Your Ever Growing World

The Secret to Getting a Job at Google Revealed

2012-08-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Google is one of the most desirable companies to work for on the planet. To find out how to get a job at Google, I spoke with William Poundstone, who is the author of Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?. He is the author of twelve books, including How Would You Move Mount Fuji? and Fortune’s Formula, which was Amazon Editors’ pick for the #1 nonfiction book of the year in 2005. He has written for theNew York Times, Harper’s, HarvardBusiness Review, and the Village Voice, among other publications. In this interview, he talks about the hardest question that they ask you, how to survive each of the five interviews, and much more.

What is the single hardest question they ask you when interviewing at Google?

“What number comes next in this sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66…?”

This question is hard because you either see the “trick” or you don’t. Nothing you learned in school is likely to help. Try spelling out the numbers—you’ll see that they are in order of the number of letters in the word. “Sixty-six” has eight letters, so the next number must have nine. One possible answer is “ninety-six.”

How many rounds of interviews do you have to go through and how many people survive each round?

Google applicants have about five interviews. The company’s human resources people have given a lot of thought to that number. They believe in the “wisdom of crowds,” so they want multiple opinions of each applicant. But they’re done research and found little or no marginal value after five interviews. Normally every applicant goes through all five rounds. The only exceptions are the rare cases where a candidate is clearly unsuitable after the first couple of interviews.

What kind of intelligence do you need to solve the many puzzles they give you during interviews?

They want many types of intelligence. Google’s interviewers try to design questions that test (1) whether you know your field of expertise; (2) whether you can apply what you know in an unfamiliar context; and (3) whether you can make “creative” leaps to arrive at a solution. Their best questions operate on all these levels.

How do you go about getting a leg up on the competition?

It’s not just about getting a “right answer.” They’re interested in your thought process, and your whole explanation counts. Because these are difficult questions, the first answer or approach that pops into your head is almost always wrong

That provides a way to get a running start on your answer: Explain to the interviewer how this “obvious” approach fails. You’re expected to brainstorm various approaches, but make sure you tie it all together at the end. The last thing a technology company wants is someone who never brings a project to completion!

Who shouldn’t apply for jobs at Google? Why?

Google is very clear about who it wants: extremely bright extroverts. The company is founded on intensive collaboration. This is reflected even in the office layout, with only a handful of private offices. (When employees feel an occasional need for privacy, they seek out an empty conference room.) The stereotypical engineer—someone who works best alone and hates distractions—is probably not a good fit.

Don't Have a Business Degree? Stop Waiting to Feel Qualified - Here's What You Really Need

2012-08-02T02:03:00.003-07:00

A four-year degree in business will likely cost you $25,000 to $50,000 depending on where you go to school. An MBA will run you closer to a cool $100,000 by the time you factor in all expenses. Is it worth it? Well, as someone who spent four years at university studying business, I’ve had plenty of people assume that was the reason for my success as an entrepreneur. “I can’t start a business because I don’t have a degree like you do,” they say.

Sea of Mortarboards (Photo credit: Josh Thompson)

Sorry, you don’t get to use that as an excuse, because it’s a bit like telling someone you’re not qualified to be a mother because you didn’t get a degree in home economics. Would it be helpful to learn some basic cooking skills, first aid and parenting strategies before having a baby? Of course. And there are about 5 billion books you can buy that will help you out. Prefer getting advice from someone in person? I think you could probably find a few mothers willing to share advice (in fact, most parents I know wish they could stop getting so much helpful child-rearing advice).

Yes, my education was useful. But after speaking with numerous entrepreneurs about this issue, the consensus is to get started and take action.Stop waiting to feel qualified with a formal education before you take your destiny into your own hands. That and these tips may save you big money and help you achieve the business success you desire.

