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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 20 March 2010
In the next few weeks, the ReadWriteWeb events guide will take you from New York City, to San Francisco, to Portland, Oregon. Along the way you'll find a conference on search engine strategies, a showcase for startups, an in-depth look at the freemium business model, and a day filled with of social media case studies.
How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.
Search Engine Strategies New York Conference & Expo
Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include:
- Digital Asset Optimization
- Deep Dive Into Analytics
- Augmented Reality: It's a Brave New World
- Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons
- Advanced B2B Search Marketing
- Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.
The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.
Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures.
The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.
TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh).
The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010.
For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au.
PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here.
Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com.
FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow.
Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here.
The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.
DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts.
Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management.
Future of Money and Technology Summit
The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more.
Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration.
ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010
The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference.
An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences.
We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks.
- Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform?
- Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel?
- Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices.
- Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices.
- Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data.
- Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR.
- Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian.
Click here to register now, or to become a sponsor, or to help shape the conference.
FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.
Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.
The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.
25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado
Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.
ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".
The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:
- Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
- 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
- Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
- A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media
The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include:
- Co-located with CloudCamp London
- Co-located with Green IT conference
- Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre
- Free-to-attend evening awards presentation
- Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices
- Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services
- Evening networking party for all attendees
FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies.
FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available.
Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.
DiscussNovell Rejects Hedge Fund’s Offer To Take The Company Private For $2 Billion
New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates L.P. in a letter to Novell’s board of directors dated March 2 offered to purchase the infrastructure software company for a cash price of $5.75 per share, or $1 billion net of the cash on the company’s books.
Elliott Associates at the time said it already owned 8.5 percent of Novell and wanted to take the company private for $2 billion.
This morning, Novell’s board publicly responded to the letter, deeming the “unsolicited, conditional proposal” from the hedge fund “inadequate”. It’s not hard to see why Novell feels that way: immediately after the initial purchase offer was made, its shares surged as investors hoped for a better bid, and stock value hasn’t decreased much since.
Shares were valued at 5.64 at market’s close on Friday – it was priced 4.20 at the beginning of this year and 4.75 when Elliott made its purchase offer public on March 2.
Unsurprisingly, Novell’s board of directors said it would start looking for alternatives for the company to “enhance stockholder value”, including a sale to another entity, joint ventures, partnerships or a return of capital to stockholders through a stock repurchase or cash dividend program.
CrunchBase InformationNovellInformation provided by CrunchBaseWhy Apple and Google Need Each Other
In the world of technology, drama is a valuable commodity. Disruptive change may happen in the minutiae of software code or the gradual execution of a business plan, but we see its effects in the dramatic narratives of companies rising and falling, or getting locked in combat with each other. Which is why the rivalry between Google and Apple is such a compelling story.
It’s so tempting to get drawn into the ego battles between Steve Jobs and the Google triumvirate while placing bets on who will win that it’s easy to forget a deeper truth about this rivalry: Google and Apple need each other.
They both have a deep desire to stake out claims on the mobile web, but the mobile web is in a nascent stage. In order to develop, it needs to have both rigid structure and a sometimes reckless creativity. Structure is necessary to provide a strong foundation and a set of standards everyone can understand. And creativity is essential to bringing the innovative potential of the mobile web into full bloom.
This dichotomy was present when the Internet began to develop in the early 90s. Many people who came online then did so through America Online’s walled gardens, a safe little enclave where consumers and content providers alike could create the rules of a new medium. Then the web itself took off and sites like Yahoo and GeoCities offered a much more creative environment to explore what else could be done.
Now it’s happening again, only with Apple and Google. Apple’s stern and unforgiving approach to the iPhone offers the structure this new medium needs to succeed. Cupertino’s control-freak tendencies stretch from enforcing adherence to ever-changing app guidelines to banishing plastic screen protectors from its retail stores.
Google’s approach is nearly the opposite, much more open and free-wheeling. Its Android OS, based on the Linux kernel, has so many versions available the company is struggling to consolidate them. The Android Market is such an unregulated affair that it’s hard for anyone to count the number of apps on sale.
Google’s culture has built into it a tolerance for the failures that come with creative experiments. Its 70-20-10 rule seems rooted on that spirit of tolerance — how many companies require employees to spend time on something that may never fly? — and Google has floated so many failed ideas it’s hard to keep track of them all. Apple, by contrast, starts with an instinctive idea of how consumers will experience its products and fits everything, even the ecosystem of apps that extends beyond its corporate walls, into making it work.
It’s in the tension between these two companies and their respective cultures that the mobile web is being forged. But as America Online found out, the walls eventually come down as consumers grow more comfortable with the new medium and desert the walled garden. That would suggest the balance will tip in favor of Google.
But I would be surprised if Apple isn’t anticipating this evolution. Right now, iPhone owners are experiencing the mobile web through the 150,000 or so apps it offers through the App Store. But Apple has also backed HTML5, which allows a smartphone browser to have rich app-like features without requiring any new software to be downloaded. Just as people stopped downloading AOL’s software and switched to browsers, we may well abandon most of the apps on our phones today.
Both companies will continue to play a major role on the mobile web, but I doubt either will ever gain the upper hand. This dramatic tension between Apple and Google may be around for a long time. So executives at both might as well get used to it.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
With The iPad, Apple Takes Google To the Mat
How Mobile Network Operators Must Evolve as Data Ramps Up
It wasn’t too long ago that the path to success for mobile carriers was a straight one: Simply offer compelling handsets at competitive prices and maintain a top-notch network and your customers would be happy. And for those that weren’t, manage a competent customer-care division. That model is rapidly changing, though, as we reach the point of market saturation.
