Itself

For those of you who were around to witness Microsoft and other technology incumbents respond to open source's rise, this will all seem very familiar.

Like these Democratic politicians and bureaucrats, the tech giants resisted open source, arguing that proprietary software was the only way to innovate, and gave them an advantage against competitors. They, too, thought that software was more valuable as individuallyowned property, rather than as a collective effort that brought multiple values and talents to its development. 

They, too, completely missed the genesis of the very Big Data movement, firmly grounded in open-source technology that was developed through the collective efforts of Yahoo!, Google, Facebook and other new-school tech giants. Such companies understand that real competitive advantage derives from savvy business execution on services built from open-source software.

It's not a matter of hoarding ones and zeroes.

If the Democratic Party holds Narwhal and its other software in cold storage, as TechDirt's Mike Masnick argues, it's effectively rendering it useless, as the software will no longer be state of the art when the next election rolls around in four years time. In addition, it's foolish to think that the Obama campaign, however smart, employed the only intelligent engineers on the planet, and is the sole repository of wisdom about how to make the code better. It could benefit from collective efforts to improve it which, in turn, also help it recruit the best and brightest. The best developers want to work with open-source code, in an open source manner.

The days of winning by blocking access to one's software are over. This is true in technology, and it's true in political campaigns. For their own good the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee should open source Narwhal and other related technology. They truly have nothing to lose.

spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

4 Tech Trends That Will Make Colleges and Universities Better Teachers

Guest author Troy Williams is president of Macmillan New Ventures, a venture capital firm. 

These are dark days for many colleges and universities. Sharp decreases in government funding and private-giving have forced academic cutbacks. That, along with soaring tuition and disappointing postgraduate employment, has earned the United States the dubious distinction of being number one in college dropouts. 

A Silver Lining

The good news is that higher ed is, at long last, critically evaluating the effectiveness of its teaching methods. Many college and university administrators now believe that digital technology can be a valuable tool for better serving students. The higher ed crisis has led to an explosion in education technology startups. In the next few years, colleges and universities will be able to choose from a host of technology products and services optimized for higher ed.

Here are four tips for success in the higher ed market:

1. Deeper Data. Tracking students can help colleges and universities to reduce dropout rates. Data can pinpoint those students most likely to drop out and match them with professors who have been successful helping students with similar learning styles. College and university administrators will be looking for vendors who can supply them with sophisticated data mining tools, training and services. 

2. Schools As Businesses. Today's colleges and universities are being run like corporations. Their business leaders who sit on their boards often have very different priorities than academics. They want to see their schools do a better job of attracting top students, retaining them and doing both in the most efficient way possible. The old model whereby tenured professors dictated teaching methods is no longer viable. Startups should pitch administrators keeping in mind that they answer to results-oriented boards. They should persuade with hard data or in the absence of it, ally with vendors that have a proven track record.

3. Commodification Of Content. A decade ago, academia viewed online education with mistrust. Since then, online educational materials and open-source learning have gone legitimate. And for good reason: the Internet offers cash-strapped colleges and universities a cost-effective content delivery model. Now, more universities recognize credits earned online. Ed-tech companies that sell tools, products and services to help colleges and universities offer a virtual experience on par with that of real-world classrooms will find enthusiastic buyers. They'll be following in the footsteps of non-profit Khan Academy that has made a big name for itself offering a library of online educational videos and interactive programs.

4. Hybrid Classrooms. To remain viable colleges and universities must offer classroom experience superior to that of the virtual world. Learning management systems (LMS) that facilitate flipped learning can help them do that. In flipped learning, students listen to lectures at home and go to class for hands-on learning based on what they've heard. This style of teaching has been dramatically effective: at Clintondale High School in Michigan, flipping reduced the number of freshmen failing English from 50% to 19%. There will be strong demand for products that offer either all or part of a LMS.

A Change Is Gonna Come

Education reform has often moved at a glacial pace. Among the reasons: tradition, the power of tenured faculty, the availability of money - public and private, and students who considered a college degree to be critical for success.

Times have changed and those reasons are no longer as powerful as they used to be. As colleges and universities change with the times, they will find that technology will be an in valuable tool to survive this painful, but necessary, transformation.  

 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Will Microsoft Close Office 365's 'Household' Discount Loophole?

Office 365, already priced as a cheaper, subscription alternative to Microsoft's retail Office packages, may offer families and friends additional discounts, provided that Microsoft doesn't close a key loophole.

What Makes A Household?

At this point, Microsoft's Office 365 package charges one fee per household, but it's not exactly clear what the definition of "household" is. Since the Office 365 license covers five devices, it's unclear whether Microsoft will treat a "household" as a single IP, or cover extended family such as parents and adult children who may move out of the home.

Microsoft representatives couldn't supply an answer. "I don't believe any one has asked me that question before," said Oliver Roll, a general manager at Microsoft.

After teasing Office 365's launch on its website, Microsoft has come clean: Tuesday marks the consumer launch of Office 365, plus Office 365 University. Consumers will pay $99.99 per year ($8.34 per month) for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access, plus 60 minutes of Skype calling and extra SkyDrive storage; students will pay $79.99 for four years of the University bundle. Microsoft also revealed that business users will receive access to Office 365 on February 27.

Microsoft also launched its traditional Office packages: Home & Student ($139.99), Home & Business ($219.99), and Professional ($399.99). Each version can be licensed by either one Mac or PC, forever, except for the Professional version. That's PC-only.

Microsoft's Roll said that the typical household would benefit from the new Office 365 pricing, but the exact payoff will vary by the number of devices in the house and other factors. "I'm a busy parent... I might have five or six devices at home and at work," he said. "I want Office to run on those devices, and I want instant access to my documents and settings on the device I'm using. People have begun to expect instant access to music and movies with services like Netflix; we don't think Office is any different."

