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Minggu, 03 Juni 2012

Weekly Wrap-Up: U.S. Wineries Love Facebook, Microsoft Kills Windows Live Branding, Google Adds Shopping Results to Search and More

94% of U.S. Wineries Are On Facebook, 73% on Twitter

A survey from ABLE Social Media Marketing found that most U.S. wineries are on Facebook and Twitter. The study covered both French and U.S. wineries, and French social media usage was not as widespread. To see the full study, and Richard's observations, check out 94% of U.S. Wineries Are On Facebook, 73% on Twitter.

Giving iPad PowerPoint Presentations Just Got a Lot Better

Microsoft finally killed the confusing "Windows Live" branding it has used since 2005 as its primary online brand. It will now consolidate messaging around promotion of its biggest software brand, Windows OS, and an identity system, creatively called a "Microsoft Account." To learn more about why its making the switch, read Why Microsoft Killed Windows Live.

Google Launches Full-Scale Shopping in Search

This week Google began offering additional options for advertisers who want to sell their products via Search. The changes come close to Paid Inclusion, but are clearly marked and Jon Mitchell feels that Google hasn't comprimised organic search. Read more about Jon's thoughts on this big change, and how the SERPs will change in Google Launches Full-Scale Shopping in Search.

Tim Cook at the D Conference: Between the Lines

Apple boss Tim Cook spoke Tuesday night at the D10 conference, his first major public interview since becoming CEO of Apple last year. His chat touched on everything from what he learned from Steve Jobs to his big-picture goal for Apple: to build great products, of course. But as always, when a big-company CEO like Cook speaks, the most interesting stuff is what he didn't say. More

Facebook Can't Have a Phone Until It Becomes an Operating System

One thing to realize about Facebook is that it is a platform. A platform allows developers and companies to build on top of it, build apps for it and interact with it through a variety of mediums. In that way, Apple's iOS and Google's Android are both platforms, but Android and iOS are also operating systems - complex sets of software that connect hardware to the platform. Facebook is a fine platform, but it is not an operating system. And that is going to make the company's attempt at building a 'Facebook Phone' extremely difficult. More

More Bad News For HP: The New Google Chromebook Compared to a Typical HP Laptop

On May 29th, Google announced two new computers, the latest Chromebook laptop and a new desktop machine called the Chromebox. After reading Jon Mitchell's thorough review, it became apparent that there's now very little difference in user experience between the Chromebook and a traditional laptop (for example, one from HP that runs on a Windows OS). Should traditional PC manufacturers such as HP - not to mention the world's biggest software provider for laptops, Microsoft - be worried about this? You bet they should. More

Be sure to check out our Hangout video where we discuss the Chromebook and how it compares to a low-cost laptop.

The Flame Virus: Spyware on an Unprecedented Scale

Security researchers recently discovered one of the most complex instances of computer malware on record. Flame, which also goes by the names SkyWiper and Viper, has infected hundreds of computers across the Middle East and Europe. What does it do? Where did it come from? Who unleashed it? More

Brands Step Up Open Graph Efforts on Facebook

Brands are increasingly abandoning efforts to get users to 'like' their Facebook pages and instead focusing their marketing efforts on Open Graph, the protocol Facebook uses to reflect third-party app use in a user's social activity. More

Why Evernote's Hello App Is Different on iPhone and Android

Evernote's Hello app for iPhone and Android devices helps you remember people you meet. But here's the rub: Each platform offers different features. In fact, the Android version, released on Wednesday, leapfrogs the older iPhone app with a bunch of cool goodies. Why not give the iPhone the same love? Evernote CEO Phil Libin explains his multiplatform strategy. More

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Game Over for GameStop and Video Game Retailers?
Executives, not Employees, are Driving the Consumer Tech in the Enterprise
Why the New Chromebook Still Doesn't Cut It
Top 10 Windows 8 Features #5: Live Performance and Reliability Charts

Mobile

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Facebook Can't Have a Phone Until It Becomes an Operating System
BlackBerry CEO Hints Research In Motion May Be Up For Sale
Cutting all the Cords: The Feasibility of a 100% Mobile Lifestyle