An insatiable curiosity about how business works, which is really about understanding people. Look up your favorite entrepreneurs, read their autobiographies and the books they credit their success to (here are some of my favorites). Never stop reading and learning. Find other entrepreneurs to connect with who are willing to mentor you. Look for other learning & networking opportunities outside the traditional classroom, too.
Knowing who you want to serve, and what problems you want to solve for them. This can’t be faked–at least, not for long. Not in this day and age. You need to tap into a genuine desire to serve others in a way that you can feel good about. Trying to simply capitalize on trends will leave you running in circles, trying to stay ahead of the curve. By solving ‘problems’ for others I’m talking about everything from building affordable housing, to helping people buy eco-friendly gifts or gluten-free pastries.
Getting clear on the value you’re providing and your desired end result. How does your happy customer or client look? How has their life changed? What exactly will you do to achieve that, and what are the costs involved–will your profit margin be sufficient?
Living in a way that’s congruent with your business mission. In other words, be what you’re trying to sell. If you’re a holistic health practitioner who secretly binges on twinkies, your business success will inevitably be compromised because what you’re doing and what you’re saying aren’t in alignment. You can be a work in progress, however. I wasn’t 100% committed to being as healthy as possible when I started my first business, a healthy fast food store. I didn’t get enough sleep or exercise, and I would frequently miss breakfast and lunch because I was so busy with work. Once I clued into the hypocrisy of selling people on healthy living while I was running on empty, I smartened up and made my health a priority. It paid off big time, in my personal and business life.
Developing your “Know, Like & Trust” factor. People need to know who you are, like you, and trust you enough to hand over their money for whatever you’re selling. This means you need to position yourself or your products/services in a way that people can notice them and see the value in them. You need to be as helpful as possible, and come across as genuinely caring about your potential customers. What can you give them for free or cheap, to help them out and give them a taste of how valuable your offerings are? Samples, free advice in the form of ebooks, blog posts and newsletters, and complimentary consultations have all been used to boost the Know, Like & Trust factor of businesses and solopreneurs.

Toyota Offers No Remedy For Newly-Recalled Cars

2012-08-02T02:02:00.000-07:00

Toyota announced a recall of 778,000 vehicles, but it still hasn’t determined how to remedy their defect.

As a result, drivers of about 760,000 Toyota RAV4s with 2006 through 2010 model years and 18,000 Lexus HS 250h vehicles from the 2010 model year may have to stop using their cars indefinitely.

Toyota says that if suspension arm nuts on the recalled vehicles aren’t tightened properly, rust could form and lead to the separation of the arm from the vehicle. The automaker says it’s still working on how to fix the problem and will notify owners as soon as possible.

In June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating corrosion-related suspension problems in 2006 to 2008 model-year RAV4s.

Four complaints said drivers lost control of their vehicles because of the problem which caused wheels to be extremely out of alignment.

For more information, owners can go to Toyota’s recall page.

8 human jobs that will still be around when robots rule the world

2012-08-01T23:34:00.002-07:00

Where will you stand when the robots take over? Will you rise up and form a ragtag band of rebels? Will you hide away in a secluded fortress — or your basement? Or will you, for one, welcome our new overclocked overlords?

Regardless of your stance on the automated apocalypse, it's good to be prepared. Much of that preparation lies in securing a career that is robot-proof. In other words, you want to find a job that can't be easily automated by the newest (self-aware) version of Windows. If you've paid attention to Isaac Asimov's infamous Three Laws of Robotics, you'll know that a science-fictional world of mechanized takeover would assure that robots can't harm or disobey us, so public safety and manufacturing would probably be the first jobs to go. But where do you start if you wantapocalyptic job security?

Luckily, we've compiled a list of eight of our favorite jobs that can't be replaced by bots.

1. Psychiatrist/counselor
Nothing can better relate to the human psyche and emotional feelings than another human. While it wouldn't be difficult to throw together a program that said "Tell me more about your feelings" every few minutes, true human empathy is something that can't be replaced by robots, no matter how hard scientists try. Plus, we imagine there would be quite a demand for some type of emotional counseling if "The Jetsons" came true.

2. Midwife
While much of an obstetrician's job might be bot-able, a midwife does things with more of a personal connection. Besides, I don't think anyone wants cold robot hands delivering their baby.

3. General practitioner
The general practitioner makes a diagnosis based on much more than textbook logic, which can easily be programmed into an artificially intelligent bot. Surgeons and more specialized doctors might easily be replaced or improved by the use of robotic technology, as precision is key. But as humans, we want someone to talk to about our medical issues. This makes the family doctor your entry point for most medical situations, and in some small-town cases, he or she might even know you and your family personally.