The addition of Office 365 University adds a new wrinkle for students, however. Previously, students who purchased Office 2010 University received a perpetual license to the software for $99.99. The Office 365 version only lasts four years, but grants students a pair of licenses, they could use it on a Surface Pro as well as a notebook PC, for example, or even split the cost with a roommate.

Roll said he didn't know whether or not a consumer Office 365 license would be geographically locked - in other words, why couldn't a family simply install a copy of Office 365 on a PC that a student would take to college? (From a price perspective, however, it really doesn't matter that much; $99.99 split among five PCs is $20; multiply that by four years, and it's $80, the same as the University Bundle.)

A small family with one or two PCs, however, plus a set of parents, might benefit from essentially paying $20 per year, per PC.

Sharing Can Be A Good Thing

How strictly Microsoft enforces that policy is well, up to Microsoft. HBO, for example, notoriously doesn't enforce username and password sharing, providing up to three accounts per subscriber. "In private, HBO executives did not dispute the notion that the password borrowing could lead young people to subscribe to HBO in the future," The New York Times has reported. Sharing an Office 365 account might do the same.

Unlike Google, Microsoft's Office 365 doesn't live entirely in the cloud, as users will be able to download copies to their PC that will allow them to run offline. Patching and upgrades will happen automatically, however, and Roll said that new features will be added more frequently than Microsoft has traditionally done.

Businesses Love Office 365

Microsoft also claimed that Office 365 has been a hit among its enterprise customers; 20% of all enterprises that use Office have subscribed to Office 365, and among small and midsize companies, Microsoft has seen a 150% increase, Roll said. 

Part of that may be ascribed to Google, which recently pared the free version of its Google Apps product from its enterprise portfolio. At the beginning of the year, both the Department of Defense and the city of Chicago signed on to use Office and other Microsoft products and services. Now, Roll said, the Catholic International Education Office, covering 2.5 million students across 103 countries, has signed on to use Office 365, as has the All India Council for Technical Education.

"In the business world some of those core parts... are the same - business users want to be able to access their documents regardless of what device they're using," Roll said. "They'd like their settings to be personalized; SkyDrive is an important part of the business services. I save documents at work to SkyDrive... and on my home PC, I pick up where I left off."

Office 365 will also include the Office Store, a marketplace for add-ons and plug-ins that includes project software, new dictionaries, and even companies like Gliffy, which Microsoft invited even though it competes with Microsoft-branded products.

(See Inside The New Microsoft Office App Store: One Developer's Real World Story.)

Vine's Microporn Highlights Flaw In App Store Model

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iOS users are happily trying out Twitter's new Vine app, posting six-second videos of their lives for their followers to see. But already there are reports of pornographic imagery appearing on the new service, which spotlights Apple's next move: should Vine stay or should it go?

The new social media app, which records and posts short videos to display in continuous loops on your Twitter account, is garnering a lot of praise as creative folks are pushing out cute little vignettes.

It's also getting a early reports of videos depicting nudity and sex. While it's not clear how much porn one can fit into six seconds (insert obligatory male performance joke here), it hasn't stopped people from trying.

Where There's Media, There's Porn

That there's porn on Vine is not a surprise. Since there were cave drawings, humans have been visually recording all things sexual. Vine is just another medium for the activity.

What will be interesting is Apple's reaction (or non-reaction) to the realization that gasp! there's naughty bits on one of the apps in their App Store.

Apple's policies about nudity, sex and all things in between are the stuff of legend, of course, and just recently have been brought into the spotlight again when the software maker opted to pull apps associated with the popular 500px photo-sharing service out of the App Store.

The decision to remove 500px apps would seem to be very germane to Vine, since content that Apple (or anyone else) would deem pornographic is appearing on Vine. And, unlike 500px, which clearly indicated galleries that contained explicit content, Vine content is not required to be so indicated. Which means, theoretically, any Vine link could potentially be a skinfest.

This is not to advocate the removal of Vine. If consenting adults want to look at this stuff, that's their call. But in keeping with Apple's own policies, Vine has some real porn potential and deserves a review.

Cut The Vine?

If Vine remains on the App Store after such a review, this would demonstrate a serious flaw in Apple's store model. If Apple placates big-name app developers and bend the rules for them to let their apps stay in the App Store, then the unfairness we've suspected will be brought into the harsh light of reality.

If Vine does get pulled, then at least Apple is consistent. But it will also show that the App Store policy is ultimately silly: instead of pulling apps out wholesale, why not just require parental controls or other safe-search-like features in any app where there's a potential for explicit content to be displayed? This would seem to be a more reasonable approach, and Apple, as the sole developer of iOS, would seem to be in an excellent position to build tools into their iOS SDK to accomplish this.

Even if you disagree with the need for such controls, having them present would seem to be a reasonable compromise that would work in the real world and not in the Reality Distortion Field.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Apple & Lenovo: A Tale of Two Companies:

One company started in a garage. The other started in a guard shack in China with $25,000, according to The Economist,.

The first company took 'Computer' out of its name on January 9, 2007. The other is now the leading seller of PCs in the world, by some measures at least.

Who Owns The Computer Market?

We all know that Apple is still a money machine - and the best in the world at it. But observers like Dan Frommer are now predicting that 'Mac shipments' seem to have peaked for good." That is a stinging comment.

Lenovo, meanwhile, might be the best in the world at making computers - at least the desktop and laptop versions.

So where will these two behemoths end up over the next few years?

Opposing Approaches

Tom Peters' seminal book, In Search of Excellence, listed eight themes that defined the success of the corporations. One rule was 'Stick to the knitting ' stay with the business that you know.'

Apple might have rewritten that rule. While there have been questions about the research behind Peters' book, there are few about Apple's success through creating and mastering new lines of business. The iPod, iPhone and iPad are powerful examples of how a company can define its own future by strking out in new directions.