Carriers in Western markets have precious little room for growth unless they poach customers from their competitors. Cell phone penetration in the U.S. stands at 89 percent, according to CTIA, and Chetan Sharma pointed out earlier this month that mobile’s market penetration in America is 99 percent for people over than the age of five. The increase of machine-to-machine connections and the coming wave of connected consumer electronics (non-phones) will help, but carriers will have to evolve beyond being simple network operators if they’re to thrive in the coming world of mobile data.
Another factor beyond market saturation is at play here, too. Mobile is no longer just about being a provider of wireless phones and connectivity; it’s about adding value with applications that leverage Web 2.0 features like presence and community and combining them with mobile’s unique characteristics, such as portability and location awareness.
While the rise of mobile Web 2.0 is a looming threat for network operators, it also presents an opportunity to develop and market more compelling “over-the-top” offerings — applications and services from carriers that can be targeted at users on other networks. In my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, I’ve taken a closer look at this topic, with a special focus on AT&T’s Buzz.com offering. I’m sure we’ll see more examples as carriers attempt to make a very difficult transition beyond their established business model into uncharted waters. What kind of opportunities do you see?
Image courtesy of Flickr user kevindooley
Integrating Ethics Into The Core Of Your Startups: Why And How
When I came to the U.S. in 1980, I was young and naïve. I used to think that corruption and ethical lapses were just a third-world ill. Eventually, I became a tech CEO and learned the harsh realities of American business. Yes, standards are much higher, and breaches are punished, but the temptations are just the same here as they are in any other country. Ethical lapses (which are a form of corruption) are quite common. You watch stories about these on TV every other day and read about them on TechCrunch. It was the ethical lapses of our financial institutions that threw our economy into a tailspin, and for which we are paying the price, after all.
It is best to be aware of the temptations and to prevent the lapses from occurring. As Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Lehman Brothers have shown, it’s a slippery slope. Once you start compromising your values for short-term gains, there is no turning back. Business ethics are not something you need to start worrying about when your company reaches a certain size; they need to be sewn into the fabric of your startup from the get-go. The lessons are the same for tech businesses as they are for investment banks and for third-world economies.
Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer researched the difference between companies that perform at high levels for extended periods and those that implode when they reach a certain size. When analyzing the spectacular failures in the recent financial meltdown, he found that:
• Of the original Forbes 100 (named in 1917), 61 had ceased to exist by 1987. Of the remaining 39, only 18 stayed in the top 100, and their return during the period 1917 to 1987 was 20% less than that of the overall market.
• Of companies in the original Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index of 1957, only 74 remained in 1997; of these, only 12 outperformed the S&P 500 in the period 1957 to 1998.
• The average CEO tenure in the U.S. is 4.2 years, less than half the 10.5-year average in 1990.
Beer posited three core reasons for the failure of so many Wall Street firms in the fall of 2008: the firms lacked a higher purpose (in other words, they were focused on short-term gains, profits, and bonuses); they lacked a clear strategy; and they mismanaged their risk. Companies like Charles Schwab and US Bancorp were able to avoid the fallout by having a laser-like focus on customer service and on honesty and transparency. Neither company touched the subprime mortgage securitization market, because they saw it as risky and simply not the kind of business that served the company’s long-term interests.
Even outside Wall Street, companies like Cisco Systems, Southwest Airlines, and Costco Wholesale, with the strongest sense of higher purpose, achieved the greatest success. Take Costco. Wall Street analysts have long chastised Costco’s management for paying high wages and keeping employees around for a long time, because this results in higher benefits costs. But the company’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, lives by his belief that keeping good employees is strategic for Costco’s long-term success and growth. The company’s per-employee sales are considerably higher than those of key rivals such as Target and Wal-Mart; customer service at the stores is phenomenal and fast; and Costco continues to expand, both in number of warehouses and in products and services for business and consumer customers. The culture of the company flows downward from Sinegal and his focus on employees and, by extension, to customers.
One of the problems that Beer found with the failed banks was that their employees lacked the ability to “speak truth to power”. Employees felt intimidated by superiors; the institutions’ internal voice of conscience and purpose was silenced by a maniacal focus on short-term profits and whatever scheme would bring them in. The silencing of employees who sought to challenge strategy and risk-management practices likely also undermined the banks’ moral authority and emboldened those who already felt inclined to do the wrong thing. With a muted internal voice, these organizations lacked a moral compass. As a result, they drove off a cliff with astonishing speed.
The same things happen in Silicon Valley companies. I asked management guru — and head of the CEO Institute of Yale School of Management — Jeff Sonnenfeld for his advice on how startups can sow the seeds for building a Cisco or Costco. Here is Jeff’s advice:
1) Create a culture of openness and welcome dissent – Internal constructive critics are your best friends — too often, founders are blinded by their own enthusiasm for their creative vision and then are surrounded by sycophants, kissing up. Founders who fall out of touch rapidly lose their ethical bearings. At Intel, founder Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore did not look for sycophantic followers in selecting the brilliant, contentious, but relentlessly honest Andy Grove as their colleague and successor. Similarly, Craig Barrett and Paul Otellini have consistently fought for different points of view internally — without undermining the enterprise, and always reinforcing Intel’s self-critical core ethic.
2) Lead by example. The authenticity of the leader’s character is essential — if colleagues don’t believe you, they will not take needed risks on your behalf — such as training subordinates to be able to do their own jobs. Startups are often defined by the hip clichés of VC firms, adoring press, and HR consultants — but the startups don’t really practice what they preach.