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Heroku Chief Opens the Door to More Processes, Bigger Ecosystem, Less Amazon
The Cloud's Killer App? SAP's Bid to Own the Enterprise Social Space
Government Market Drags Microsoft Deeper into the Cloud

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MIT Brain Who Beat the Casinos Launches Service to Quantify Developer Performance
New Pipl API Pulls in a Staggering - and Creepy - Amount of People Data Into Your Apps

Start

5 Ways to Tell if a Co-Working Space is Right for Your Startup
Are Incubators Really Necessary for Startup Success?
10 Secrets of Successful Crowdfunding - From Scott Steinberg
How Not to Screw Up Your Startup Presentation

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Sabtu, 02 Juni 2012

The Real Reason Video Game Consoles Still Have Optical Drives?

Earlier this week, ReadWriteWeb reported on the rise of digital downloads and the pressure it is putting on videogame retailers. (See "Game Over for GameStop and Video Game Retailers?") And this week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Sony flirted with shipping a 2013 successor to the Playstation 3 without an optical drive, then decided to keep it. Microsoft will also ship its next-gen console with an optical drive.

Why bother?

Blaming Slow Net Connections

The Journal claimed Sony and Microsoft based their decisions on shoddy Internet service overseas, which might mean that players would have to spend hours or even days trying to download large game files, and might incur bandwidth fees from their Internet Service Providers.

That reasoning makes no mention of the struggles of game retailers like GameStop, but no doubt comes as a relief to them anyway - at least for the time being.

Still, the fact that Sony - which co-created the CD, DVD and Blu-ray formats - even considered dropping the optical drive from its next-gen console clearly shows where the industry is heading. According to the Journal, even GameStop's CEO admits that a move to digital downloads is 'inevitable.'

ReadWriteWeb talked to a producer of a popular first-person shooter, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid antagonizing retailers. 'We all want the industry to go that way. It gets games to customers faster, and it gives publishers a lot more room for price flexibility,' the producer said. He also noted that smaller publishers, such as Hothead Games (makers of the Deathspank parody series), were 'basically built on Steam and the Apple Store,' and suggested that digital consoles could open doors for even more indie shops. As Hothead expressed the situation on its own forums: Digital platforms allow for a much higher level of creativity due to the lower investment required to bring them to market.

So, is the issue of lousy Net access in the developing world the real holdup? Or are there other factors in play?

Who Goes First?

According to the anonymous producer, 'No one [in the console business] wants to be the first one to cut the cord.' Retail sales still account for the majority of total game sales, and systems are too competitive for one manufacturer to take the plunge alone. There's also currently no solid model for incorporating storefronts into digital sales beyond game cards, and no secondary market for preowned digital titles.

Are the video retailers worried? GameStop has declined to be interviewed on these topics, so we went back to a local GameStop outlet and asked the clerk we talked to previously.

He wasn't too concerned, even allowing that he'd heard rumors of 'some pretty big things that might be in the works' with a console vendor. He seemed confident that even a disc-less platform release would still give plenty of time for retailers to adapt.

'We get a big pop in sales for consoles and one or two big games in the first month after a new [console] release, but it really takes a year or so for the new system to come into its own,' he said. 'That gives us some time to figure out how things are going to work.'

The clerk pointed out that even though the Playstation 3 launched in 2006, the store still sells plenty of used Playstation 2 games.

Microsoft and Sony have declined to comment about the degree to which they plan to push online sales for in-game 'extras,' but again, the clerk was optimistic. 'As long as people want to play a game before they buy it or pay for things in cash, we'll be in business.'

Photo by 'blindfutur3'.

[REVIEW] Can a Browser App Pop the Internet Filter Bubble?

The Problem

Pariser coined the phrase filter bubble in his 2011 book of the same name. As Pariser sees it, the online world is increasingly controlled by behemoths like Facebook and Google. Because they want to sell us ads, they present to us a version of the Internet that suits our tastes and exposes us to content that we find agreeable.

Clicking on an article about Obama while skipping one about Romney, for instance, speaks volumes about a user's taste. Over time, we create an Internet that matches our world view through the click signals we send. We aren't exposed to different points of view, which Pariser says is a threat to everything from creativity to democracy. Adding to the threat is that the filter bubble usually works behind the scenes: In fact, it must go unnoticed to be effective. So while we make the media that ultimately makes us, we don't notice that we're being exposed to certain content because we never see the content we're missing.