Still, it is very interesting to speculate on which company's strategy will win in the end. The question draws me back to my days at Apple - when I watched the company set off in the directions that now define it.

What might surprise some people is that the decisions that Apple made were often not conscious ones. They sometimes just happened in Apple's unique corporate culture.

I have described trying to manage at Apple as trying to herd a bunch of cats over a wall with a pitchfork. To complete the image, there was one person whose voice would send the all the cats over the wall instantly. That person, of course, was the late Steve Jobs.

Different Paths To Different Places

Let me try to shed a little light on why Apple and Lenovo are fundamentally different.

The first difference is Lenovo's strategy of making sure there is place to buy one of its computer very close to where the consumers are. Even in an emerging market like China, Lenovo's goal is to be within 30 miles of every consumer.

Apple, meanwhile, got to what I like to call its "metropolitan strategy" through a combination of missteps and vision.

In the early '90s, Apple wanted to strengthen its sales presence in the K-12 education market. Instead of hiring more people, it chose to strengthen the agent model by reducing the number of resellers who could be educations agents. As a manager in Apple's Education division, I had to make some very difficult calls to small rural dealerships and tell them Apple was changing their contract so that they could no longer sell to education customers. For some of these small resellers, losing Apple's education business was a death knell.

That was a misstep.

The vision part came in when Apple figured out that its now-weakened resellers would never do as good a job as Apple-branded stores could. That was the genesis of the fabulously successful Apple Stores.

Not everything has changed. Apple has a history of disappointing its partners. Former and current Apple resellers have endless stories of Apple not letting them sell iPods to predatory specials at Apple Stores to chronic availability problems on hot products.

For its part, Lenovo has exclusive resellers in China and exclusive territories in India. Both setups are very different than the retail situation in the United States - but they've played a big part in Lenovo's growth and are now actually targets for Apple.

The Business Market

Another huge difference is Lenovo's focus on corporate PC sales. Lenovo has doubled its success in that market, according to The Economist.

At one point, I actually led Apple's most successful enterprise sales team. We tripled Apple's sales into arguably the most Windows-centric market in the world, the United States government. But our tiny team were fish swimming against the tide in a company rapidly transforming itself into a consumer powerhouse.

Price Matters

Here's one final point. Apple has come to believe it cannot make anything worthy of the Apple brand at a low price point. Lenovo believes it can deliver quality and still serve customers looking for a good deal.

If they are both right, that's a big win for Lenovo.

92% Of All Smartphones Shipments in Q4 2012 Were iOS & Android

If you are a smartphone manufacturer trying to make a dent in the mobile wars and are not building a device running iOS or Android, you are out of luck. According to Boston-based research firm Strategy Analytics, 92% of all smartphones shipped in the last quarter of 2012 ran either Apple or Google's mobile operating systems. 

Overall, smartphone growth for the quarter grew 38% annually between Q4 2011 and Q4 2012 from 157 million units to 217 million. For the year, Strategy Analytics believes that 700.1 million smartphones were shipped in 2012, well ahead of the 490.5 million shipped in 2011. 

Growth rates for the smartphone market are slowing. Granted, growth is still in the double digits, but global ship growth slowed from 64% in 2011 to 43% in 2012, according to Strategy Analytics senior analyst Neil Shah in a release. 

On a global basis, Android is winning the smartphone wars. In Q4, it took 70.1% of all smartphone shipments. Apple's iOS was second with 22%. That left 7.9% to all other competitors, notably Microsoft's Windows Phone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry. 

For the entirety of 2012, Android held 68.4% of all smartphone shipments. Apple held at nearly one-in-five (19.4%) while the rest of the market shared 12.2% of all shipments. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

6 Signs Yahoo May Actually Get It (Finally)

Disclosure: I used to work with Yahoo in my two years as an editor for the website Tecca. While I was never on Yahoo's payroll, our companies had a close content partnership and some leadership overlap. (It's complicated.)

Yahoo is a strange, many-headed beast. Not often commended for its corporate vision, cohesive net of products... or anything else, really, maybe it's time to give the Web's most excited (!) megalith a break. 

When the company ousted compromised CEO Scott Thompson and poached Google's Marissa Mayer last year, the Web was heartened - maybe Yahoo gets it, after all these years!

By 2012, it seems, the Web's wary denizens were busy mistrusting Google and Facebook. Yahoo, still a giant by any other gauge, was starting to look like an underdog.

As the legend goes, Yahoo was founded in the 1994, a relative dark age of the Web. The company was originally a hierarchical Web directory, not even a search engine, though it quickly added that and other functions to become a full-featured Web portal

But over time, scrappier, savvier upstarts like Google and Facebook became the new online titans. By that time, Yahoo, having already enjoyed its era at the top, could only lumber on toward a social/mobile future it didn't seem to quite understand.

Add a remarkable run of executive-level churn and an ensuing identity crisis to the mix, and you've got a snapshot of the challenge Marissa Mayer signed up to tackle. But less than a year after her sparkling indoctrination into the folds of the world's biggest corporation with a punctuation mark, Yahoo looks more alive than it has since... well, let's just say it's been a while.

Here are 6 reasons we think that Yahoo could finally be poised for a comeback. 

1. Mayer Understands What's Broken

Mayer gets Yahoo's history - and, as she tells Bloomberg Television, she understands the long game.

"You know the first wave really was Yahoo itself, you know the directory, there are these pages out there, how do you organize them? And then the Web got so large that the directory model broke down and gave to search. And then the next wave that came was social, and now I think we're on the mobile wave. And so if you think about that, that's all happened in about 15 years. We've gone through four major technology shifts in terms of who the main players really are. And so I think there is always opportunity for new disruption." 

2. Yahoo's Product Draft Is Well Underway

Yahoo just bought Snip.it, a Pinterest-esque Web clipper. Last year it launched Axis, an experimental mobile browser that most people actually liked. And it revamped Yahoo Mail, with apps to boot. 