3) Learn from immediate peers or distant models. Too often, founders atrophy because they believe that the unique quality of their business or technological mission means that they too are truly unique in leadership values. Steve Jobs has patterned himself after Polaroid founder Ed Land — and tried to learn from Land’s strengths and weaknesses. Henry Ford regretfully once claimed “History is bunk” but in reality revered Thomas Edison. Michael Dell put legendary tech entrepreneur (Teledyne) and educator Dr. George Kozmetsky on his board right from the start to learn from this brilliant then septuagenarian.
4) Recognize your own fallibility as a leader, know your limits, and beware of the myth of immortality. Entrepreneurs often are horrified at the thought of leadership succession. The founders of great firms such as Google, Cisco, Amgen, and Microsoft have known that they would need to prepare for a day when they no longer could be the lone day-to-day internal boss, primary external ambassador, and symbolic cultural icon. The founder of the original (pre-Starbucks) coffee house chain Chock-Full-o-Nuts started his first café on Broadway 43rd Street in 1923 and was a great national success. Sadly, sixty years later, as a dying man who had been flat on his back for two years at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he still clung to the job of leader of the enterprise, his full-time physician serving as acting president.
5) Remember that institutional character — like a liquid cupped in your hand — is fragile; easily lost; and hard, if not impossible, to regain. Egomaniacal moves, personal grandiosity, greed, and deception create impressions that are hard to erase. Whole Foods founder, John Mackey, sabotaged the integrity of his own exalted brand, damaging the company’s internal pride and customer admiration far more badly than any competitor could have, due to his self-inflating and his misleading “anonymous” blogging, hiding his identity through an anagram of his wife’s name, “rehodab.”
I’ll add another very important point: Establish an independent board. Venture firms often demand a majority of board seats as a condition for their investments. Conflicts invariably arise. The board begins to serve the needs of VCs and management, rather than of the company itself, which loses the independent voice to warn it not to do the wrong things. The inconvenient truth is that all board members have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the company, and not in their own interests. Board members must not engage in transactions in which they or their partners stand to gain. They are legally required to avoid these conflicts of interest.
Finally, remember that in business, you have to make tough choices at every juncture. Though business decisions usually have clear consequences and outcomes, ethical decisions are always hard. Making the right choice doesn’t always bring success, but ethical lapses almost always lead to failure. No matter what the consequence, doing what’s ethical and right is always the better long-term strategy.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
Android This Week: Nexus One for All; Buzz Hits Android; Google TV
Google this week took another step toward getting its own Android-based handset, the Nexus One, on as many U.S. carriers as possible. Originally released on the T-Mobile network, the device was added to AT&T next, and then Verizon. Sprint said this week that it will become the fourth major carrier to support the Nexus One — which should help boost the lower-than-expected sales numbers of what many feel is the best Android phone on the market.
Google Buzz is one of those services that folks either love or hate. Those in the pro-Buzz camp will love the new Google Buzz widget, which can be placed on the home screen of any Android phone, where users can post text and photos to it with a single tap. The widget also supports geolocation. Posts submitted through it are uploaded in the background, and as such do not impact performance nor usage of the phone.
More on Mobile AppsAnd the Android OS may be coming to a TV near you! Google, Intel and Sony have entered into a partnership to create Google TV, a venture aimed at bringing social networking into the set-top TV box space. Google TV will be based on the Chrome web browser, which doesn’t currently work with Android. Launch is slated for this summer.
Weekly Wrapup: Nexus One, Facebook, Ai Weiwei, And More...
Our top story this week was about bad news for the big guys: Google, Facebook, Digg's top users. As you catch up on the news, be sure to watch the conversation about China, tech and democracy that took place between activist/artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter's Jack Dorsey and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things.
Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.
Story of the Week: Nexus One's woes, spies love Facebook, top Diggers lose power
- Oops: Google Denied Trademark on Android Nexus One
- Big Changes Are Coming to Digg: More Power to Publishers, Less Power to Top Diggers
- How US Government Spies Use Facebook (Updated)
- Cartoon: Can't Go to SXSW? We Feel Your Pain
- Nexus One Flopped, but Android Didn't
More coverage and analysis from ReadWriteWeb
Announcing the ReadWriteWeb Mobile SummitJoin us for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7 in Mountain View, California as we explore the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Be a part of the discussion on geo-location services, augmented reality, native app vs. browser-based, commerce and marketing, mobile social networking and the Internet of Things. Sponsorship enquiries: sales@readwriteweb.com,
Register now for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit and get early bird rates - only $295.
Mobile Web
- Microsoft Updates Bing iPhone App and Removes It from All International iTunes Stores
- Blockbuster Brings New Releases to Android, Windows Mobile Phones
- Mobile App Marketplace: $17.5 Billion by 2012
Internet of Things
- Internet of Things Explained (Video)
- 6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home
- 8 Ways to Better Understand the Internet of Things
More Internet of Things coverage
Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App
We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.
Real-Time Web
- OneRiot Brings Its Real-Time Ads to the Web
- Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source
More Real-Time Web coverage. Don't miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb's report, The Real-Time Web and its Future.
ReadWriteStart
Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.
- The Death of the Pageview
- Micropayments and Subscriptions: How Business Models for Startups are Shifting
- 6 ReadWriteStart Lists: Our Best Startup Advice
ReadWriteEnterprise
Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.
- Provider Fail: Vodafone Sells HTC Smartphone Loaded With Malware
- Google Apps Offers Migration for Microsoft Exchange
ReadWriteCloud
Our channel ReadWriteCloud, sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing.