Pariser outlines several ways to address the problem, including building serendipity into search engines and helping users find alternative viewpoints, particularly when it comes to news. That's the angle rbutr is trying to address.

How rbutr Works

rbutr is an add-on app for Chrome, with versions for Firefox and Internet Explorer in the works. Its goal is lofty: to give you other points of view by listing content that shows a counterpoint to whatever it is you're reading. Say you land on the The Guardian's negative review of Noam Chomsky's new book. If you have the app installed, you can click on the rbutr button and see that someone has posted a link to Chomsky's response to the review:

Read that sentence again and see if you can spot the problem phrase: 'someone has posted.'

While the filter bubble works automatically and behind the scenes, rbutr needs lots of people to actively find rebuttals and post them: a cumbersome process that needs a five-minute how-to video to explain.

rbutr does have some interesting concepts built in, including an upvote feature to push the most useful links to the top. And to be fair, it is perhaps too soon to be reviewing rbutr: the app depends on people posting links to content, and it's new enough that few people have. rbutr openly acknowledges the issue on its website, saying 'this is a real problem, and our primary focus at this point.'

No Solution in Sight

Blog comments are not a perfect vehicle for airing a diversity of opinion, but they work - better than rbutr, at least. At this writing, 71 comments follow the Guardian's review of Chomsky, which provide a diverse set of viewpoints, as well as a link to the same alternative commentary rbutr turned up.

If I'm going to take the time to find a link and a counterpoint of view, why would I post it in rbutr without comment - presumably where only other rbutr users will see it - when I could post it in the comments section of the post? rbutr ultimately takes a simple task and makes it monumentally complex. Sad to say, the filter bubble won't be going away anytime soon.

Photo by Harley Pebley

ReadWriteWeb DeathWatch: Research In Motion

The Basics:

Research In Motion (RIM) designs, manufactures and markets the BlackBerry line of smartphones, the PlayBook tablet, and various device-specific operating systems and applications. The company tends to focus on business users, and its mobile administration and management tools earned it a following in large IT departments.

The Problem:

The smartphone market that RIM created grew up and passed it by.

RIM was first to the game, which helped it jump to a huge lead, and it amassed legions of fans based on features like physical keyboards and unprecedented access to corporate IT departments with robust security and management tools.

But with the release of the iPhone and the rise of Android, BlackBerry devices became less than cool. Still, even as it stumbled with product delays, poor consumer interfaces and misguided marketing (reportedly considering 'Nothing can touch it' as a slogan for its first touchscreen), RIM assumed its foothold in corporate IT was unassailable.

That assumption proved incorrect.

As iPhones and Androids became more popular among consumers, they increasingly worked their way into corporations, causing BlackBerry sales to slump in developed markets. On May 29, RIM warned of a Q1 operating loss, predicted more job cuts and announced that it had engaged bankers to perform a strategic review. All signs point to stripping down the company for a fire sale.

The Players:

President and CEO Thorsten Heins definitely knows a lot about technology (he was CTO at Siemens Communications prior to his arrival at RIM), but as this snooze of a video shows, he's not exactly Steve Jobs (or even Tim Cook) when it comes to driving excitement and confidence. While Heins has been with the company for several years (as COO of Product Engineering), he's new to the big stage, having been promoted to CEO in January. His COO and CMO, the two people directly responsible for developing and selling new products, joined the company earlier this month.

Moving past the people who got RIM into trouble was clearly necessary, but the newbies face a steep learning curve and not much time to effect a turnaround.

The Prognosis:

RIM is terminal. The company is toast, but it could be a long, slow death.

In his May 29 update, Heinz predicted that RIM would increase its cash on hand beyond the $2.1 billion with which it ended in 2011. With the right cuts and that kind of money, coupled with 78 million users and a growing user base in developing nations (albeit with cheaper products than those sold in the U.S.), RIM could hang on for several years.