4. Organic farmer
Although large-scale, single-crop agriculture has largely been automated, correctly caring for plants and animals isn't something that can be programmed into a robot. The world is getting away from factory farming and realizing the benefits oforganic food and sustainable farming practices. While robots could run on any number of energy sources, we'll still run on good old-fashioned farm food. Hopefully.

5. Writer
Mathematicians can keep their infinite monkey theorem, because you can't program creative writing. A recent scientific journal reported that robot journalists are a real possibility to efficiently and quickly report on news based on key words, but writing fiction, poetry, and other forms of creative writing take real human experience and savvy.

6. Artist
Programming a robot to copy a work of art brushstroke by brushstroke isn't difficult, and there's a robotic artist out there that can use edge detection to sketch a person's face. But it takes human creativity and imagination to actually define art styles.

7. Daycare worker
Going hand-in-hand with the human empathy needed in a counselor, we would need more than a sentry bot to guard over our children while we're off working one of these robot-proof jobs. Children learn by example, so any job that involves child-rearing would be best left to us fleshies.

8. Robotic engineer
This choice is obvious — someone has to create all of those robots! Whether it be programming, mechanical design, or simply maintenance, robots are nothing without us.

Preparing for our robot overlords
Although most of this article is written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, we'd like to think that we're doing a service by preparing you for the future. And for those of you already employed in one of these fields, you have nothing to fear. Unless, of course, it's the aliens that take over instead.
Read more at http://www.tecca.com/columns/robot-proof-jobs/#Vk3EdBOHPR8z03YZ.99

If you live until 2045, you may never have to fear death

2012-08-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

If you have enough cash, a Russian man may be able to help you live forever

Immortality is something all of us have thought of, but nobody really takes seriously. A 31-year-old Russian man named Dmitry Itskov wants you to seriously consider the possibility of living forever, and perhaps even plan on being able to do so by 2045. His plan, called simply "The 2045 Initiative," will sound familiar if you've seen the James Camera blockbuster "Avatar" — and he just needs a few billion dollars to make it a reality.

Itskov's project has several phases, with each step bringing mankind closer to the ultimate goal living forever. The first step in the project is to create robotic humans that can be controlled remotely. He plans on crossing this hurdle by 2020 at the latest. Then, by 2025, a human brain will be transferred into a robotic skeleton to continue life after death. By 2035, the avatar's brain will be constructed separately, and your own personality will simply be "transferred" into it when you are ready to end your human existence. And finally, by the year 2045, humans will be able to walk around in holographic avatars for eternity, never fearing death.

Not surprisingly, the Avatar project is extremely expensive, and Itskov needs some serious financial help if he's to pull it off. So, naturally, he's asking the world's richest people to help fund the movement. In return, he's pledging to help each donor on his or her own immortality quest. You know, because you just can't spend $50 billion in one lifetime.

This article was written by Mike Wehner and originally appeared on Tecca

China announces plans for moon landing in 2013

2012-08-01T00:56:00.000-07:00

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin stands on the lunar surface during the first moon landing in 1969. (Apollo 11/NASA)
Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin collects moon rocks in 1969. (NASA)
Buzz Aldrin deploys a seismometer in the Sea of Tranquillity area of the moon. (NASA)

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China has announced plans to send an unmanned rocket to the moon in 2013, an effort to further the country’s ambitious space program -- but Beijing faces serious competition to plant the next flag on the moon.

The official China News Service said that the Chang'e Three orbiter will carry out surveys on the surface of the moon, according to a report on Reuters -- catching up to a U.S. achievement from 45 years ago.

The communist country tested a new rocket engine Sunday that uses liquid oxygen and kerosene, which will power future missions to the moon, according to news reports.

If successful, China’s probe would be the first craft to land on the moon as part of a mission since the Soviets managed it in the 1970s. The country also said it plans to land a man on the moon, a feat only achieved by the United States, most recently in 1972, the AFP noted.

