Yahoo, Now A "Technology Company," Kills Off Its Lamest Products

The Yahoo evolution continues - this time with a few more swings of the axe.

Friday, Yahoo announced that it would be sunsetting a handful of its products in a move consistent with CEO Marissa Mayer's plan to aggressively prune the unruly conglomerate.

Out With The Old, In With The Cool

Yahoo will be terminating some of its more vestigial products, which is exactly what it needs to do. Cleaning out the old, rotten stuff will help rid the company of its unhip World Wide Web-esque vibe. These soon-to-be-dead products will join the ranks of some of Yahoo's mobile apps, which are next for the chopping block. Here's the list of what the big Y! will jettison:

• Yahoo! Message Boards website
• Yahoo! app for BlackBerry
• Yahoo! Avatars
• Yahoo! Updates API
• Yahoo! Sports IQ
• Yahoo! App Search
• Yahoo! Clues (beta)
• Yahoo! Updates API

R.I.P. It's hard to say what, if anything, will be missed on that list. Yahoo's Message Boards seem like they might still show some signs of (protozoan) life. But Yahoo Avatars might have been singlehandedly perpetuating the company's out-of-touch, mid-1990s image. (Seriously, have you seen those things?)

On Yahoo's Yodel Anecdotal blog (which I really wish had made the list), Jay Rossiter, the company's Executive Vice President of Platforms, explains the culling with a shout out to recent updates on Flickr and Yahoo! Mail, two Yahoo products people actually use. According to Rossiter, Yahoo wants to hang onto only products that are a "daily habit that still resonates." The goal is to sharpen the company's focus on its brand new Mayer-era direction.

Yahoo Is Now A "Technology Company"

In another decisive move that bubbled up quietly Friday via an SEC filing, Yahoo now fashions itself as a "global technology company." For the past few years, Yahoo had been resolutely calling itself a "digital media company," so the change is a bit curious, though the timing isn't. Here are the old and new Yahoo boilerplate excerpts, with the updated language highlighted:

Old: Yahoo! Inc., together with its consolidated subsidiaries... is a premier digital media company. Through our proprietary technology and insights, Yahoo! delivers personalized digital content and experiences, across devices and around the globe, to vast audiences."

New: "Yahoo! Inc., together with its consolidated subsidiaries... is a global technology company focused on making the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. We provide a variety of products and services, many of them personalized, including search, content, and communications tools'all daily habits for hundreds of millions of users, on the Web and on mobile devices."

Between the quiet rebranding and these ancient products galloping off into the sunset, Yahoo is increasingly focused on the one thing that certainly needs the attention - the company itself. 

Image of axe courtesy of Shutterstock.

Google Disses Motorola Products - And Hires Guy Kawasaki

Google's short-term goals for its Motorola smartphone division are two-fold: clear the rubble on the runway and build for the future. 

When it comes to runway, Google is still dealing with the product pipeline that it inherited from Motorola when the acquisition received final approval by regulatory bodies way back in February 2012. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference this week, Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said Google still has to deal with 18 months of product pipeline that it has to 'drain right now.' 

That product pipeline was on full display in September when the latest Droid Razr devices were released. The reaction to the Droid Razr HD, Razr Maxx HD and the Razr M was a universal yawn, with all three devices seen as no more than iterative updates to the aging Razr series as Google continues to liquidate Motorola's existing design and assets. 

(See also The New Motoroloa: Google's Hardware Division Steps Into The Future.)

Even the next new smartphones that will soon come out of Motorola are not anything to write home about. Pichette seems well aware of that fact, calling them, 'not really to the standards that what Google would say is 'wow' ' innovative, transformative,' according to a report from The Verge. 

Essentially, Google has to clear away years of Motorola mediocrity, past and future, before it can really build a device that will stand out as the quintessential Android smartphone. 

That is where Guy Kawasaki comes in.

Kawasaki Joins Google To Advise Motorola

Guy Kawasaki ' venture capitalist, publisher and early Apple evangelist ' loves Android. We learned this in December, and heard more details when he sat down with ReadWrite editor-in-chief Dan Lyons for a ReadWrite Mix event in San Francisco last December. The revelation that Kawasaki, such a staunch Apple advocate for so long, was an Android fanboy was shocking to many people in the pro-iPhone camp. 

(See also Shock And Awe: Apple Legend Guy Kawasaki has Become A Hardcore Android Fan.)