The Blackberry 10 OS won't change the world, but it's years more modern and consumer-friendly than its predecessors. Best-case scenario, it staunches the bleeding, slows the erosion of RIM's domestic user base and buys a bit more time.

That's not likely to be enough, though. As Morgan Stanley's Ehud Gelblum suggested in a May 30 analyst note, RIM will probably be torn apart and sold, with its collection of wireless patents the prize amidst the wreckage.

Can Anything Save It?

RIM is hanging its hopes on its long-delayed Blackberry 10 operating system, but a new OS (even a good one) will not be enough to excite app developers or mainstream consumers.

If RIM could decouple its hardware business to focus on secure, business-oriented mobile applications and management tools, a vastly scaled-down company might be able to thrive. But dramatically shrinking a huge public company - and a Canadian jewel - is likely to be very difficult even if RIM could find a buyer willing to pay a reasonable price for its cratering device business.

Jumat, 01 Juni 2012

Are Incubators Really Necessary for Startup Success?

There Is Value in Incubators

Without a doubt, an incubator can help a startup get up and off the ground quickly. Ella Dyer is an alumna of Springboard Enterprises, the Startup Chicks Accelerator and Venture Atlanta. 'Winning the first annual pitch competition placed us in a four-month mentoring/coaching program where we learned, were reminded of and shared valuable insights into the making of a successful startup. Throughout the program we were able to network with proven leaders, several who have become close advisers and even investors in our company.'

Many startups point to the value of connections, just as Dyer does. Connections go beyond just getting venture capital, of course. Dyer notes, 'The Atlanta chapter of Startup Chicks is ripe with support in every category. From the start we knew who to turn to should we need assistance with spreadsheets (something covered several times throughout our first year) or tax details.' Dyer's experience with an accelerator had other benefits: 'Sharing the launch of our first application, FashionAde, with the vast community of Startup Chicks was a bonus; we immediately had users, feedback and more assistance.' Overall, Dyer considers incubators very valuable and a key to her success.

But is an incubator actually necessary to a startup's success?

The Counter-Argument

When you're outside looking in, an incubator seems to do certain things very well: connect you with investment capital and guide you through the process of setting up a business. For this service, most incubators take a percentage of the startup in question. There are some subtler benefits as well: When a new startup lands in one of the better-known incubators (like Y Combinator), it gets a huge amount of attention from the media, at least online. That attention may be enough to turn the tide for a new company.

But what if your startup doesn't need the services that an incubator offers? What if you can bootstrap the startup you have in mind? For those companies, there may be little point in applying to an incubator. And, as an added bonus, you get to keep control of your entire company.

Considering that incubators tend to look for very specific business models - startups that can grow quickly and offer a major return on investment - a close look at the numbers can sometimes make it hard to justify applying. And if you're doing something particularly new, you may not be able to get into an incubator even with a truly great idea. Incubators aren't exactly conservative, but they do clearly prefer the types of startups that they've seen before.

Incubators: Nice to Have

We need to cultivate the mindset that incubators are a nice-to-have option, not a need-to-have. I'm saying that as someone who has started a business without needing (or being a good candidate for) an incubator, but who would love to go through an incubator at some point just to get the connections it offers. I see a lot of value in the process. But I also see that plenty of startups can establish themselves without that sort of assistance and go it alone.

Can Tim Cook Escape the Ghost of Steve Jobs?

The answer is simple: He's already well on his way. The idea that Tim Cook is a haunted man, trying to live up to the legacy of Jobs, is absurd. He's his own man, his own CEO, and Apple today is doing better than it ever was under Jobs's leadership.

This proposition isn't subjective. Look at Apple's stock value, which is up 55% since Steve Jobs' death on October 5th, 2011. That stock has been buoyed by Apple's two strongest and best-selling products ever, the iPhone 4S and the new iPad - products that were launched under Cook's watch, not Jobs'. Wall Street has a lot more confidence in Apple under Cook than under Jobs.

Investor uncertainty was partly a result of Jobs' chronic health issues. But a bigger part was Wall Street's distrust of the fabled reality distortion field. While Jobs successfully saved Apple from the brink of ruin upon his return to the company in 1997, his cult of personality was such that, to most outside observers, it seemed as though the company itself was hopped up on Steve juice. In other words, Apple was a junkie, and the moment Steve wasn't around to inject another hit, the company was going to crash. That's not a healthy situation, and to this day, investors continue to undervalue Apple's stock.