"I think it's well within China's capability and budget," Chen Lan, an independent space analyst, told the AFP of next year's planned mission.

Neither the Russians nor the U.S. is currently capable of landing a man on the moon. Since the end of the space shuttle era, NASA’s has focused its eyes on a new spacecraft for manned exploration of space, the Orion multipurpose vehicle, which won’t be ready until 2017 at the earliest.

But China will nonetheless face stiff competition from a growing private space industry in the U.S. and elsewhere. The industry has its eyes on the moon and the cash that can be extracted from rocks and craters.

Astrobotic Technology announced plans in May for an ice prospecting robot, Polaris, to be launched to the Moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket like the one that successfully lifted this spring from Cape Canaveral. That vehicle is set to launch in 2015, the company said.

Moon Express has announced plans to piggyback on private space cargo flights, using them to carry its lunar landers and mining platforms to the moon.

"People ask, why do we want to go back to the moon? Isn't it just barren soil?" Jain told FoxNews.com last year. "But the moon has never been explored from an entrepreneurial perspective."

And a host of other companies from a variety of countries are competing for a $30 million prize from Google to reach the moon’s surface, a competition called the Lunar X Prize.

One country no longer in the battle: Russia, which has said manned missions are no longer a priority.

Indeed, the country recently sold four 1970s-era Soviet Almaz program three-crew capsules and two Russian Salyut-class 63,800-pound space station pressure vessels to spaceflight firm Excalibur Almaz, which plans to sell about 30 seats between 2015 and 2025, for $150 million each.

Green cheese indeed.

Aussie swimmer blames social media for failing to bag gold in 100m Olympic final

2012-08-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

When Aussie swimmer Emily Seebohm failed to take gold in an Olympic swimming final she'd been tipped to win, she gave an excuse few had been expecting: social media.

Australian swimmer Emily Seebohm went into Monday’s 100-meter backstroke Olympic final as the hot favorite. She ended up with the silver, but what surprised people most was that her race time was significantly slower than what she clocked in the previous day’s heat. Even Canada’s Missy Franklin, who took the gold, came in with a slower time.

Shortly after the race, 20-year-old Seebohm came up with an excuse never before uttered by an Olympian, but one which certainly reflects the technological age we now live in.

You see, according to Seebohm, she messed up because she stayed up too long the night before the big race responding to messages of encouragement on Twitter and Facebook.

“I guess when you swim that fast in the heat, then people put pressure and more pressure on you, saying, ‘Oh, you’re going to get the gold.’” Seebohm told Australian reporters after her loss. “Maybe I just started believing that and just thought I’d already won by the time I had swum and I hadn’t even swum yet.

“I don’t know, I just felt like I didn’t really get off (social media) and get into my own mind.”

“You’re going to win gold”

She said that with so many people telling her via social media sites that she was going to win gold, she simply started to believe it. “When they tell you a thousand times you are going to get it, somewhere in your mind you are just like, ‘I’ve done it’. But I hadn’t and that was a big learning curve and I obviously need to sign out of Twitterand log out of Facebook a lot sooner than I did.”

Seebohm later said her disappointing performance was also down to nerves, and not just the social media sites. However, the Aussie swimming team’s coach, Matt Brown, clearly sees the likes of Facebook and Twitter as a major distraction.

“I’d love to throw away some of those phones,” he said. “That’s the age we are living in. Emily has already learned that no matter how experienced you are you keep learning.”

The Social Media Games

In the run up to the London Olympics, there was much talk of it being the most connected Games ever, but most reports focused on sports fans rather than the participants.

These days, many high profile athletes have Facebook and Twitter accounts, with masses of devoted followers tracking their every post and tweet. At a time when they’d be better off focusing on their upcoming event, it seems some, like Seebohm, are getting caught up in the online conversation.

Speaking before the Games began, Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 organizing committee and himself a two-time Olympic gold medalist, said, “I have found quite a close correlation between the number of tweets at competitive times and the level of under-performance.”

Coe continued, “From a personal perspective, when I was an athlete I just wanted complete and total focus,” he said. “I knew it was my time and that they don’t come around that often. If I was focusing on trying to defend a title I wouldn’t be reading Twitter, I wouldn’t be interested in it. Why would I?”

