grandeffectmaster

"The secret disadvantage that writers have is that writing takes away from reading time."

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 22:58:38 +0000

“The secret disadvantage that writers have is that writing takes away from reading time.”

- Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher crime novels, on his habits.

The Medium and The Message

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 22:07:41 +0000

The Medium and The Message

The crazy, true-life adventures of Norway's most radical billionaire

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 19:47:01 +0000

The crazy, true-life adventures of Norway's most radical billionaire:

Shawn Tully on Norwegian billionaire Fred Olsen:

His presence galvanized and terrified employees in equal measure. Each morning he’d race into the parking lot in a secondhand Oldsmobile 98 sedan, then sprint upstairs to his office. “It was like he never slept,” says one former employee. “He could be really rough when he was mad about something. He could shame you. But you knew why, and you knew you’d screwed up. If you were as passionate as he was, he loved you, but if not, you were gone.” In quieter moments Olsen would regale employees about the lost city of Atlantis or Heyerdahl’s discoveries. They called such sessions “going to the moon.”

The precursor to “moonshots”?

Although former associates say Olsen is a brutally tough businessman, in our discussions he never mentioned profits and rarely cited numbers when talking about his latest investments. For Olsen, renewable energy is more an ethical calling than a business imperative. His long experience in petroleum production convinces him that the world isn’t facing a shortage of oil or even a future of ultrahigh prices. But renewables are essential, he says, to counter global warming. “If this warming continues, the oceans will rise, and the place we’re sitting now, and many cities, will be under water,” says Olsen, who drives a Tesla Model S. His principal crusade is protecting the Arctic from the drilling and shipping traffic that fracture the polar icecap. “I used to fly over the North Pole, and all you saw was thick, white ice, cracked like the surface of an old painting,” he says. “Now you see lots of black water, and that accelerates the heating of the oceans.”

Maybe the last guy you’d expect to take up such a cause, and he truly champions it.

Back in his office, Olsen is reflecting on his long career, in which change has been just about the only constant. “Both products and family businesses obey life cycles,” he says. “My mother’s family was in fishhooks and horseshoe nails. Those businesses came and went. That’s why it’s so important to catch the wave, to keep innovating, keep changing.” In Olsen’s case, that’s been the blueprint for a most interesting life.

Great advice. Also look for the part where Fortune debunks the notion that Olsen was the inspiration and model for C. Montgomery Burns – to which Olsen responds, “I’m thankful!”

Oh yes. 🚀🍦 (at AMC Metreon 16)

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 17:33:13 +0000

Oh yes. 🚀🍦 (at AMC Metreon 16)

How to Find High Paying Blogging Jobs Today

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:00:31 +0000

Blogging has gone beyond just a hobby today. In fact, it is now the main source of income for many people including moms who opt to work at home while taking care of their family and home at the same time. Convenience is the major benefit bloggers enjoy these days. Whether they want to be […]

These Pictures of You

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 22:19:22 +0000

These Pictures of You

As Volkswagen Pushed to Be No. 1, Ambitions Fueled a Scandal

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 22:08:12 +0000

As Volkswagen Pushed to Be No. 1, Ambitions Fueled a Scandal:

Danny Hakim, Aaron M. Kessler, and Jack Ewing on the VW diesel scandal:

Confronted again, Volkswagen continued to maintain that there was a problem with the testers, not the vehicles.
California regulators changed tack, examining the company’s software. Modern automobiles operate using millions of lines of computer code. One day last summer, the regulators made a startling discovery: A subroutine, or parallel set of instructions, was secretly being sent by the computer to what seemed to be the emissions controls.
Regulators were floored. Could Volkswagen be trying something similar to what the heavy-truck industry did to manipulate emissions tests in the 1990s?
Regulators set out to cheat the cheat, tweaking lab test parameters to trick the car into thinking it was on the road. The Volkswagens began spewing nitrogen oxide far above the legal limit.

So damning. So outrageous. Perhaps the only silver lining here will be if this accelerates the move towards electric cars.