Apparently, his devotion to Android runs deeper than he originally let on.

Kawasaki tweeted on Wednesday that he will be joining Google as an advisor to Motorola. Kawasaki will focus on 'product design, user interface, marketing, and social media,' according to a post on his Facebook page.

'Motorola reminds me of the Apple of 1998: a pioneer in its market segment, engineering-driven, and ripe for innovation. I believe that great products can change everything. For example, the creation of the iMac G3 (the Macs that came in colors such as Bondi, Strawberry, Blueberry, Lime, and Grape) was a pivotal event for Apple,' Kawasaki wrote. 

What's Next For Motorola?

Between Pichette and Kawasaki, we're getting a pretty good idea of the direction of Motorola under Google's stewardship:

1. The first thing that needs to be done is to clear the pipeline.
2. The next is to employ smart designers and idea people like Kawasaki to create transformative products under the Motorola name. Will that be the mysterious 'Motorola X' that Google has supposedly been working on?

If we date Motorola's 18 months of product pipeline from the time when the acquisition was approved by the U.S. Department Of Justice, Google still has nearly six months or so worth of Motorola supply chain to suffer through. It would not come as a surprise to see at least one more iteration of the Razr series from MotoGoo before we we find out what Motorola-under-Google really has up its sleeve. 

After all this time, it had better be something that will make us all say "Wow!"

Top image: Motorola Droid Razr M by Dan Rowinski

What To Expect From Facebook's Shiny New News Feed

News Feed, one of the three so-called "pillars" of Facebook - alongside Timeline and Graph Search - is the bustling epicenter of the social network. And it's overdue for an overhaul.

In a press invite sent out Friday, Facebook invited us to "Come see a new look for News Feed" on the morning of Thursday, March 7, at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

News Feed Needs Some Spring Cleaning 

At turns maddening, cluttered and ad-ridden, News Feed is the core of the Facebook social experience. If you click the "Home" button that's where you'll land - and it's certainly where Facebook wants its users to hang out.

Facebook's real-time, algorithm-driven, social ticker is also what makes the social network so confoundingly addictive: When did my college roommate get hitched? Why can't I stop reading about people I haven't spoken to in years and barely knew to begin with? 

While Facebook obviously has the hyper-engaged can't-peel-your-eyes-away aspect of News Feed on lock, it's still a confusing, busy page. Managing who and what shows up on News Feed remains a Sisyphean grind.

The News Feed redesign is likely to remove some of the micro-managing necessary to maintain a relevant social stream. Facebook might also rethink the formula that determines what shows up in the News Feed - but better, more centralized controls for sorting and hiding content would also be a good idea. 

A (Literal) Stream Of Revenue

The cunningly engineered sense of addictive voyeurism is what powers News Feed - and what drives advertising revenue straight into Facebook's pocket. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Facebook raked in $1.33 billion in advertising revenue - a 41% leap.

The last time Facebook changed News Feed in a major way was back in September 2011, though it aggressively tinkers around with all of its features on a rolling basis.

We know Facebook is playing around with a cleaner, more image-centric Timeline design, so it's possible that the News Feed revamp could follow suit. Rumors are also afloat that a very visual redesign for the mobile News Feed is on the way - and with Facebook's mobile mindedness, we'd expect some news on that front too.

We won't know what the company has up its sleeve for certain until March 7, but we can cling to one certainty - it's not going to be a Facebook phone.

Image by Taylor Hatmaker.

Hey, Tim Cook: Your 'Thermonuclear' Lawsuits Are Making Apple Look Stupid

Turns out Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team celebrated too soon when they took a big victory lap last summer after a jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages based on claims against Samsung.

Because the judge overseeing the case just tossed out almost half of that judgment ' saying, in effect, that the jurors were a bunch of idiots who didn't calculate damages correctly. And if Apple wants another crack at that money, it will have to go trial all over again. (In case you care, here's Judge Koh's actual ruling.)

It's an amazing setback for Apple, but perhaps no big surprise. A lot of people right from the start seemed to realize that the jury in the case had done a lousy job by ruling too quickly without seeming to fully understand the laws it was charged with applying.

(See also: Apple's Thermonuclear Patent War Is A Farce)

Worse, this band of buffoons was led by a foreman, Velvin Hogan, who after the verdict went around giving interviews in which he revealed, over and over again, the many mistakes that he and his minions had made. Hogan indicated, for example, that the jury was trying to 'send a message,' even though that wasn't its job. That was just one of many dumb moves on its part.