Aussie shooter Alethea Sedgman said that while it was good to keep in touch with family and friends, it was better to “focus without Facebook.”

Guidelines

The British Olympic Association (BOA) have even gone as far as to draw up a list of guidelines for its athletes regarding social media.

“Don’t forget your rivals may be reading,” the BOA warns. “Other competitors may gain confidence if they read any comments you make about poor form in training, feeling tired, upset or low on confidence.”

Whether Seebohm’s experience makes other athletes sit up and take notice remains to be seen. Hopefully any social media addiction won’t get so bad that we start seeing runners, smartphone in hand, snapping photos of themselves as they cross the finishing line, and then posting it on Facebook just prior to collecting their (silver?) medal on the podium.

[Source: londonnow, AP]

Solar Cells Can be Built Using Any Semiconductor

2012-07-31T04:39:00.000-07:00

Researchers at the Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley found that inexpensive semiconductors can be used to create photovoltaic devices via a gate field, as long as a certain geometric shape of the electrode is maintained.

Zoom

Solar cells could be seeing much more widespread use and application as a result of research results announced by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. The technology is called screening-engineered field-effect photovoltaics, short SFPV. The approach utilizes the electric field effect as well as a "carefully designed partially screening top electrode" that "lets the gate electric field sufficiently penetrate the electrode and more uniformly modulate the semiconductor carrier concentration and type to induce a p-n junction."

"Our technology requires only electrode and gate deposition, without the need for high-temperature chemical doping, ion implantation, or other expensive or damaging processes," said William Regan, lead author of the study. "The key to our success is the minimal screening of the gate field which is achieved through geometric structuring of the top electrode. This makes it possible for electrical contact to and carrier modulation of the semiconductor to be performed simultaneously."

The Berkeley scientists said that they shaped the electrode contact into narrow fingers using copper oxide in one configuration and, in another configuration, they created a single-layer graphene surface. "With sufficiently narrow fingers, the gate field creates a low electrical resistance inversion layer between the fingers and a potential barrier beneath them," the researchers said. "A uniformly thin top contact allows gate fields to penetrate and deplete/invert the underlying semiconductor. This results in both configurations are high quality p-n junctions."

"Our demonstrations show that a stable, electrically contacted p-n junction can be achieved with nearly any semiconductor and any electrode material through the application of a gate field provided that the electrode is appropriately geometrically structured," Feng Wang, co-author of the study, noted.

Apple Buying into Twitter

2012-07-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

APPLE

Apple iOS honcho Scott Forstall introduces Twitter integration at the WWDC conference on June 6, 2011

We already know that Apple is a Twitter fan. It’s baked the social network into both of its operating systems, OS X and iOS, in a manner that’s a departure from its tradition of building every possible aspect of its products itself. Now Evelyn M. Rusli and Nick Bilton of the New York Times are reportingthat the relationship could lead to something a lot more significant: In recent months, Apple has been in discussions to buy a chunk of Twitter.

In another report, Shira Ovide and Jessica E. Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal confirm the Times story, sort of: They write that the talks in question happened more than a year ago.

Rusli and Bilton say that negotiations aren’t currently in progress, and that the conversation has involved Apple spending in the hundreds of millions in a deal that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, which would mean that Apple would be taking a stake of less than 10 percent. So the idea might have led nowhere, and even if something does happen, the impact on the industry could be less than history-making. Still, it’s fun to ponder the implications.

The notion of a deal between the two companies is nothing new: It dates back at least as far as May 2009, when rumor had it they were deep in discussions of a potential Apple buyout of Twitter. That scuttlebutt sounded profoundly fishy, mostly because it was part of a long tradition of speculation involving Apple buying well-known companies–everything from Sony to Hulu–which has always led absolutely nowhere.

Now, Apple does snap up other businesses all the time. But it likes to spend its money on small companies with low profiles which it can integrate entirely into its own efforts. Its decision this week to purchase mobile security startup Authentec is a classic example.