The Death of the Death of Books

Sun, 27 Sep 2015 18:36:41 +0000

The Death of the Death of Books

The Art of Omission

Sun, 27 Sep 2015 17:59:40 +0000

The Art of Omission:

John McPhee with some great thoughts on writing. My favorite bits:

Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you decide what stays out. At base you have only one criterion: If something interests you, it goes in—if not, it stays out. That’s a crude way to assess things, but it’s all you’ve got. Forget market research. Never market-research your writing. Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way.

A good way to frame what writing really is at the highest level: choosing words to string together.

And:

Be that as it might not be, Ernest Hemingway’s Theory of Omission seems to me to be saying to writers, “Back off. Let the reader do the creating.” To cause a reader to see in her mind’s eye an entire autumnal landscape, for example, a writer needs to deliver only a few words and images—such as corn shocks, pheasants, and an early frost. The creative writer leaves white space between chapters or segments of chapters. The creative reader silently articulates the unwritten thought that is present in the white space. Let the reader have the experience. Leave judgment in the eye of the beholder. When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author. If you see yourself prancing around between subject and reader, get lost. Give elbow room to the creative reader. In other words, to the extent that this is all about you, leave that out.

“Let the reader have the experience” is a great way to put it.

Green 4 does not mean lop off four lines at the bottom, I tell them. The idea is to remove words in such a manner that no one would notice that anything has been removed. Easier with some writers than with others. It’s as if you were removing freight cars here and there in order to shorten a train—or pruning bits and pieces of a plant for reasons of aesthetics or plant pathology, not to mention size. Do not do violence to the author’s tone, manner, nature, style, thumbprint. Measure cumulatively the fragments you remove and see how many lines would be gone if the prose were reformatted. If you kill a widow, you pick up a whole line.

This reminds me of Twitter.

Needs. (at Mercury Cafe, San Francisco)

Sun, 27 Sep 2015 16:40:29 +0000

Needs. (at Mercury Cafe, San Francisco)

Instagram is ON IT from day one. Nice. Still that iOS 6-ish icon...

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 21:31:10 +0000

Instagram is ON IT from day one. Nice. Still that iOS 6-ish icon tho.

"The e-book terror has kind of subsided."

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 16:17:44 +0000

“The e-book terror has kind of subsided.”

- Steve Bercu, owner of BookPeople, a bookstore in Austin, TX, on the (slowing) state of eBooks.

The iCar Project

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 19:53:24 +0000

The iCar Project:

Daisuke Wakabayashi on the Apple Car project:

The go-ahead came after the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California. Leaders of the project, code-named Titan, have been given permission to triple the 600-person team, the people familiar with the matter said.

As noted on Twitter a few days back, this is basically the worst-kept secret in Silicon Valley. There are more people working on this project than almost every startup out here. That’s hard to keep under wraps, especially when you have to meet with government/regulatory folks, so assume Apple is just aiming to keep *details* of the project under wraps.

linxspiration: Fight Club. Insane that this film came out 16...

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 18:18:18 +0000

linxspiration:

Fight Club.

Insane that this film came out 16 years ago…

Your Right to Write

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 20:52:49 +0000

Your Right to Write

“The plan will reveal itself to you when you’re ready to see...

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 20:30:20 +0000

“The plan will reveal itself to you when you’re ready to see it.”

"Everything you can touch on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is new."

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 18:53:00 +0000

"Everything you can touch on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is new.":

John Gruber:

I used to think — and maybe it was even true — that one of the advantages to Apple of the tick-tock cycle is that during the S years, they’re already experts at manufacturing a bunch of the components. That they’ve already got a year of experience making that case, that display, those buttons. That manufacturing-wise, Apple could just swap in a few new components, like a new A-series CPU, and call it a day. But the iPhones 6S don’t use the same case as last year’s models. They’re now made out of an altogether new “7000 series” aluminum alloy. This isn’t just a new material that needs to be obtained in massive quantities, it also requires new CNC machining to carve and polish the frames. The displays are the same sizes as last year, but Apple is using a new glass that it calls “the strongest in the smartphone industry”. Even the Touch ID sensor is new. Everything you can touch on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus is new.