- IBM Makes A Major Move Into The Cloud; Amazon Is In Its Sights
- Rulers of the Cloud: Will Amazon's Computing Fabric Become a New Economy?
- The Oracle Effect: Sun's Best and Brightest Move On to New Places
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
DiscussThe Virtualization Wars: Microsoft and Citrix v. VMware
Watch this battle unfold. The virtualization wars are just getting started.
On one side we have Microsoft, which announced changes in its licensing structures this week. The change reflects an understanding that the customer wants full access to its virtualization platform and not be charged a tax for that right to access it on a PC, no matter if it is at work or in their home.
And in true fashion, Microsoft is on the attack, Citrix at its side, in a full on fight with VMware for the virtualization market.
On the VMware side, we see a company ready to move into Microsoft's customer base by offering more than virtualization as witnessed with its recent acquisition of Zimbra. VMWare is gearing up to tap into the Microsoft Exchange market by combining its virtualization technology with the Zimbra email platform.
Microsoft Offers Some FlexibilityHistorically, Microsoft has charged for separate licenses to access Windows operating systems in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. Until now, there would be separate licensing fees for people to access their virtual desktops from secondary devices like home personal computers.
The licensing issue in all of this gets complicated pretty fast. According to Simon Bramfitt:
"Right from the start Microsoft showed that it had been listening to its customers' feedback. As of July 1st Microsoft is rolling Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) into the Windows Software Assurance (Windows SA) program. This means that anyone with Software Assurance can deploy desktops locally or in the data center at no additional cost. At the same time Microsoft is extending the remote access rights so that remote isn't tethered to a single PC in the primary users' home. This awareness of the fact that users want flexibility around when and where they work is the key element that has been missing from Microsoft's virtualization strategy since day one. If this wasn't enough, Microsoft is introducing a new desktop virtualization license called Windows Virtual Desktop Access (Windows VDA) costing $100 per year per device and aimed at organizations who are using endpoints that do not have a Windows SA license - Contractors PCs, devices that are do not run Windows (e.g., thin-clients, smart phones and Apple Macs) and yes, PCs with OEM licenses. Hang-on, isn't that just the same as the old non-SA VECD license? More or less, yes; it's certainly cheaper, although at $100 per year not by much. What's more important is that Windows VDA is now a first-class citizen in the Microsoft licensing hierarchy with all the benefits of Software Assurance (e.g., 24x7 support, upgrade/downgrade rights), and as a desktop virtualization license it gets the same extended roaming rights offered to the a full member of the SA club."VMWare, in smart retort, praises Microsoft for the move and bowing to "intense customer pressure."
Raj Mallempati, director, product marketing, calls it an opening for VMWare View. You know it's competitive when you see this kind of rhetoric:
By loosening up the restrictive desktop virtualization license policy (VECD), Microsoft has finally bowed to intensive customer pressure. This validates the acceleration in demand in the desktop virtualization industry that VMware helped start and continues to lead. Microsoft's move here is extremely positive for the industry.
But what is Citrix part in all of this?
At the beginning of the year, VMWare offered the opportunity to exchange Citrix XenApp licenses for VMWare View. In response, Microsoft and Citrix announced a partnership this week aimed right at VMWare with some pretty attractive licensing deals.
The promotion intends to undercut VMWare by reaching into its customer base with offers to trade in as many as 500 licenses in exchange for a Microsoft integration offered with Citrix.
To kick it off, the two companies plan a 100-city tour.
But what this really represents is Microsoft providing some flexibility in its virtualization licensing agreements. That move alone will help open up the market.
And VMWare? The company has 80 percent of the virtualization market. Any move on its customer base should be expected. VMware's vision for Zimbra is another matter. That's a battle it is taking right back to Microsoft - square on its home turf.
DiscussCheck-In Fatigue. Or, Why I’m Rooting For An All-Out Location War.
I didn’t have the same problems at SXSW this year that some people did. Was it too crowded at some events? Sure. But there were plenty of alternative things to do. Did some of the keynotes bomb? Yes. But there were plenty of other things to listen to. Did AT&T fail? No. Actually, they did an awesome job keeping the network up. Instead, I had a problem of a different kind: check-in fatigue.
Seeing as location was this year’s Twitter at SXSW, and seeing as I write a lot about location, I wanted to try to use as many of the services as I could during the actual conference. I drastically underestimated how much work that would actually be.
At first, I was using all of the services I had on my phone to check-in when I arrived at a place in Austin. This included: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, Burbn, MyTown, CauseWorld, Hot Potato, Plancast, and (at certain places) Foodspotting. Even with great AT&T service, this would take a solid 10 minutes or more to check-in to all of them. And it took even longer when I’d have to pause to explain to my friends what the hell I was doing on my phone all that time.
This was at every venue we stopped at. The situation simply wasn’t tenable.
By the second day, I had cut the services I would check-in to in half. It still wasn’t close to being something I would consider doing on a regular basis. By the end of my time in Austin, I was down to using only two services — yes, the two in the midst of the “war” — Foursquare and Gowalla.
Pretty much everyone I knew in Austin were also using both Foursquare and Gowalla to send out all their check-ins. And all seemed to agree: it was still too tedious to use even just two services to do the same thing. In the end, there should be only one.
And so it should be no surprise that a few companies are already working on a solution for this problem. One is by the creators of Brightkite, who managed to obtain the killer check.in domain name. The team showed me a preview of the app at a party one night, and I immediately knew it was exactly what I needed (see a preview of it here).