The odds are still against Apple buying part of another well-known company, but these new rumors aren’t unthinkable in the way they once might have been. CEO Tim Cook has said that as he prepared to succeed Steve Jobs last year, Jobs told him not to ask what Steve would do, but to do what was right. It’s not that tough to imagine Cook and Co. concluding that a tighter relationship with Twitter feels right.

That scenario certainly sounds more likely than one in which Apple pours its energies into building its own mammoth social network from scratch. While the company has a long-standing reputation for being bad at social networking, that’s not quite fair: It’s more that it’s evidenced little interest in it over the years.

It launched its most meaningful social effort of its own, the Ping social features built into iTunes, back in 2010. But the whole effort seemed half-hearted in a way that Apple’s efforts rarely are, and when Ping didn’t immediately catch on, the company didn’t do much with it.

Game Center, the multi-player features built into iOS and, as of this week, OS X, is the closest thing Apple has to a social-networking success story. However, it doesn’t really encroach on the turf of the major general-interest networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Apple is technology’s most fastidious, detail-oriented major player. When it builds something, it worries about every seam, every pixel, every element of the experience. Social networking, by contrast, is inherently untidy. It’s about turning features over to real people and getting out of the way. That doesn’t play to Apple’s strengths, which helps explain why Ping failed to capture the imagination of both Apple and consumers.

But Apple can’t pretend that social networking doesn’t matter. As Cook put it in his appearance at the D conference last May, the company doesn’t need to own a social network–but it does need to be social. So partnering up with an existing major social network, and maybe even owning part of it, could make sense.

As long as Apple and Google are squabbling over Android, that network isn’t going to be Google+. And Facebook, which will get integrated into OS X and iOS this fall, is more of an Apple rival than a potential junior partner. (Both would like to be the single technology company at the center of the lives of people around the world.)

That leaves Twitter, which needs all the help it can get as it does battle with the twin behemoths that are Facebook and Google. A deal with Apple would be a coup. It might also be a worthwhile way for Apple to invest a tiny sliver of the billions it has in the bank.

Of course, any financial transaction between the two companies wouldn’t be a big whoop in itself. What would be fascinating would be if Apple influence started to show up in Twitter, or Twitter helped to shape Apple products. Or both. It would be a blast to see Apple’s chocolate get mixed up with Twitter’s peanut butter.

I’m not going to get emotionally invested in that possibility, though. Remember, both the Times and the Journal are talking about the discussions in the past tense. They could have been tentative explorations that have permanently concluded. Like Tim Cook said, Apple understands that it’s important to be social–but maybe even Apple is still figuring out exactly what that means.

Why Many In The U.S. Did Not Get The Olympics Opening Ceremony In London

2012-07-31T01:05:00.001-07:00

This weekend on Forbes.com, “London Olympics: The Most Embarrassing Opening Ceremony?” was not intended to represent the American reaction to the event. Unlike many other commentators here and around the world, I was not thinking about Danny Boyle, or the budget or any of the back story. I just watched it.

And I found it hard to watch. Not because I am a hater or an enemy of inclusiveness. Not because I am a fan of the Chinese Communist state and value conformity. Not because I am ignorant of England’s contributions to world culture. Quite the opposite on all counts.

I found it hard to watch for some of the same reasons that many in England loved it. I thought the that there was a sharp distinction between the “ produced” bits and the “crowd” bits. Some of the high-production elements worked for me (007, the Queen and her corgis, Beckham in the boat, the final Olympic rings fireworks) but I found the choreographed crowd actions to be cliche, disjointed and amateurish. Mass movement does not necessarily constitute a performance. (In fairness, some of the American reaction, including my own, was shaped by NBC’s poor editing of the event. Many comments reported that the BBC did a far superior job, which I do not doubt.)

London has become an important hub of contemporary art and there are many contemporary artists who create performance works for large numbers of people. The Tate Modern itself has staged all manner of large-scale art experiences in their vast Turbine Hall, so there is no question that England has the intellectual and cultural capital to have done something truly forward-looking.

Because I was reviewing the event as a “content experience” I did not share the same contextual frame that the news industry used to prepare the public for what they were going to see. Many viewers, particularly in America, had a similar reaction to mine and felt that the coverage didn’t reflect their experience of the event. For them, my story was refreshing and validating.