This is the silliest part of the vast majority of “s” cycle reviews – the notion that it’s the same exterior with some upgraded innards. Yes, design-wise it *looks* similar, but imagine what a pain in the ass it is to have to change all your tooling/processes to make all these small differences that constitute the iPhone 6s (and 6s Plus).

As Gruber goes on to note:

I think it’s backwards to think that in an S year, Apple simply takes the previous model and makes a few tweaks. Instead, I think what’s obvious is that knowing the basic industrial design at least two years ahead of time gives the engineering teams inside Apple an opportunity to make significant changes to the components and the materials used to construct them. The timeline for iPhones, because of the massive scale at which they must be manufactured, is such that, right now, as I’m typing this, the design for next year’s iPhone 7 is either locked down or very close to it. The company will now spend the next year hustling to make it work and put it into production so it can start shipping a year from now. But that means there are also teams already at work on the iPhone 7S slated for 2017 — and they have a massive head start in terms of knowing the shape and dimensions of the device.

In a way, the non-”s” phone are beta releases (which is unfair, but you catch my drift) which are then perfected for the “s” release. We’ve seen this time and time again over the age of the iPhone. And yes, we do indeed know that the next few iterations of the iPhone are already in testing somewhere inside an Apple building.

Finally, the most amazing part of the new iPhone:

The new iPhone 6S beats the new MacBook in single-core performance on Geekbench, and is within spitting distance in multi-core. That’s astounding. I can’t wait to see the scores for the iPad Pro later this year.

That is what we used to refer to as a “boom.”

goslingsryan: The Big Short (2015) trailerFrom the outrageous...

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:30:20 +0000

goslingsryan:

The Big Short (2015) trailer
From the outrageous mind of director Adam Mckay comes THE BIG SHORT. Starring Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, in theaters Christmas.

Basically the anti-typecasting movie. The bizarro Ocean’s 11. Looks great.

oatmeal:More minor differences here.

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 00:15:34 +0000

oatmeal:

More minor differences here.

“Big things have small beginnings.”

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 19:22:10 +0000

“Big things have small beginnings.”

A $50 Tablet and a $220 Calculator? Ah, the Wonders of Technology

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 18:52:23 +0000

A $50 Tablet and a $220 Calculator? Ah, the Wonders of Technology:

Brian Barrett:

By all accounts, Amazon’s new Fire tablet occupies an entirely different taxonomic ranking. It’s lighter, its battery lasts longer, its display should be improved thanks to in-plane switching (IPS) tech that its cheap rivals often lack. It’s not going to win any awards, and next to the iPad Air 2 or 10-inch Kindle HD, it’s still essentially a brick. A brick, though, that costs literally one-tenth the price. Even less, if you buy it in a six-pack, which you can, because we’ve gotten to the point where good-enough tablets can be bought and sold like Miller Lite.

I’d rather have the beer. Though maybe not Miller Lite.

How Museums Are Marketing Themselves Through The Internet

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 07:35:54 +0000

The Internet presents a unique problem for museums. Namely, why would you pay to get into a big building where you walk around all day and can’t touch anything, when you can see all the same art on your computer for free? You don’t have to get out of bed. If you want to, you […]

3 Tips for Creating Value for Your Online Customers

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 05:47:51 +0000

For many online businesses, it’s easy to track the metrics that are important to the business side of your company. From capacity planning to resource management and everything in between, knowing the exact value your company has for your shareholder and employees is relatively simple. What isn’t as simple is quantifying and improving the value […]

The Essence of Online Engagement

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 13:41:17 +0000

These days, it’s not enough for people and organizations to simply establish an online presence such as on social networking sites. Other than creating an account and adding personal and company information, engaging with your fans and followers is a must. It should be noted that engagement is key to achieving the results you want […]

Debunking Cloud Storage Myths

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:14:00 +0000

The internet can be a worrying place for some, and a wondrous one for others. Those who are new to the world of technology can often approach it with caution due to the bad press it’s received. While it’s true that certain platforms have been attacked, this wasn’t necessarily due to its location, but rather […]

3 Tips for A More Effective B2B Blog

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 07:38:42 +0000

In today’s world of blogging and content marketing, it seems like the majority of the focus is put on blogging to an audience of the everyman. However, B2B blogging is just as important in the business world. And while blogging to John and Jane Doe comes more naturally to most people, business blogging can prove […]