Cook has proven that assumption to be false. Apple in the post-Jobs era isn't in decline. It's ascendant.

Some will say this is because Jobs, on his death bed, was personally involved in laying a roadmap for everything Apple is currently doing. The iPhone 4S and new iPad, they will say, were Steve's babies, not Cook's. To say this, though, ignores a simple fact: Apple isn't as huge as it is today simply because of its well-designed products. Apple is the largest and most profitable tech company on Earth because it can design these magical products and then manufacture and ship them out on a massive scale without compromise and at unheard-of profit margins. That's Tim Cook's design. That's his product. That's his "one more thing." And that's why he's the CEO Apple needs right now.

It's not enough to design products that everyone wants to own. You also need to get them into as many hands as possible. Steve Jobs was great at distilling products to their essence and making people covet them, but Apple could not be what it is today without Tim Cook's genius: his ability to get millions upon millions of devices built in total secrecy and then into the hands that want them. When the new iPad launched and lines didn't snake around the block, many saw proof that Apple had lost its mojo. The truth was far simpler: Cook is such a maestro at what he does that almost everyone who wanted a new iPad on the day it came out was able to walk into a store and buy one.

The truth is that Steve Jobs' greatest strength was nurturing talent and excellence. He didn't think of himself as irreplaceable. He set up internal universities at Apple aimed at training the next generation of executives to think more like him. He didn't believe that his way of thinking was unique. He thought it was something anyone could do.

'Once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you," Jobs once said during his wilderness years, "and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use - once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

Jobs' goal was not to be indispensable to Apple. His goal was to replicate his DNA and to inject it into Apple's, so that if he ever left the company, it would not be diminished, as it was when he was forced out in 1985.

Before he died, Steve Jobs cloned himself. Apple is now Steve Jobs' brain, and Tim Cook is the cerebral cortex of that brain, making sure that the organism as a totality - from the cerebellum of Cupertino down to the limbs of Apple's supply chain - works as a unit. Cook doesn't need to live up to his predecessor's legacy. That's something the whole company fulfills, with Tim Cook - Steve's chosen successor - at its core.

John Brownlee is deputy editor of Cult of Mac.

New Pipl API Pulls in a Staggering - and Creepy - Amount of People Data Into Your Apps

Customer ID, Social Context and CRM

Pipl's Chief Revenue Officer Jonathan N. Schreiber says the API could be used for customer identification or verification, or to add social context to applications, such as customer relation management (CRM) systems. In this way, Pipl will compete with people-data providers like Rapleaf, which powers services like Rapportive. But it's a flexible API and could be used in a number of unforeseen ways.

The API, built using Mashery's platform, is designed to let developers use the GET command to retrieve Pipl's search results in JSON on XML format, says Schreiber. Developers can specify a specific type of info they want, such as a mailing address, or just the full search results. The results are time-stamped and include a score that reflects how confident the Pipl service is that it has the right person.

Much of the data that Pipl finds is not normally accessible through Web searches but is still publicly available. According to Schreiber, Pipl uses only publicly available, non-logged-in information and respects robots.txt instructions to avoid the collection of information that's not meant to be crawlable.

Schreiber describes Pipl as a 'real search engine,' not a metasearch engine. It doesn't query each source for each search - it has already crawled and indexed all of this information. Pipl also performs recursive searches: Once it finds an email address associated with a person, it goes back and uses it to find more profiles and information associated with that email address.

Creepy or Not, Here It Comes

This may sound a bit creepy, but Schreiber also says that although Pipl will try to determine an individual's email addresses, the search engine will never return email address results to users. In fact, Pipl may actually prove useful in cleaning up online profiles by exposing old profiles and information.

Nevertheless, services like Pipl and other people data search engines like Spokeo have proven controversial. See ReadWriteWeb's recent post: Here Are 20 Companies Who Sell Your Data (& How To Stop Them). While there are plenty of innocent uses for an API like this, it's not hard to imagine developers using this API to do some unsettling things.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.