"Impermissible Legal Theory"

In her ruling today, Judge Lucy Koh said she was tossing out part of the judgment because the court had 'identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award.'

Consequently, Koh ordered a new trial for damages on a bunch of Samsung products that Apple claimed infringed on its patents. The judge isn't saying that the products don't infringe, just that the jury didn't follow the right procedure in calculating damages.

(See also: Another Apple Patent Gets Smacked Down; 'Thermonuclear War' Even More Of A Farce)

At the time of the verdict some observers noted that there seemed to be lots of problems with the jury's decision. Nevertheless, Apple fanboys cheered. And Cook put out a ridiculous statement about how Apple wasn't doing this for money, or to thwart competition, but because of 'values.' (Gag me.) 'We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury,' Cook wrote. 'We applaud them for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right.'

Patent Medicine

Problem is that since then, some of Apple's patents have been struck down as invalid, because, well, it turns out other people invented the stuff that Apple had gone out and patented. In other words, Apple found stuff that other people had invented, tricked the patent office into granting Apple patents on that technology, then used those patents to file bogus claims against competitors, hoping not to squeeze money out of them but to drive them out of business.

So much for 'values.'

I pointed in December that Apple's 'thermonuclear' patent war is turning out to be a farce. Apple's claims have been laughed out of court all around the world. In a few cases where Apple has won some minor victory, its claims have been so trivial that opponents developed workarounds in a matter of days.

Today's news makes Apple look even more ridiculous and pathetic.

Worse, while Apple has been pursuing this quixotic legal quest, its rivals in the Android camp just keep gaining market share. Android now runs on 75% of smartphones. Even in tablets, Apple has seen its market share eroding at a stunning rate, thanks to the rise of Android.

Thermonuclear Crater

All this started because Apple's late CEO, Steve Jobs, threw a temper tantrum and vowed to go 'thermonuclear' on Google for daring to create a rival to the iPhone. Jobs might have been a genius, but he was also a bully and a spoiled brat who couldn't stand the idea that he couldn't have the smartphone market all to himself.

Jobs was wrong. And now he's gone. It's time for Apple to stop this bullshit. Settle the cases and go back to competing based on products. Supposedly Tim Cook never wanted to sue Samsung in the first place. Now's his chance to step up and do the right thing.

Image courtesy of Reuters

Stretchable Batteries Could Power Devices Embedded In The Body [Video]

The "Stretch Armstrong" of Batteries 

It took Yonggang Huang and John A. Rogers, from Northwestern and University of Illinois, respectively, six years to develop a cordless power supply that was versatile enough to be used in stretchable electronics, particularly devices used inside the human body.

Finally, they were able to come up with "pop-up" technology that allows the circuits to bend and twist. Typically, circuits inside of batteries are rigid, but creating bridges using metal wiring to connect the elements gives the circuits the ability to stretch and flex along with any device. The power in the metal bridges works its way through the circuits to power the battery. 

In a video (below), Huang and Rogers demo the battery by hooking it up to an LED light and slowly stretching it out. The battery was able to reach about 300% of its original size and still provide power. Once stretched, the battery can regain its original size without damage to the circuits. 

Its life span is about 20 charging cycles - and it can be recycled just like any other lithium-ion battery. Due to its small size, it can hold a charge for only eight to nine hours, but the battery charges wirelessly using coils that induce charging through an external source. This makes it ideal for use in medical devices embedded in the body. 

'Flexible' And 'Stretchable' Are Distant Cousins 

It seems like a stretchable battery would be attractive for the flexible device market, but Huang says the two aren't as alike as one would think. In an email to ReadWrite, Huang said that while the OLED displays from Nokia and Samsung are flexible, they aren't stretchable.

"Flexible means the device could be bent or twisted, which essentially requires the device to be very thin. Stretchable represents a more challenging type of mechanics, which requires that the device must accommodate a large strain deformation, including not only bending, twisting, but also stretching and compressing." 

Businesses Think They 'Get' Social Media. Do You?

Just a few years ago, social media and mobile marketing were the Wild West of business strategies. On the surface, they offered seemingly ambiguous value and, to the more old-school veterans of branding and advertising, were simply a distraction from the tried-and-true tactics of the pre-social media age.