5 Tips For Blogging About Environmental Concerns

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 06:59:18 +0000

Blogging about environmental concerns is very important and serves a very honorable purpose in today’s day and age. However, as much as you care about certain topics, you won’t get a great following until you know how to present your case. To do that, consider the following five tips that will help you remain focused […]

3 Tips for Blogging As A Lawyer

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 06:58:52 +0000

Creating an accessible and fascinating blog is a great way for your clients and potential clients to get a better feel for who you are as a lawyer. However, it can be difficult to know exactly what to include in your blogs and how to best address issues your clients would find helpful, whether it’s […]

6 Things to Cover In an Event Review

Sun, 09 Aug 2015 10:45:48 +0000

Getting the opportunity to cover an event can be the first big break for a blogger. While you are certain to be overwhelmed with excitement about the prospect of covering the event, it is also a lot of pressure. Putting out a polished review can reflect well on the event as well as give your […]

Tips For Marketing Your Home Based Business Online

Sat, 08 Aug 2015 00:23:24 +0000

Getting your small home based business up and running can be a challenge. Marketing is everything when you are starting out small and on your own. If no one knows your business exists, you can’t expect your sales to skyrocket. The tools you need to succeed in marketing your product are right at your fingertips. […]

HoloLens is the most exciting project to come out of Microsoft in years

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:59:55 +0000

I'm a jaded tech blogger, but Microsoft's HoloLens project is without doubt the most exciting project to come out of Redmond in years. After years of talk about augmented reality, this may be the first project that actually lives up to the hype.

The new Yandex browser sure looks interesting

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 20:32:15 +0000

The Yandex team launched an alpha version of its new browser today and there are plenty of interesting design ideas here. Overall, it feels like a bit of a hybrid between Safari and Opera Coast. I rather like the tabs at the bottom of the screen, but I’m not sure I could use a browser without a bookmark bar as my default choice. Still, it’s not every day you see a new browser design launch and now that Firefox and Chrome almost look the same, it’s a nice change of pace to see somebody try something different. More on TechCrunch.

Google Now For iOS Keeps Getting Smarter

Tue, 13 May 2014 23:47:09 +0000

Android users already know about this, but with the latest update to the Google Search app for iOS, Apple users now also get to enjoy this feature. When Google realizes that you have an upcoming trip on your schedule, it will show you info about your destination, including weather and some tourist info. Nifty stuff.

Google Spell Up Chrome Experiment

Tue, 13 May 2014 16:07:25 +0000

This is pretty cool: a browser-based tool that helps you improve your English using nothing by voice recognition.

Google Releases Version 1 of its Go Programming Language

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:30:51 +0000

Go, the increasingly popular programming language Google first announced in late 2009, is now available in its first stable version. This release also marks the first time that a native support for Go is available to Windows users. Dart, another language developed by Google’s engineers, is mostly meant for web applications, while the developers of Go aimed to create a modern general-purpose language for networked and multicore computing. While Go took quite a bit of inspiration from C, it also includes ideas from other languages like Pascal, Newsqueak and Limbo. As the engineers behind the project note, the reason to release a stable version now is to give developers a stable target for their development efforts. Until now, the language still changed regularly and some of these changes likely broke existing code. Now, Google’s engineers will ensure that – with a few exceptions – every further addition to Go won’t break existing programs. “Code that compiles in Go 1 should, with few exceptions, continue to compile and run throughout the lifetime of that version, even as we issue updates and bug fixes such as Go version 1.1, 1.2, and so on.” With this release, Google also updated its Google App Engine SDK to support this new version (App Engine is Google’s cloud computing platform for developers). To see how serious Google is about Go, you just have to look at the fact that besides Go, App Engine only supports Java and Python right now.