But there’s a problem with this solution too. Currently, Gowalla’s API is read-only, which means you actually can’t use another app to check-in to the service. I spoke with CEO Josh Williams a bit about this just prior to SXSW, and he noted that the main thinking behind this is to maintain the user experience Gowalla is looking for (a very Apple-like argument). But, he did say that eventually he thinks they will open up a two-way API — maybe once they have time to create some best practices documentation, he noted.
Another problem is that currently each of these check-in services has their own places database. That means that a place on Foursquare may be slightly different than a place on Gowalla, even though they’re technically the same place. Worse, there are plenty of duplicates for some venues since people are allowed to create their own. Check.in works around this place problem by doing a look-up on each service and letting you pick the correct check-in spot. But it’s a bit slow, and still seems rather tedious.
A better solution would be for the various services to adopt a standard for places. The Activity Streams group is working on such a concept. Yahoo may also be able to implement such a system on top of its WOEID system. Of course, any service that adopts such a standard would be risking at least part of their business since these place databases are one of the keys to each service.
Meanwhile, Facebook is thinking about aggregating data from both Foursquare and Gowalla for its own upcoming location implementation. Might that be the one location stop to rule them all (of course, the writing back to Gowalla would still likely be an issue)? Not if Twitter has anything to say about it.
I love that all these startups are emerging around location right now (at least a dozen more have emailed me just since I’ve been back from SXSW). But I’m starting to worry that this is going to turn into a repeat of the social wars, where we all have 15 different profiles we constantly have to update across a range of networks.
During our Realtime Crunchup last year, I brought up this issue during our panel on location. All the players on stage (including Twitter, Foursquare, Hot Potato, Google Latitude, GeoAPI, and SimpleGeo) seemed to want to say that they could all get along and play nicely together for the betterment of location as a whole. I didn’t buy it then, and I’m definitely not buying it now.
From a business perspective, it doesn’t make sense for these guys to all play nicely with one another and make it so you don’t have to use their services. The need to take steps to ensure that you will use their service, and will do so instead of a rival service. That’s the way it works, and that’s the way it has always worked. And that’s why it’s a war. Right now, it’s just the early stages where all sides are arming themselves. Soon, they’ll try to kill one another. And that may not be such a bad thing.
[photo: flickr/intagiblearts]
CrunchBase InformationFoursquareGowallaFacebookTwitterInformation provided by CrunchBaseRulers of the Cloud: Google Becomes the Cloud, Search is a Feature
The shortest way to describe this is that Google is no longer a verb. It's becoming a noun. Not just the few clicks to find information, but the information itself and the experience surrounding it.
Today, we get to add Google's chapter to "Will One Company Dominate the Cloud" introspective series and take a glimpse of the silent revolution from "index" to "be" that is transforming the company and it's products to the default way to engage the Internet.
As fate has it, Google done us a big favor in preparing for this piece. The company has launched an assault on the enterprise with its movement in the Google App Engine, having a stand-off with China, and negotiating with the EU. And that was just a bit of Google news from this week.
Whereas it's a bit more clear where Amazon and Cisco win (our recent analysis) as they head towards the cloud, with Google it takes a bit more expansive view. We have to take the focus out a bit, to be able to dial in on the details.
Acknowledgment: Developers are the Products they BuildWe recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Bray. He has been a key contributor and thought leader in key areas of interoperability and information design, including his leadership in bringing XML to the world. He recently announced that he's joining Google and focusing on Android in a transition from Sun.
Several things struck us about our dialog that we think are key for Google.
First, when Bray described his new job at Google, he talked about what he wanted to do and what he saw that needed to be done. Within three days of being there, he has a sense of ownership of the companies products and mission. In some organizations, you may never get such a luxury.
Second, Bray described his opportunity to "roll up his sleeves" and get back in the groove as a developer on a project he feels passion for. He mentioned his desire to take the open APIs of Android and expose some of the information in a more portable way, for example to transfer a call log from one phone to another. A very interesting project, with tangible results. This type of innovation lives on top of all the work the company has done to make the API exist, and to attract individuals who are willing to rethink how it should really work.
We think that this is the most interesting thing about where Google is right now. It's "open" mantra gives the company the ability to see a whole generation into the future of information channel disruption. And, by bringing in "no holds barred" developers like Bray and a legion of others, the company is patiently solving problems that many of us don't even know exist.
Lastly, Bray said something that caused us some deep thought.
His comment, "when the Drizzle team was moved into Google, they just kept working on the their open source project and things stayed nearly the same."
What caused us to pause was that open source development, whether Linux or XML, gives the developer, as a person, a way to contribute to the world. And it's documented. If the Internet was the Bible, leading a key open source initiative, is like getting your own chapter in the book, where time will be the judge of your actions. Much better than your manager alone.
To know that hard work, intellectual capital, libraries are available to the world after the contract is complete. This really speaks to the artist in us, in a way, the paid open source developer is using Google as a canvas.
If working at Google offers this emotional spark to employees, it will gain entirely new efficiencies in solving the big problems, in the context of individual efforts. Maybe this open source spirit is embedded into Twitter, and is why it works. We like to contribute to our version of the greater good...and want fans to cheer us on.
What we learned; acknowledgment matters, and connections to the whole population of people is an amazing vehicle. Google: become an indie rock star - with the strength of grep.
All of the Information on EarthGoogle's destiny to become the hub of the worlds information is intertwined with history. And this comes with artifacts of policy and posturing. To start with, not everyone agrees that Google should achieve a dominant cloud position. As we're noticing, stopping it is another matter.