But for people who genuinely enjoyed the spectacle, I’m afraid it seemed mean and small minded. I have read all of the more than 300 comments and replied to as many as I could intelligently. Perhaps 80% of them agreed with me, often hilariously so. A small number took me for a rude person and responded in kind (and then some!) Many of those that disagreed took the time to explain why.

Having taken that all in, I have to say that I think the ceremony did expose some cultural rifts between our two countries. Specifically, England, in fact, has a deep tradition of amateurism that is very much part of its identity. Atul Gawande expressed this very clearly last year in his article “Personal Best,” in the New Yorker:

What we think of as coaching was, sports historians say, a distinctly American development. During the nineteenth century, Britain had the more avid sporting culture; its leisure classes went in for games like cricket, golf, and soccer. But the aristocratic origins produced an ethos of amateurism: you didn’t want to seem to be trying too hard. For the Brits, coaching, even practicing, was, well, unsporting. In America, a more competitive and entrepreneurial spirit took hold.”

These are Gawande’s words, not mine, but reading them helped me to understand, perhaps, this gap I have been experiencing after writing about my reactions to the ceremony. Not that I represent America, or am a “typical” or “mainstream” American in any way. I’m not. But, by gum (to sound American!), my reaction to this would seem to come from an internalization of that more professional approach that Gawande (an American physician and journalist) ascribes to our country.

What that means in terms of the ceremony is that what I found sloppy and amateurish, the Britons found charming and quirky and representative of themselves in all their self-deprecating glory. It’s not that I wanted or expected it to be robotically perfect like the Chinese in 2008, but I missed the new British spirit that I felt when I was in London last summer. For all of the ways that England has become a radically more diverse society, the rigidity between high and low is more tightly integrated into its culture than in the U.S..

Now, the actual income inequality in America is huge and growing, so I’m not holding the U.S. above the U.K. as actually being more democratic—but we (deeply) think of ourselves that way. It might have something to do with that Revolution a while back that was based on overturning perceived tyranny.

That all being said, I think that the Americans that were disappointed in the opening ceremonies (myself included) were expecting something more brilliant than the retrospective mashup of recent British (pop) culture that we got. It was more like a bad Broadway musical than a unique performance that could have only been imagined in England. We were expecting what the host’s great artists and writers, musicians and designers, filmmakers, engineers and performers can deliver: Intelligence, incisiveness, discernment and craft. In short, a vision of the future better than our own.

[Note: These shows diversity of opinion ]

Top Technology Job Trends of 2012

2012-07-31T00:58:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled upon Indeed’s top job trends site. The site features an itemized list of the fastest growing keywords found within job postings across millions of jobs from thousands of job sites. It provides a particularly good insight into some of higher growth areas of the technology job market.

The results may surprise you. From a relative volume point of view, jQuery (an Open Source JavaScript Library) is the clear winner with a growth of more than 800,000%, #2 is PaaS (also known as Platform as a Service) with a 500,000% rise and Hadoop (an Open Source Big Data platform) at more than 400,000% increase.

This job trends graph shows relative growth for jobs found matching various technology search terms.

From an absolute percentage point of view, unsurprisingly Social Media is the clear winner with more than 1.5% of all job postings containing the term. More surprising is the second spot going again to jQuery with close to 1% of all searches.

Shows absolute searches across all job postings as a percentage.

I also compared a few of the buzzwords du jour, “Big Data” and “Cloud Computing” The winner is Big Data.

Cloud Vs Big Data

For my last comparison I looked at job postings involving Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, Google. Interestingly, Twitter is the clear winner.

Job postings

The site also notes that Information Technology job postings have decreased -7% since June 2011. Yet clicks on Information Technology jobs have increased 11% since June 2011. This may show that the amount of job searches is increasing faster than the volume of job postings.

Another Interesting stat are the most populous metro areas ranked by job postings per capita for second quarter of 2012.