Just like Mayer planned, Yahoo is on the prowl to bolster its product roster with companies that fit into Yahoo's (newly) mobile vision. Look for Yahoo to make more small, interesting acquisitions this year as it continues to quietly build itself back up.

3. Mobile And Social: The Missing Puzzle Pieces

Mobile and social are music to the ears of anyone waiting for Yahoo's second coming. Mayer put it this way:

"I definitely think with the Web becoming so vast - there is a much content and social context and now with mobile, there is so much location and activity context. How do you pull all that together? ...It brings Yahoo back to its roots. It used to be that that's what Yahoo was. It took the Internet and ordered it up.

Now it's so vast that you can't just categorize it anymore. But could we provide a feed information that is ordered, a Web ordered for you, and is also available on your mobile phone."

4. The Flickr Case Study

When the great Instagram Terms of Service freak out went down late in 2012, Yahoo got lucky. Flickr, still one of its best-loved products, had just released an app update to rave reviews. Defectors wary of Facebook's hand in the future of their filtered photos were poised to leap into Yahoo's arms. Suddenly Yahoo had a golden opportunity to prove that it could be agile, mobile and social at once.

Call it good timing, but Yahoo didn't altogether fumble the aftermath, even running a promo for Flickr Pro accounts. Building back a beloved, long-neglected product is a welcome sign that the big Y! is getting back int he game.

5. Yahoo Throws Its Doors Wide Open

Facebook and Twitter are throwing punches. Samsung and Apple's holy war over patents will go down in history. Everyone wants to take down Google, with good reason. But Yahoo? Yahoo just wants to make friends.

"Our focus, in addition to technology, but also on media, it means there is an opportunity for strong partnerships. That is what we will be focused on. We work with Apple and Google in terms of the operating system. In terms of social network, we have a strong partnership with Facebook. We're able to work with some of these players that have a lot of strength in order to bolster our user experience that we offer on the Yahoo site."

6. In Yahoo We Trust (For Some Reason)

The most underrated thing that bodes well for Yahoo is that we're rooting for it. Tired of Apple, Google and Facebook duking it out, many people want to see Yahoo make a comeback. It's an era of deep distrust of big companies commanding big data for big money, but Yahoo has been down for so long there's an undercurrent of Web users who inexplicably want to see it get back up. 

There are plenty of other things to consider. Yahoo pulled in more than $7 billion from selling off a chunk of its stake in Chinese online marketplace Alibaba, and its stock enjoyed a nice run up toward the end of 2012. 

But Yahoo still faces many challenges - it's long term success is far from assured. We'll have more information when Yahoo announces its fourth quarter earnings on January 28. You can find the full interview with Mayer embedded below.

Image via Flickr user Adam Tinworth, interview via Bloomberg Television

Social Enterprise Is Not Living Up To Its Promise

If you're not hearing a lot about social enterprise these days, it may be because no one can figure out what the hell social enterprise is.

On paper, the concept sounds reasonable, even important: take popular social media tools (microblogs, wikis, blogs, etc.) and use them for internal collaboration, project management and overall feel-good business practices.

Social Entreprise vs. Business As Usual

But in practice, a lot of companies have found that actually using this stuff is not a magic wand to bring forth happiness and productivity to their organization. The reason? Social media tools in the enterprise often work counter to the internal communications practices that have long been ingrained in companies.

For instance, in theory it might seem like a good idea to coordinate creative activities on social platforms. But in reality, there's always going to be the managerial hold-out who won't accept a project as actually moving forward unless there's a meeting or memos - the very things social enterprise practices are trying to eliminate. And there could be a legitimate need for this, too: If not done properly, social enterprise software can fail at making sure someone deals with all the boring minutia, like documentation for regulatory purposes, which could be a huge no-no.

Then there's the issue of figuring when and for what social enterprise should be used? In too many cases, employees may get confused over when and how they're supposed to turn to the social media platform in their day-to-day jobs. And if only some workers engage with the platform, its utility is greatly reduced. 

You Can't Force Workers To Be Social

Too often, enterprises overlook the importance of organic adoption of social media. You can't just flick a switch and turn on a social network - and an email from the CEO won't work either. Instructions to go social from the IT department are even more likely to ignored. 

The appeal of these platforms lies in the very fact that they grow and evolve network connections at their own pace - as users find them helpful and engaging. Social media tools do make it easier to establish those connections, but it's not something you can force.

That's why, when I read news like Salesforce may be moving away from its social enterprise channel and focusing more on cloud computing, I'm not surprised.

ZDNet writer Dan Dignan points out other reasons that help explain why social enterprise seems to be failing. My personal favorite? That social enterprise is like a cleverly disguised version of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). And that dog just won't hunt. "ERP software changed companies fundamentally, but also led to spectacular IT disasters largely due to people, process and culture. Social with business process integration won't work."

So does that mean the entire concept of social enterprise is doomed?

Not necessarily. The gigant-o, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink enterprise social platforms imposed from the top are indeed in trouble. But targeted tools that companies and their employees pick and choose to bring social techniques to specific projects and use cases may still find success. But that's still a much-reduced vision of the social enterprise's original promise 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Feeling Sick? Tweet It And Help Track Outbreaks

You know it's flu season when everyone on Twitter is talking about runny noses, germ-filled subway rides and obsessing over the effectiveness of their Purell.

While potentially annoying, these kinds of tweets may help predict and monitor how illnesses like influenza are moving across the country. A new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (yes, that's real) from Brigham Young University's Computer Science department has been able to track illness trends by analyzing the location data of tweets referencing illness. 

Location, Location, Location...

The BYU team did not track any certain sickness during this trial, instead concentrating on location data. The ultimate goal of the study was to encourage the creation of a program that health organizations like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and even smaller city-based organizations could use to track the progression of any disease across the nation. This would give health officials a heads up if a outbreak is headed their way.  