We'd like to suggest that in 2010, the company is not shy about stepping towards its future and will use its power, technology, and cash to stir it up. Here is our list of organizations in the world that Google has, is, or will be, continually bumping into in its quest for cloud information dominance.
- China (counties own the filters for the people)
- ATT (service providers own consumer on the network)
- Penguin (book publishers own the words in the texts)
- Visa (financial institutions own the digits in the transactions)
- Facebook (social networks know the details)
- Amazon (commerce sites own the decision point)
- Twitter (owns "what's happening")
- Microsoft (owns the computer applications and files)
We see both practical and strategic reasons that Google has a deep connection with the open source movement. Strategically, being the new optimized layer, removing all historic barriers to information give the company more leverage. Practically, solutions can be built where information is free.
Reviewing a few examples, such as Google Earth, Android, and even GMail and we see that where there are open protocols and information disruptive products can be built. Once they are built, the Google wields a significant economic advantage in binding the worlds information assets and converting them to eyeballs.
Here, we take a quick look at the information assets that Google is investing the global cloud.
- Results: Google has moved away from Page Rank to "Closest Object" in it's default results. What this means is that many businesses today show up as widget in the results in google with embedded links, maps, and other efficiencies.
- Ads: This is perhaps the best known and most valuable insight and unique asset, who wants to pay for what customer
- Realtime index: Google has worked to keep up with Twitter's realtime firehose
- Semantic index: The company continues to add more and more microsyntax parsers into its index, giving more controlled tools for publishers
- GMail: It had to be done. And it is monetized.
- Documents and files: Google Docs and the Apps Marketplace create a whole new stream of information about an individual. Private, personal, and shared.
- Mobile transactions: This is an interesting sample of where Google's strategy to build the Android OS pays off in the cloud. Not only does Google get to connect mobile to the rest of the offerings, but also to be able to dial in on movements, calls, and other critical tasks in our real-time lives.
- Books: Indexing all of them, first is an interesting piece of the strategy to break apart historic containers of knowledge. Is the book copyrighted? How about the quote?
- Browsers: The browser knows a lot. Google's Chrome moves it from being default search, to being default experience. This was a great example of where access to information "Faster pages" is the simple value proposition for consumers to switch.
- Filters: Protecting companies, trademarks, and interpreting the legality of free speech. Someone has to do it, if we're all one people.
- Health transactions: Google has even taken on one of the most sensitive challenges, private health information. And, it's connections to legacy systems that prefer EDI to JSON.
It's clear that Google is making progress. What we've also learned in this review is that the companies biggest asset - people - may scale to solve problems in lightweight ways that entire teams and companies haven't been able to in the past. Perhaps being open, or transparent, gives the company a unique advantage in being prepared for a cloud future.
Is the cloud where the action is?
What verb would you be if you were hired at Google?
DiscussMicrosoft Updates Bing iPhone App and Removes It from All International iTunes Stores
Microsoft just launched a new version of its Bing iPhone app. The iPhone app gives you comprehensive access to Bing's core services, including Bing maps and directions, as well as news and image search. Besides offering better stability and a few interface tweaks, the new version of the Bing app also integrates more tightly with the iPhone by giving you access to your contacts in the mapping feature and making it easier to copy and paste URLs and share interesting results through email.
Releasing Bing for iPhone Worldwide was an Accident...Just as it launched this new version of the app, however, Microsoft also pulled the Bing applications from all the non-U.S. versions of the App Store. According to a statement Microsoft sent to Neowin, the company "inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the Apple Marketplace has a presence." Why it took Microsoft three months to pull the app, which was released in December 2009, remains a bit of a mystery.
New FeaturesIf you are in the U.S., however, the Bing iPhone app remains to be the best way to access Microsoft's "decision engine" on your phone. The new version now includes a number of interesting new features. One of the most useful features is the app's ability to let you bookmark maps, websites and direction. Sadly, however, this feature isn't integrated with Apple's Safari, so your bookmarks don't carry over to the iPhone's default browser.
Other new features include better parental control settings, private search and the ability to edit your search history and support for first generation iPod touch devices.
DiscussWeekend Reading: Rework, by Fried and Hansson
This week we've got a book hot off the presses for your weekly dose of entrepreneurial reading as 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are back with their second book in four months. Released earlier this month, Rework, a no-nonsense rethinking of how to successfully start and run a business, comes hot on the heels of their first book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application, which published in November of 2009.
This time Fried and Hansson take a more general approach to business by examining the ways that new companies are disrupting traditional business practices and making a big splash. They cover their entrepreneurial bases by reminding us that "no time is no excuse" and that "a business without a path to profit isn't a business, it's a hobby," but then also elaborate on less traditional practices that have helped them succeed.
The main theme of the book is to trim the fat and do fewer things better; simplifying every aspect of your business and doing a smaller number of things at a higher quality is far better than trying to do too much and a mediocre level. There were times when customers of their products wanted more features and they refused to comply because it would slow them down and decrease efficiency. They decry time-stealing meetings, lengthy contracts, childish office politics and bloated inventories because they weigh down companies from reaching their full potential.
Rework is a great read for entrepreneurs because it is very focused and doesn't waste any time with lengthy use cases. The book itself is an example of the principals it teaches; the quality of a written work is not based on it's length, so why should company be judged by how many features it offers? Fried and Hansson admit that the book, which comes in at a dense but brief 288 pages, was originally drafted to be nearly twice as long, but why say in 600 pages what you can say under 300? Another reason the book is a great read is because of the authors' open and honest tone.