Google Moves Its Hangouts API Out Of Preview

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:57:18 +0000

Google has been very conservative about releasing APIs for Google+ and may not even release a full read/write API for its social network before the end of this year. The one API the Google+ team has put its weight behind, though, is the Hangouts API, which gives developers access to Google+'s video chat features. Today, the company announced that it is taking this API out of preview. This means developers can now launch and share their hangout apps with the Google+ community. To launch this feature, Google has partnered with a number of developers, including Aces Hangout, Cacoo, Scoot & Doodle, Slideshare and Clubhouse Challenge by Bravo.

BrowserQuest: Mozilla Launches Massively Multiplayer HTML5 Game Experiment to Showcase Modern Web Technologies

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:10:03 +0000

Mozilla, in cooperation with French developer Little Workshop, launched a new MMORPG called BrowserQuest today to demonstrate what developers can do with HTML5, WebSocket, Canvas and other advanced web technologies, including Node.js. The game, which is actually quite fun in its own right, should work with virtually every modern desktop browser (except for Internet Explorer), as well as Safari on iOS and Firefox on Android. The mobile version is, in Mozilla’s words, “more experimental,” but should be seen as “an early glimpse of what kind of games will be coming to the mobile Web in the future.” The one technology Mozilla really wants to showcase here – besides the multiplatform nature of using web technologies over native apps – is WebSocket. With this, developers can set up a system to communicate back and forth between the browser and the server. In the case of BrowserQuest, this means that the server can keep your actions and those by your fellow players in sync without much effort. Here is the total list of web technologies BrowserQuest uses: HTML5 Canvas, which powers the 2D tile-based graphics engine. Web workers, allowing to initialize the large world map without slowing down the homepage UI. localStorage, in which the progress of your character is continually saved. CSS3 Media Queries, so that the game can resize itself and adapt to many devices. HTML5 audio, so you can hear that rat or skeleton die!

Google Launches Street View-Based Travel Guide to Japan

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:31:01 +0000

Just in time for the cherry blossom season in Japan, Google today launched what it calls a “new visual travel guide” for the country. This new interactive guide, which Google created in cooperation with the Japan Tourism Agency and the Japan National Tourism Organization, is based on Google’s street view images and allows you to visit eight distinct areas in Japan (though it’s worth nothing that four of these are actually in Tokyo, including the city’s famous fish market and the Ahikabara and Ginza shopping districts). The guide, it is worth noting, also features some indoor imagery, as well as the ability to virtually stroll through some of the country’s famous gardens. Besides the obvious Street View feature and sightseeing suggestions, the guide also features restaurant, hotel and shopping recommendations – all of which feature indoor Street View images and a bit of information about the establishment. According to Google, the guide features 339 locations – including “26 great cherry blossom viewing spots.” The guide is available in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. It will be interesting to see if Google plans to expand this program to cover other countries as well. While there are a number of third-party sites that use Street View to augment their travel guides, this guide for Japan is actually Google’s first foray into using this feature for a home-grown travel guide. The fact that the company calls this an “edition,” though, provides a hint that more of these guides may be in the works.

Ford to Open Palo Alto Research Lab this Summer

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:08:04 +0000

Car manufacturers are slowly but surely morphing into technology companies and it's not just upstart manufacturers like Tesla who are trying to piggyback on Silicon Valley's deep pool of engineering and academic talent. General Motors, for example, already has offices in Palo Alto and today, Ford announced that it has also chosen Palo Alto for its new Silicon Valley lab. The company already has research labs in Dearborn, MI; Aachen, Germany; Nanjing, China and Tel Aviv, Israel. The lab will be lead by TJ Giuli, a Ford research engineer and Stanford-alumni who has been working on the forefront of the company's tech efforts for the last few years. The company hopes that the new lab will "serve as a hub for independent technology projects and identification of new research investments and partners located along the West Coast." It also hopes to develop deeper partnerships with local tech firms and universities. Ford is, for example, already a member of Stanford's Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) affiliate program. Ford will hire Silicon Valley talent for its new offices, but also plans to rotate-in engineers from its other locations to work on new in-car technologies and ideas. The company first announced its plans to open a Silicon Valley office earlier this year, but at that time, it hadn't chosen a location yet. According to the city of Palo Altos' economic development manager Thomas Fehrenbach, the city itself reached out to Ford when it heard about Ford's plans, though chances are that it was already pretty high on Ford's list of possible locations.