Other online services track disease too, such Google Flu Trends, which uses search terms and results, as well as data from the CDC to specifically track the flu. Another site, MappyHealth, uses location data from Twitter to track illnesses ranging from pertussis to STDs. While these sites are similar to the work done at BYU, the research team mainly sees them as validation to what it originally thought was possible with tweet tracking.

Associate Professor of Computer Science at BYU and lead researcher Christophe Giraud-Carrier said in an email that the method his research team developed can pick up epidemics up to two weeks before the CDC can. "That kind of lead time would greatly help put the resources where they are most needed and in a more timely fashion."

Those two weeks can make a big difference. The influenza vaccine takes about two weeks to be effective at preventing the flu. If health officials were have that kind of lead time, vaccinations could be targeted at areas that seem to be outbreak locations. 

Why Twitter? 

With all of the different types of social media, why choose Twitter? Tweets are public by default, which makes them easier to monitor. The site provides independent researchers a way to monitor users without having to engage them, require them to remember anything or take a test. No one was asked to turn on the location option for their tweets, so the location data that is gathered should be an accurate portrayal of the country.

The site's terms and conditions when it comes to its application programming interface (API) also made it very easy for the research team to follow tweets en masse: 24 million tweets by 10 million different users were tracked by the research team. 

Location data wasn't gathered from tweets themselves. Only about 2% of users actually tagged their location in their tweets. Researchers found a better option to decipher location: User profiles. About 17% of the tweets monitored had users that provided location data on their profile. While some users had fake locations like "a cube world in Minecraft," 88% of the time the provided location data was accurate and useful because it provided a distribution of geolocated tweets across the country. This correlated with the overall distribution of the overall U.S. population. 

Of the tweets tracked, 15% contained specific location data. This may not seem like much, but Giraud-Carrier explained that this percentage is actually very good: "15% is indeed relatively small. But with over 312 million Americans, it still gives us a lot of people to look at/listen to. The fact that the distribution is consistent with the population is also encouraging. We do not want to overstate what is possible, but there seems to be a critical mass here that should allow useful things to be done."

Giraud-Carrier wants the study to serve as proof of the quality and value of geolocation data on Twitter, adding that social media should be used not only as a means of prevention, but also intervention. 

Image courtesy of Brigham Young University.

A Day In The Life Of YouTube's Fancy-Pants New L.A. Studio

Far from the Walk of Fame or the fabled sign, this is not Hollywood. Too far southeast from the beaches filled with silicon tech and silicone bodies, we're miles away from the beaten path. In a converted helicopter hangar once owned by Howard Hughes, step into the home of YouTube's new creative space. Could this be the new home of L.A. tech, nestled in sleepy Playa Vista? If you're into online video, and lucky enough to get access to the Google-owned facility, the answer may surprise you. 

With fresh, wide-eyed faces, collaborative accommodations, and name tags galore, the YouTube space feels more like a college campus than a production facility. But that's the point. Welcome to Day One of the inaugural incubation class. Welcome YouTubers. (Up till now, the space was used only for occasionally workshops, with the likes of Rainn Wilson and Amy Poehler.)

Through The Looking Glass

It's got a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory feel that you can't shake. The 41,000-square-foot facility smells, looks and feels like money - it's backed by Google, after all, and subtle reminders and signage are everywhere. There's a 6,000-foot catwalk circling the building, a fireman's pole for quick access to the ground floor, and 2 million feet of fibre-optic cable running under the floor. 

Above the check-in desk hang 48 video screens stacked on top of each other to form a jumbotron, playing a continuous feed of video. There are arcade games in one corner of the cavernous atrium, piles of food sitting in an adjoining open kitchen. The oldest visible person can't have been born before 1980. Most look like they were hatched in the '90s. 

Everyone wears name tags, even staffers, who seem just as awed by the fancy digs as the stream of young creators who check-in and get their name badges like worker bees or students on the first day of school. Because that's what today is: Day one of the space's first incubation class.

Some 25 teams of YouTube "partners" are the first test batch of what can be legitimately dubbed the newest accelerator in town. Except this one doesn't give you any money, or claim ownership of your final product. Instead, it offers the tools to make more professional productions, and strategy to build and grow audiences-- while linking with creators on a profit share. When it comes to money, it's becomes hard to pin down just how much they share as YouTube is reticent to make numbers public.  According to online searches, partners make in the neighborhood of $2 to $5 per thousand views on their videos and about $0.01 per thousand channel views. But when asked to confirm these numbers, Google spokespeople responded that they don't make public financial details with partners. "The ad rates (are) different for many reasons, so that's not accurate. YouTube doesn't share those various rates (again that depend on many factors) publicly. The rev share is always 'majority goes to the partner' and that much is consistent and public."

Most people won't make enough to quit their day job, and critics have said that this model is exploitive. For most people, that's probably true. But not this group. These are very much the outliers, handpicked by YouTube based on audience size and diversity. 

The space's first resident, Freddie Wong, boasts more than 4.3 million subscribers and 785 million video views on his channel. There's big money on the table for Wong. And he's taking it.

YouTube is letting Freddie build a new soundstage for season two of his scripted series, Video Game High School. And it didn't even have to spend a penny. Neither did Wong. He raised the money through a Kickstarter project and private investments.

Specs

There's a a 1,500 square foot sound stage geared towards live music, a 47-seat screening room, three freshly painted green-screen rooms, an editing bay, live feed control rooms, a Next Lab to help audience development, and a "back lot" filled with rentable cameras and equipment. And there's a palpable do-it-yourself, entrepreneurial feel that pervades the entire building.

"My mom should be able to walk in here and make a YouTube video," explained Kathleen Grace, the space's manager of production and programming. 

The hours are 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week (on Sunday, they rest). 

Partner Talk With Freddie Wong

Freddie Wong slides down the fireman's pole and walks over. He sits at a long table opposite from me, adjusts his glasses, musses his long hair and apologizes for intermittent coughs. He's getting over a cold. 