"Ever seen those weapons prisoners make out of soap, or a spoon? They make do with what they've got," one passage humorously points out. "Now we're not saying you should go out and shank somebody, but get creative, and you'll amazed with what you can make with just a little."
Other useful and easily digestible analogies for their unique business ideas include comparing your company to a hot dog stand. They advise that the best way to trim down an inflated company is to find the "epicenter" by asking yourself, "If I took this away, would what I'm selling still exist?" The best hot dog stand doesn't worry about the decorations on the stand, or the condiments - it worries about the hot dogs.
There are dozens of other valuable pieces of advice in Rework that are sure to inspire any entrepreneur or small business owner. But as LeVar Burton famously said at the end of each episode of Reading Rainbow, you don't have to take my word for it. Seth Godin, who has authored several books on business and entrepreneurship including The Dip which we profiled earlier this year, had nothing but high praise for Rework.
"Jason and David have broken all the rules and won. Again and again they've demonstrated that the regular way isn't necessarily the right way," says Godin. "They just don't say it, they do it. And they do it better than just about anyone has any right to expect."
This book is an obvious buy not only because the of the expert advice dispensed by the successful founders of 37signals, but also because the book is an easy, quick and inexpensive read. Personally, in a few short hours I was able to breeze through the audio version, which can be found online for less than $10. But if you prefer reading words on a page, the Kindle version is also $10, or a hardback copy is just $3 more at some online retailers.
DiscussThe Man Corporations Love and Xenophobes Hate
During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.
Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.
Here are a few highlights from our meeting:
His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.
I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.
Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”
Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.
“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)
Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.
Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”
India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.
There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.
Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”
Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.
But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.
This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.
Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.
Opera, Safari Beat Chrome On Google’s Own JavaScript Conformance Test
Back in June, Google launched Sputnik, a suite of tools that runs over 5,000 tests to check a web browser’s JavaScript conformance. Last week, they made the tool a lot easier for anyone to use, with a version that works in the web browser. The results are interesting.
Notably, both the Opera and Safari web browsers beat Google’s own Chrome browser in the test. As you can see in the picture above, Opera is the clear leader, with only 78 failures (the closer to the center, the less errors). Safari came in second with 159 errors, with Chrome in third with 218 errors. Firefox is close behind with 259 errors, while Internet Explorer is the outlier with 463 errors.
These tests were run on Windows machines, with the latest released version of each browser. Using the web tool on my Mac, though, shows similar results (at least for Opera, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox — there is no IE for Mac anymore).
While much of the focus on JavaScript is about speed (that’s what the SunSpider test measures, for example), Sputnik is interesting because it focuses on conformity, making it more like the Acid3 test, which tests web standards compliance. Chrome, Safari, and Opera have all passed Acid3, with Firefox getting very close (94/100 for Firefox 3.6). IE, meanwhile, again lags behind with just 20/100 for IE8. And even the new IE9 preview only scores 55/100.
Speaking of IE9, I tried to run the Sputnik tool in the preview build of the new browser on Windows 7. Unfortunately, it completely shut down several times after getting up to about 50 failures after only a few hundred of the 5,000+ tests — not a good sign. But again, it’s just a very early preview release of the browser, and early SunSpider results for the browser have been good.
CrunchBase InformationOperaSafariGoogle ChromeFirefoxWindows Internet ExplorerInformation provided by CrunchBaseNo Kidding! Telx, a Data Center Operator, Files for a $100M IPO
The Telx Group, a New York City-based data center operator, has filed for an initial public offering that could see it raise as much as $100 million from the public markets. The last major data center operator to go public was RackSpace, and that was back in 2009. With the demand for data centers and Internet services on an upswing, Telx’s attempt to go public is very timely.
The company is well known for owning 60 Hudson Street, an iconic wired carrier hotel in Manhattan where more than 250 networks converge. Owned by private equity firm GI Partners, its other assets include The Planet and EV1 Servers.
Telx has 15 data centers with about half a million square feet of data center space. The company had revenues of $98.3 million in 2009 and net losses of $9.9 million. Telx, which also provides global interconnection and co-location services, has about $130 million in debt. The IPO is being underwritten by Goldman Sachs & Co. and Deutsche Bank Securities. Telx has applied to trade on the Nasdaq market under the ticker TELX.
Review: Aperture 3
If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot. Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and makes the program as a whole more approachable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of admission.
Crocodoc Sets Its Sights On Adobe Acrobat With New Update
Last month we wrote about Crocodoc, a new Y Combinator-funded company that makes it very easy to upload a text document or PowerPoint deck and mark it up online to share with your colleagues. Unfortunately, it was also pretty bare boned — you couldn’t even save your edited document to your hard drive. Today, that’s changing: Crocodoc has rolled out some key new features (including the ability to save) that make the service significantly more flexible, and also pits it more directly against Adobe’s Acrobat Pro.
Aside from the ability to save to PDF, the new version includes a freehand pen tool, a tool to convert any website to PDF (which you can then add notes to), and a new API. In a few days, the company will be releasing its application on Google’s recently-launched App Marketplace. The service will also be rolling out a Flash-based embeddable document viewer (similar to what you’ll find on DocStoc and Scribd) that lets you both view and mark up embedded documents.