That's all changed with the advent of successful Facebook marketing, Twitter branding presences, and the slew of other ways companies can leverage virality and connectedness to market products and communicate with customers.

According to a marketing industry report from the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), 98 percent of companies are now using social media, while 70 percent of marketing executives believe social media has a positive impact on their business. 

While social media for large businesses can be a tricky game in the era of prolific hacker attacks, a strong focus on any and all variety of social networks will always result in a healthy conversation no matter what the circumstance. Just ask Burger King, whose twitter account was hacked to hilarious results, and still resulted in the company making headlines for days. 

Given that companies have finally woken up to the realization that customers feel a stronger connection to a business and its services by interacting through social media - and not through targeted emails, commercials, or traditional web advertising - more are now planning to outsource around social media content creation and analytics than ever before, according to the SIIA report. In that respect, 60 percent of businesses plan to spend more on sectors like social content creation in the next year, the highest of any spending category in the SIIA survey. 

While businesses may finally be unilaterally embracing the age of Twitter, mobile marketing still has a long ways to go. According to the SIIA report, only 25 percent of companies are incorporating mobile marketing. With mobile payments still a free-for-all market, it's no surprise that businesses may have to take their time in figuring out the intricacies of targeting potential consumers through smartphones. 

Watch the SIIA's webinar that discusses the report and its findings below:

VMware: "If Amazon Wins, We All Lose"

Someone has a problem, and it doesn't appear to be Amazon. In a somewhat shocking declaration, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger told a group of VMware partners that if "a workload goes to Amazon, you lose, and we have lost forever," as reported by CRN. This is true so far as it goes: the more enterprises move applications to the public cloud, the less need they have for VMware's technology, or for other datacenter-bound infrastructure.

But where Gelsinger really tips his hand is addressing why he wants to keep customers out of the public cloud:

We want to own corporate workload. We all lose if they end up in these commodity public clouds. We want to extend our franchise from the private cloud into the public cloud and uniquely enable our customers with the benefits of both. Own the corporate workload now and forever.

To save customers money? To boost their productivity? To benefit the customer in any way? No, no and no.

Instead, VMware's plea essentially translates to "you have to help us lock customers into our platform," as Benchmark general partner Bill Gurley suggests. It's fine for VMware to say such things in the privacy of its boardroom, but on stage? In front of hundreds of partners and the press? Not wise.

Those familiar with the early days of open source will appreciate the similarities to Microsoft's attacks on open source. When Microsoft wrung its hands about the GPL being "bad for the world," it wasn't really worried about customers. It was worried about its business model. Microsoft knew how to compete with cheap. But free? That was difficult.

Now, VMware is up against a highly disruptive competitor, and by its own admission, it's not winning. VMware President and COO Carl Eschenbach said as much as he tried to rally VMware's partner troops: "I look at this audience, and I look at VMware and the brand reputation we have in the enterprise, and I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books."

And yet, it hasn't been beating Amazon. Not in cloud workloads, anyway, given Amazon may record as much as $3.8 billion in AWS revenue this year, according to Macquarie Capital. Yes, much of Amazon's volume thus far has come from test/development workloads, but that is almost certainly just a starting point. Remember when Linux was only used for edge-of-the-network, non-critical workloads? That didn't last long...

With any technology disruption, there will be winners and losers, but VMware might want to take a page out of IBM's book, which has somehow managed to weather and even thrive despite serious threats to its legacy businesses. Ironically, even old-school SAP might be able to show VMware the way. SAP now lets customers rent its in-memory Hana database as a service on Amazon.

Perhaps Gelsinger could take a page from his own company's PaaS offering, Cloud Foundry. Cloud Foundry, now part of the Pivotal Initiative, is emphatically open source and explicitly eschews infrastructure moorings. Cloud Foundry, in other words, is the antithesis of the lock-in Gelsinger appears to be advocating. "Lock-in to Amazon is bad," goes the reasoning, "but lock in to VMware? More, please."

Not that VMware is the only conflicted company on earth. Nor is VMware doomed. Not by any stretch. The company continues to have a firm hold on the enterprise CIO. But to keep that hold, it might want to be a bit less blunt about wanting to turn that hold into a stranglehold. After all, one big reason for enterprise adoption of first open source, and now the cloud, is precisely the flexibility to get things done without being locked into any company whose guiding principle is to "own the corporate workload now and forever."

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.