Wong says online video is at a turning point. He says it's moving from short and viral to more long form, higher-production-value content. At the same time, keeping creative control and direct access to fans is pushing the medium farther and farther away from the traditional video distribution system.

The involvement of Wong with YouTube, and his distaste for the studio system, is evidence of that. "As a creator, to be able to take [content] direct to our audience is something you've never had before," Wong says.

How to bring media direct to the consumer with a fiscal model that works for both sides, is the big unanswered question. Wong admits the money side is still a work in progress, but when asked if he would take a rich deal with a big-name production company or television studio, he shakes his head emphatically. "What's actually being offered?" he questioned.

Wong says it's not all about the money, and creative control is a major factor. That's why he wants to stay in this space, with YouTube. He's predicting major gains for his upcoming new season, and his partnership with the online video giant. 

"We're kind of like the guinea pigs," he says smiling, about his four-man team. "If you can handle us, you can handle anyone."

 

Photos By Adam Popescu.

Why Microsoft's Earnings Report Doesn't Reveal How Windows 8 Is Doing

Microsoft reported an unexpected boost in both profits and revenue within its Windows division for the fourth quarter, and yet little of that had to do with real demand for Windows 8.

Well, possibly. Or maybe not. Or perhaps we're completely wrong.

(See Microsoft Earnings Surprise: Windows Soars, While Office Stuggles.)

That's because Microsoft revealed very few details about the success or failure of Windows 8 in its quarterly earnings call on Thursday afternoon, and what little company executives divulged had already been disclosed. Yes, we know that Microsoft has sold more than 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date. Big deal. Windows marketing chief Tami Reller said as much earlier this month.

The big statement from Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, on Windows 8 simply reiterated what most Microsoft followers already knew:

"With the launch in October, we collectively took the first of many steps in changing the way people use technology at work and at play," Klein said. "Since then, the number of Windows 8 certified systems has nearly doubled, the number of apps in the Windows store has quadrupled, and Windows users have downloaded over 100 million apps. To date, we have sold over 60 million licenses of Windows 8. Our partners, including OEM hardware manufacturers, app developers, and retailers, have worked hard to get us to where we are today. It's early days and an ambitious endeavor like this takes time. Together with our partners, we remain focused on fully delivering the promise of Windows 8."

Why Windows Won

Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live revenue grew 24% to $5.88 billion, while the division's profits grew 14% to $3.3 billion. Why? Three reasons, according to Klein, were responsible for the bulk of the revenue increase:

1. Retail upgrades.
2. Surface sales.
3. Multi-year license agreements struck with enterprises.

Some, like ex-Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff, suspected that the bulk of the Windows division's sudden boost in revenues was money that had been deferred from pre-sales of Windows 8 before the launch. Subtract that, and the 24% increase drops to 11%. According to Microsoft, sales to equipment makers outpaced the x86 PC market - no surprise there, given that the third-quarter PC market dropped.

Probably the most important news is that enterprise volume license sales - multi-year license deals that are typically signed for three years - were up "double digits" Klein said. (We don't know, however, if they were for Windows 7 or Windows 8.) More than 60% of all corporate PCs currently run Windows 7, which is an indication of strong enterprise support.

Unfortunately, Microsoft said virtually nothing about its Surface tablet, including sales figures. And how many consumers took advantage of the cheap $39.99 Windows 7-to-8 upgrade, or the $19.99 upgrade for those who bought a new PC before Windows 8 was released? We may never know.

"The Microsoft financials show that they did indeed profit well from the work they did on Windows 8," Patrick Moorhead, principal with Moor Insights, said in an email. "Unfortunately their [manufacturing partners] can't say the same. The fact is, the jury is still out on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and Microsoft has a long way to go to show that both operating systems are strategically a success."

We Know Nothink

What else did we learn that we already knew? For one thing, we know that Klein is a master at dodging questions. Give credit to Walter Pritchard of Citigroup, who asked one of the more adroit questions: In the months following the Windows 8 launch, what has Microsoft learned about the importance of price (in terms of the Surface tablet, we presume) in terms of driving sales, and will Microsoft eventually lower prices?

Mr. Klein?

"We learned a lot... about the price points customers are looking for from their devices," Klein returned. "We saw some really great demand for touch devices for the market. In some cases we didn't have the supply we needed to satisfy that demand. I think from a price point we learned what we always suspected: there's segmentation and differentiation. One of the powers of the Windows ecosystem is obviously, a variety of devices and form factors and experiences at a variety of price points. And I think we learned from experience that that continues to be important, and as I said we continue to work closely with our chip partners as well as OEMs to bring the right mix of devices, which to your point, mean the right set of touch devices at the right price point of the unique needs of the individual. I think we learned a lot about that and one of the things you'll see is a greater variety of devices at a bigger variety of price points to meet the different needs of consumers."

Stop. The. Presses.

Unfortunately, the only Microsoft exec that can actually be goaded into something resembling an answer wasn't on the call. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer was absent ("he pulled a Sinofsky!" one friend quipped) but made an appearance via press release:

'Our big, bold ambition to reimagine Windows as well as launch Surface and Windows Phone 8 has sparked growing enthusiasm with our customers and unprecedented opportunity and creativity with our partners and developers. With new Windows devices, including Surface Pro, and the new Office on the horizon, we'll continue to drive excitement for the Windows ecosystem..."

What We Do Know

Microsoft did provide some additional... well, they weren't "facts," exactly.

• Sales of Windows Phones are up four times compared to last year, whatever that figure was. 
• Online ad revenue grew 15% (although the Online Division lost money, again: $283 million)
• If one factored out $788 million of deferred Office upgrade revenue, Microsoft's Business Division grew revenues by 3%.
• Deferring $380 million in video game revenue (for add-on packs and the like) meant that Entertainment revenue was down only 2%, not 11%.
• The Windows upgrade offer expires at the end of February, when Microsoft will recongnize $1.1 billion in revenue - giving a nice little boost to Microsoft's third fiscal quarter Windows revenues, too.