CEO Ryan Damico says that these features make Crocodoc more competitive with Adobe’s $400 Acrobat Pro software because the free Acrobat Reader most people have doesn’t allow them to mark up and save their documents (personally, I’ve been avoiding any software with the word ‘Acrobat’ in its title for years). Damico does acknowledge that there are still plenty of premium features that Crocodoc doesn’t have that Adobe’s paid software does, but says that this basic editing/saving functionality is what most people are after, anyway. Damico says that in the long term, Crocodoc is hoping to “do to Acrobat what Gmail did to Outlook” by taking a widely used desktop application and bringing it online.
CrunchBase InformationCrocodocInformation provided by CrunchBase
Brightkite’s GroupText Is a Text Messaging Party Line
When I think about the lowest common denominator of mobile communications, text messaging follows close behind voice. Obviously, every phone offers voice capability by definition, but texts are nearly as ubiquitous. Email is catching up as consumers leave basic feature phones for smartphones — and many feature phones offer either a native or add-on email solution. But text messaging capability is still farther along in terms of reach across handsets. Brightkite, a location-based social network service knows that, which explains the company’s new GroupText feature.
GroupText reminds me of an old-school party line amongst friends that uses text messaging instead of voice communications. Looking to get a group of friends all together in one location? You could send emails, make phone calls, or use an online invitation service. But I keep coming back to that lowest common denominator of the text message since it’s instant and most everyone has access to the service. GroupText bundles the text message conversation in a chat-like view, making that lowly text function social and powerful — think threaded text messaging with multiple people.
The whole concept is perfect fit for Brightkite, given its location-based bent. If I want to chat with a bunch of folks about a topic, I’ll have the conversation in medium like email. But if I’m simply trying to get a group in one location, I’m going to shoot venue info and other event details in brief text — something I can’t easily do in Foursquare, which is my current LBS service of choice. GroupText doesn’t require my friends to have a Brightkite account, so there’s no mandatory network registration hassle. Each GroupChat can handle 25 friends and responses are sent to all in the group — folks can also attach pics or indicate their location so there’s no need to ask “when are U getting here?” And the entire group interaction is available on the web for those who aren’t currently mobile or for “Monday Morning Quarterbacks” that want to replay the conversation — after a wild night on the town, I see some after-the-fact entertainment value here.
Brightkite recently submitted a software update to Apple that includes the GroupChat feature and anticipates arrival in the iTunes App Store soon. Until then — the lowly text message lives on!
Images courtesy of Brightkite
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General Motors Wants To Augment Your Windshield
Last week we told you about how Chevrolet, a division of General Motors, was bringing an augmented reality (AR) marketing promotion to SXSW in Austin. Now General Motors is kicking it up a notch with some experimental technology that will bring the world of AR to car windshields and provide a heads-up-display (HUD) experience.
The new technology, still very much in the testing phase, uses an array of sensors which track both objects on or near the road, as well as the position and angle of a driver's head and eyes. By combining the data from these sensors, GM can then project images onto the windshield with lasers to help drivers stay safe when driving.
"Let's say you're driving in fog," says Thomas Seder, group lab manager for GM's research and development. "We could use the vehicle's infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could 'paint' the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is," Seder said.
In other words, it would be like having a fighter pilot's HUD in your car, except instead of tracking the sky for bogies, your car tracks the road for possible dangers. The display works by coating the windshield with transparent phosphors which emit light when excited by a laser. GM says this is better for the driver because the entire windshield can be used to display information, not just a portion of it like current in-car HUD systems. The technology also includes the ability to recognize and read road signs and alert the driver to when they are driving too fast or if construction is ahead.
The company says that while this exact technology will not be in any cars in the near future, some of the features will start to be rolled into upcoming models. What this likely means is the transparent phosphor windshield will be placed in cars and used to display other HUD information, like speed, gas and other indicators.
The hard part of this technology doesn't seem to be displaying it; rather, the barrier is in the sensor work between tracking objects on the road and tracking the position and angle of the driver's eyes. Since it's much easier to simply display objects that don't rely on exact positioning for the driver's point-of-view, it's likely we'll see these additions before the true AR experience becomes a reality.
Eventually, however, GM hopes technology like this will make for better turn-by-turn directions and make it easier to find locations upon arrival. We've all heard our GPS systems say, "You have arrived at your location!" only to look around and not necessarily know where it is. With this new system, GM hopes they can solve the problem of "the last 100 yards" by displaying indicators of specific locations based on the sensor readings.
This certainly seems like the future of driving, but I wonder if it will be displaced by cars that simply drive themselves. If we can create sensors good enough to find the lanes in the road and nearby vehicles, why not just let the car drive it self and skip the HUD? Either way, its great to see AR taking steps forward beyond marketing and into practical application in a consumer space, even if it is years in the future.
DiscussGoogle Hands Of Its First 1337 Cash Prize For A Chrome Bug
Back in January, Google announced that it would follow Mozilla’s lead and start offering cash bounties for bugs found in the code of Chromium (the open-source browser behind Chrome), or Chrome by the community. Google both matches Mozilla’s $500 and ups the bounty all the way up to $1,337 (yes, 1337) for “particularly severe or particularly clever” bugs. This week, they rewarded the first of those.
As noted on the Chrome Release blog, Google made four cash payments on Wednesday. There were two $500 prizes (both for memory errors), one $1,000 prize (for a cross-orgin bypass), and the first-ever $1,337 prize. The lucky receipient of that was a man named Sergey Glazunov, who located a bug that Google is calling, “High Integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects.”
This crowd-sourced bug hunting seems like a great idea, especially for a browser moving through development as quickly as Chrome. Chrome has only existed for a year and a half and already they’re testing version 5.0. Stable builds of both the Mac and Linux version of the browser are likely to launch at some point over the next few months.
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