77% of U.S. Teens Now Own Cell Phones, Most Send at Least 60 Text Messages per Day

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:23:06 +0000

About three quarters of U.S. teens (77%) now have a cell phone. This number is, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, up slightly from September 2009 (75%). Looking back to 2004, though, it’s clear how this number has increased dramatically over the last few years. In late 2004, only 45% of teens had cell phones. The interesting trend here, though, is that 80% of older teens (14-17) now own mobile phones (and 31% of these older teens own smartphones), but that the number of younger teens with cell phones has actually dropped a bit (57% vs. 66%). Unsurprisingly, teens from households with a higher income are more likely to own cell phones and while 83% of suburban kids now own a mobile phone, only 69% of kids in urban areas and 73% in rural areas own one. The Pew study did not find a statistically relevant difference between boys and girls when it comes to cell phone ownership, but when it comes to texting, girls are still far heavier users than boys. The median number of texts per girl in this study was closer to 90, while boys only send about 50 (the mean numbers, it’s worth noting, are far higher and also far closer to each other: 165 for girls and 168 for boys). Unsurprisingly, those teens who send the most texts are also more likely to own a smartphone. As for old-fashioned voice calls, teens – just like the rest of us – are slowly making fewer calls and most teens report that they mostly use text messages to socialize with the people in their lives:

ReadWriteWeb’s COO Sean Ammirati Leaves to Start Birchmere Labs Seed & Studio Fund

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:00:44 +0000

ReadWriteWeb, which was acquired by SAY Media late last year, just saw its first departure after the acquisition. The site's COO Sean Ammirati today announced that he is leaving RWW to start Birchmere Labs, which he describes and a early stage seed and studio fund. Ammirati will become the lead partner of this new venture. The fund, which itself is funded by Birchmere Ventures, will focus on community driven commerce startups, including web and mobile startups that "have strong network effects while still delivering value from the first user with transaction-based revenue models." I've had the joy of working with Ammirati at ReadWriteWeb for almost two years. He is one of the smarter and more driven people in our business, so losing him will be a loss for SAY and RWW. At the same time, though, it's clear that Sean's entrepreneurial experience (mSpoke, a company he co-founded, was the first startup to be acquired by LinkedIn) will serve him well in his new position. It's also probably not a stretch to think that his role at RWW changed quite a bit after the acquisition. As he told me yesterday, the new fund wants to take a very agile approach – somewhat like Kevin Rose's Milk. The fund will be both run as a lab (and hence develop its own products and startups) but also make investments in early stage companies. For ReadWriteWeb, this is the first departure since the acquisition, though it is worth noting that the site had a very high staff turnover in the year leading up to the acquisition, with a lot of the key members leaving the site or, like RWW's former co-editor Marshall Kirkpatrick, starting their own ventures while still writing for the site now and then.

What to Expect from Firefox in 2012: SPDY, Quiet Updates, Better Web Apps

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:34:28 +0000

Last year, Mozilla managed to get Firefox back on track. While the long delay of Firefox 4 gave competitors like the up-and-coming Google Chrome a chance to gain quite a bit of market share, Mozilla adapted to the changing environment and switched to a Chrome-like rapid-release schedule that is focused on releasing a new version every six weeks. Given these short release cycles, it's good to keep the larger picture in view sometimes and, thankfully, Mozilla today provided us with a nice overview of what we can expect from Firefox for the rest of the year. The organization has discussed most of these plans before, but it's good to take another look at what's in store for the popular browser. A SPDYer Browser Among the highlights Firefox's users can look forward to is default support for Google's SPDY protocol that speeds up the communication between your browser and web servers. In the current version (11), SPDY is not enable by default, but you can turn it on by browsing to about:config and doing a search for spdy.enabled. In addition, Mozilla also plans to turn on HTTP pipelining by default. This allows the browser to download different elements of a site in parallel, which should speed things up, especially for sites that don't yet support the SPDY protocol. Silent Updates Mozilla also plans to bring silent updates to Firefox. This means, you will never have to see another update dialog again. Instead, Firefox will just update itself automatically, just like Chrome currently does. The development team plans to launch this feature in version 13. Better Web Apps As for web apps, Mozilla wants to integrate them more deeply into the browser. This means support for Mozilla's online app store, which is scheduled to launch later this year, but also a lot of work on the backend, including support for Mozilla's identity solution, an install process for web apps and the ability for apps to run in the background. This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg. You can find a full list of the features Mozilla has planned for this year here.