According to Klein, Microsoft is positioned for growth across a "massive" market, from tablets to laptops, to ultrabooks and all-in-ones.

OK, we know the potential is there. Microsoft has been saying that for months. So what's going on now?

Top 10 Most Popular Tags On Instagram

The Instagram hashtag can be a pretty powerful thing. 

As with other social platforms, tags are used on Instagram for descriptive purposes, typically appending a caption with words that are relevant to the image's content. Look, my cat is swatting at a turkey sandwich. #cat #cute #sandwich #slap #food #lol. Pretty standard stuff, right? 

Instagram hashtags can also be surprisingly effective in fueling content discovery, helping users get more exposure for the photos they take. Tagging images with the right terms at the right time can also lead to an uptick of likes and new followers. 

So what are the most popular tags?

It changes over time, and it can actually be interesting to watch trends spike and then fall out of favor on Instagram. In June, #tweegram was the third most-popular tag, but has since slid down the list to number 16. #summer is no longer in the top 10, for obvious reasons. The hashtag #me has grown more popular in the last seven months, suggesting that Instagrammers may be getting even more narcissistic than they already were. 

While some tags fluctuate, others remain popular over time. Tags like #love and #cute are among the most frequently used, while people evidently haven't gotten sick of tagging things with #photooftheday. 

If you were expecting #cats, #powerlines or #food to break the top ten, you may be in for a surprise. 

10. #girl

 

Photo by fashionstyleparison. 

9. #picoftheday

 

Photo by krad1469 

8. #beautiful

 

Photo by emmafudd72.

7. #instamood

 

Photo by mordyisrael. 

6. #photooftheday

 

Photo by tomwebstax.

5. #tbt  (Throwback Thursday)

 

Photo by justlikenonna. 

4. #cute

Photo by snoreborewhoree. 

3. #me

Photo by jonasbarcellos. 

2. #instagood

Photo by wait4it.

 

1. #love

Photo by koolmello.

 

Hey Fanboys: Is Today The Day To Buy Apple Stock?

Apple shares are getting killed after Apple fell short of Wall Street expectations with its earnings report. Shares started sliding in September, dropping from $705 to about $514 just before the earnings came out. And then, when investors saw the numbers, the bottom fell out and Apple stock plunged more than $50, settling at $460. They may drop more today once the market opens, since all the analysts on Wall Street are bashing Apple.

Which raises the question: Is now the time to buy Apple?

Keep in mind that investors have made a lot of money by buying Apple when things looked bleak for the company. Also keep in mind that right now, by every measure, Apple stock is ridiculously cheap. 

The Numbers

The company has $140 billion in the bank, and a market value of $483 billion. That in itself makes no sense.

Apple stock is trading at 11.6 times trailing 12 months earnings. That's cheaper than IBM, which trades at 14 times trailing earnings, and Microsoft, trading at 15. It's half the multiple that Google is carrying (23). It's a fraction of what Facebook is selling for (160 times trailing earnings). It's nearly as cheap as Dell, which is trading at 9 times earnings and doing so poorly that the company is considering going private in a buyout.

Apple is cheaper than Johnson & Johnson (19) and Procter & Gamble (20) and Hershey (17.6) and McDonald's (17.6). In fact Apple is cheaper than the S&P 500 (currently trading at 17 times earnings), cheaper than the NASDAQ (20.6), cheaper than the Dow Jones Industrials (15).

Do you really think Apple is a worse company, or has a less bright future, than the average company on a stock index? 

Well, that's what Wall Street is saying.

Apple is cheap, cheap, cheap. This is bargain basement, fire sale pricing. 

Negative Sentiment

Better yet, everyone on Wall Street is going negative. Jim Cramer says Apple has lost its magic. Nomura says Apple is entering its "ex-growth" era. Investor Jeff Gundlach says Apple is heading to $425 and could go as low as $300.

TheStreet.com says Tim Cook sounded like the former CEO of RIM when he did a call with analysts last night. A very bullish Apple analyst has lowered his target price for the year ahead, though he still rates the stock a Buy.

All you Apple fanbloggers who are saying that there's nothing wrong with Apple, and that "Apple didn't miss, Wall Street did" - are you ready to put your money where your mouth is?

Seriously, who's buying? Are you? Let's hear the bullish case for Apple.

Image courtesy of Reuters. 

Big Data: Overhyped And Overpaid?

 Gartner research director Svetlana Sicular thinks Big Data is about to plummet off the "peak of inflated expectations" into the "trough of disillusionment." Perhaps. But other data from Twitter and job trends suggest a much more complicated picture.

Sicular reaches her conclusions about Big Data based on a series of conversations with IT professionals over the past few weeks, in addition to a roundtable with Hadoop vendors Cloudera, Hortonworks, and MapR. In discussing Hadoop, the vendors suggest that "MapReduce has always been Hadoop's bottleneck or that Hadoop is 'primitive and old-fashioned,'" apparently disillusioned with the state of Big Data's poster child/elephant. 

This could be chalked up to the Hadoop vendors simply acknowledging that despite being an excellent technology, Hadoop still has a ways to go. But Sicular's conversations with enterprise business analysts are more damaging:

My most advanced... Hadoop clients are also getting disillusioned. They do not realize that they are ahead of others and think that someone else is successful while they are struggling. These organizations have fascinating ideas, but they are disappointed with a difficulty of figuring out reliable solutions... Formulating a right question is always hard, but with big data, it is an order of magnitude harder, because you are blazing the trail (not grazing on the green field).

And yet, these same companies don't seem to be giving up on Big Data. 

For example, DataSift plowed through 2.2 million Twitter mentions by more than 981,000 authors, as Ovum analyst Tony Baer reports, finding that positive mentions of Big Data vendors outnumber negative mentions by 3-to-1. And while Baer acknowledges that "Twitter streams are not a scientific focus group for detecting brand awareness, they provide a valuable window on market thinking." Indeed, given the levels of Big Data hype, it's surprising that the overall mood about Big Data remains overwhelmingly positive.

So much so, in fact, that enterprises are paying a premium to hire job candidates with Big Data-relevant technology skills, as Dice.com's 2012-2013 annual salary survey reveals. Job candidates with Big Data technology expertise command an average salary of $100,000, while other hot technologies like cloud/virtualization ($90,000) and mobile ($80,000) yield lower salaries. As Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com, asserts, "We've heard [Big Data] is a fad, heard it's hyped and heard it's fleeting, yet it's clear that data professionals are in demand and well paid."

While Gartner clearly has a valid point that Big Data's outsized expectations are sure to crash into reality at some point, it's also clear from jobs data, in particular, that enterprises see enough value from their data that they're willing to pay up for expertise that can analyze it. Will they be disappointed? Possibly. But the jobs data indicates we have yet to plummet into Gartner's "trough of disillusionment."

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Why Magazines Are Using Digital To Boost Prices, Not Bolster Innovation

Well, this is disappointing.

As magazines make the transition from print to pixels, some publishers are using the move as an opportunity to jack up their prices - in some cases, to more than they were charging for print editions. And that's for tablet versions that are too often crappy afterthoughts. 

To be fair, magazines are contending with legitimate financial concerns. Their advertising revenue has been declining and the historically discounted subscription rates they've charged for print delivery just aren't enough to pay the freight. To cope, many publishers are asking readers to chip in more - on digital versions as well as print editions.

There are some problems with driving up prices too much, though.

For one, everyone knows it's cheaper to distribute content digitally than to print it and mail it. Asking buyers to pay more for something that costs you less to deliver is the kind of tactic that makes many subscribers feel exploited. It's a head-scratcher, if not a subscription-canceler. Sure, magazine makers may still be coping with meaty legacy cost structures. But that's not our problem, is it?  

Readers Have Way More Choices

There's also much more competition. Long gone are the days when magazines competed only with each other. Today, the entire Internet churns out content at a volume too great for any one human to keep up with - and it's all instantly available at any time. 

In addition to traditional magazines gone tablet, there are the digital-only magazines, sitting right there on the skeuomorphic newsstand shelf. For every frustrated TIME subscriber, there's a free download of the Huffington magazine, not to mention personalized, social-fueled digital "magazines" from Flipboard, AOL Editions, Google Currents, Zite and an ever-growing list of others. If Wired jacks up its prices, there's always digital mags from The Next Web and Engadet, not to mention the huge selection of tech coverage available through news aggregator apps and feed readers. 

How Publishers Have Fared With Tablets

Not everyone in the publishing industry is enamored with the idea of publishing native tablet apps for readers to flip through. MIT Technology Review editor Jason Pontin vowed to kill his magazine's native apps, citing high costs, technical challenges and the walled-off, un-Web-like nature of apps. The Financial Times famously pulled its iOS apps in favor of the HTML5 approach and isreportedly seeing more traffic and revenue since making the switch. Indeed, research has suggested that most readers prefer Web apps to native, platform-specific publications.

Still, some magazines have done pretty well with their digital editions, especially when they bundle them with print. In the United States, tablet publications are the second highest-grossing category of apps on iOS, according to an independent audit. Time and Conde Nast are selling the most digital mags, with news and women's interest magazines dominating those sales. 

Half of Wired's revenue now comes from digital, which is a rare but promising milestone for a legacy publisher. I still subscribe to Wired in print, and I appreciate the fact that the iPad edition comes at no extra charge. I also happily pay for Marco Arment's experimental publication The Magazine, because it consistently publishes content I enjoy in relatively small doses, rather than flooding me with irrelevant features and full-page ads.

"The Magazine was profitable from day one," says Arment. "As subscribers increased past break-even, I've been able to reinvest the additional income into more articles, higher author payments, original illustrations, photos and a professional editor."

While Arment won't disclose hard numbers, he says he's satisfied with what he calls The Magazine's "fantastic success." By utilizing what publishing expert Craig Mod calls "compact publishing" and monetizing it fairly, Arment has managed to build a profitable, if small media business in an age when industry trend lines have the stubborn tendency to slide downward.

There's clearly a limit to how much people will pay for magazine-style content. And it's not at all clear that number is rising instead of falling. Folks who want to remain in the publishing business need to figure out a hybrid model that works, and not just jack up their prices to make up for shrinking subscriber rolls. 

Digital Magazines Suck

The business model isn't the only issue here. Just as important is the consensus that most digital magazines just aren't very good. In far too many cases, subscribing to a magazine on your tablet means downloading a bloated, glorified PDF that hardly delivers the potentially magical experience the form factor allows. Even some of the digital-only magazines from online publishers mimic print page-for-page in disappointing pinch-to-zoom layouts.  

There are some promising alternatives. Wired's iPad app is pretty print-centric but at least the editors go to  the trouble of adding multimedia bells and whistles.  The Magazine takes an attractive minimalistic approach - both in terms of publication design and pricing.

Traditional publishers may want to look to The Magazine for inspiration, as well as to social news aggregators like Flipboard and Zite, which have managed to produce truly addictive reading environments worthy of a slot in one's home screen dock. Rethinking magazines for tablets will require publishers to get completely out of the print mindset. That means different layouts, lighter file sizes, deeper social integrations and yes, occasionally pointing readers toward content published by others. 

On the whole, digital magazines have a long way to go. When they get there, those of us who are most hungry for the news, analysis and entertainment they provide will happily pay up. Hopefully, there will be enough of us to make the best digital magazines into viable businesses.