Google Adds 11 More Deal Sites to its Google Offers Network

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:55:43 +0000

Google has been quietly expanding its network of parters for its daily deals service Google Offers since it first launched last year. Today, the company is announcing that 11 new partners are joining its platform. These new partners are 8Moms, APDailyDeals, AT&T Interactive, Boston.com, DailyDeals.com, DoubleTakeDeals, Half Off Depot, Morgan’s Deals, Savored, Signpost and Urban Dealight. In addition, Google also announced that it is bringing it "full slate" of partners to Austin, Houston, Philadelphia and Miami today. Out of the 40 cities where Google offers is currently available, customers in 23 of these now get offers from the company's partners in addition to Google's own offers. In its announcement, Google explicitly acknowledges that in order to bring its users the best deals, it needs to work with partners. At the same time, though, it's also clear that these smaller niche sites need bigger partners to have any chance in succeeding in a market that is dominated by Groupon and LivingSocial. Maybe the most interesting of these new partners is Signpost (which, it is worth noting, is partly funded by Google Ventures). The company sets up online stores for small businesses and also works with its customers to set up daily deal campaigns.

Spotify Launched in Germany Without Key Licensing Deal

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:17:25 +0000

Spotify, the popular streaming music service, launched in Germany today. The company had been planning this launch for a while and had already been operating a German-language version in Austria since last year. Quite a few pundits assumed that the delay was due to rights negotiations with the German royalty collection agency GEMA. This organization is quite notorious for charging relatively high rates for music streaming, which was the main reason Grooveshark closed its German site earlier this year. The reality is a bit different, though: Spotify still hasn't signed a licensing deal with GEMA. Talking to German public radio, Spotify acknowledged that the company is still negotiating with GEMA. As of now, the two haven't been able to reach an agreement, though the negotiations, which Spotify describes as "intense," continue. GEMA, it is worth noting, has been negotiating with Google to set streaming rates for YouTube for years now. It's not unthinkable that its discussions with Spotify could also take quite a while. Just last year, Sony Music CEO Edgar Berger argued that "some members of GEMA's supervisory board have not yet arrived in the digital era."

Not Delayed: Firefox 11 Still Coming Later Today

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:37:48 +0000

Yesterday, Mozilla announced that it would delay today's planned launch of Firefox 11 for a few days in order to scrutinize a potential security issue and to avoid issues with Microsoft's Patch Tuesday updates today. Now, however, Mozilla has canceled this delay and announced that Firefox 11 is still on track for today's release. The security vulnerability, it turns out, was already known and patched. In order to avoid the conflict with Patch Tuesday, though, this release will only be available as a manual update today. Once the Firefox team is sure that there are no issues with Microsoft's latest patches, it will push automatic updates to all users. Since switching to its rapid-release schedule, Mozilla never missed a scheduled release date for Firefox. What's New in Firefox 11 Once Firefox 11 is available, this is what you can expect from the update: What’s New NEW Firefox can now migrate your bookmarks, history, and cookies from Google Chrome NEW With Sync enabled, add-ons can now be synchronized across your computers NEW The CSS text-size-adjust property is now supported CHANGED Redesigned media controls for HTML5 video HTML5 The outerHTML property is now supported on HTML elements HTML5 View source syntax highlighting now uses the HTML5 parser (see bug 482921) DEVELOPER The Style Editor for CSS editing is now available to web developers DEVELOPER Web developers can now visualize a web page in 3D using the Page Inspector 3D View DEVELOPER SPDY protocol support for faster page loads is now testable DEVELOPER XMLHttpRequest now supports HTML parsing DEVELOPER Files can now be stored in IndexedDB (see bug 661877) DEVELOPER Websockets has now been unprefixed FIXED Firefox notifications may not work properly with Growl 1.3 or later (691662)