Rank	Metropolitian Area	Job Postings Per 1000 People
1	San Jose, CA	161
2	Washington, DC	118
3	Raleigh, NC	112
4	Hartford, CT	102
5	Boston, MA	91

Manchester United Files For IPO Of Up To $333 Million, Signs $600 Million Sponsorship Deal

2012-07-31T00:18:00.000-07:00

English soccer club Manchester United, the world’s most-valuable sports team, is seeking up to $333 million in an initial public offering according to a regulatory filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. The filing states that 16.7 million Class A shares will be issued, worth between $16 and $20 each. Half of the shares will be issued by the club while the other half will be sold by the Glazer family, which owns the team. Proceeds from the Glazer family’s shares will not go to the team.

Today’s filing suggests a far more valuable IPO than the $100 million one that the team filed for at the beginning of the month. Manchester United intends to use all net proceeds from the IPO to reduce the team’s debt; as of March 31, the team had a total indebtedness of £423.3 million, or about $664.9 million.

The midpoint of the IPO offering range would value the club at $2.95 billion, about $715 million more than the $2.24 billion we evaluated it worth in April.

The filing comes on the same day that the team agreed to a new sponsorship deal with General Motors. The American automaker signed the deal one day after the company ousted global marketing chief Joel Ewanick, and some have suggested that the sponsorship agreement may have something to do with his firing.

Financial details of the seven-year deal were not made public, but sources familiar with the contract have pegged the annual value between $60 million and $70 million. After including an initial activation fee of $100 million, the contract is thought to be worth a total $600 million. GM’s deal is set to begin in 2014 and will grant the automaker the Red Devils’ coveted jersey sponsorship; Chevrolet will have its name emblazoned on the crimson jerseys. The new agreement is a massive increase from the estimated $31 million annual payout by current jersey sponsor Aon.

The club claims to have 659 million supporters around the world, and executives at GM clearly believe that direct access to those fans will help make the automaker a much stronger international brand. Between the sponsorship agreement and upcoming IPO, expected to be priced on August 9, the Red Devils have taken massive steps towards greatly increasing annual revenues and erasing team debt.

"The Battle" New iPad vs. iPad 2 vs. Transformer Prime vs. Galaxy Tab 2 10.1

2012-07-30T04:13:00.003-07:00

With a product announcement comes the time to compare. Check out how the latest Apple iPad stacks up against its competition.

The new iPad is here — and that means it’s time for another round of tablet wars. We’ve compared the latest iteration of the iPad against the last-gen model, as well as the Asus Transformer Prime and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Feast your eyes on these tablets in all their specification-glory, and stayed tuned for updates as we learn more about the latest iPad.

Hackers see "sheeple" sheared by Google wireless data grab

2012-07-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

Long before Google online mapping service cars snatched data from private wireless hotspots there was the Wall of Sheep.

The Wall, created by Aires Security, has long been a mainstay of the infamous Def Con gathering of hackers that ended Sunday in Las Vegas.

Designed as a "security awareness tool" and refined over the years, the Wall captures data sent wirelessly by smartphones, laptops or other gadgets and then finds information unguarded by encryption or tough passwords.

Wall builders have long branded folks careless about what they send wirelessly as "sheeple" vulnerable to wolves who can eavesdrop on transmissions as easily as one can overhear a chat in a coffee shop.

Those behind the Wall see what Google did by sucking up unprotected wireless data with Street Viewvehicles as perhaps unethical but perfectly legal.

"If you overhear a conversation in a public place, a Starbucks for example, you are not doing anything illegal," Aires chief Brian Markus said as private data of "sheeple" was projected on a wall behind him.

"For wireless, if you are monitoring it passively and you don't have to break into anything that should be legal."

The Wall team's T-shirts this year were emblazoned with "Encrypt or you will regret it in the end."

The subject of whether the Wall, and by extension what Google did with Street View, was criminal was the focus of a Def Con session where hackers backed the idea that unprotected data was fair game.

"Tech people think sniffing is fine; people who understand privacy think it's terrible," University of Pennsylvania distributed labs director Matt Blaze said during the session, referring to capturingwireless data.

"If you understand both, your head explodes."

Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Center for Democracy and Technology played devil's advocate in the discussion, itemizing points of US law that work against Google's in the Street View controversy.

"Whatever you think of this issue it is dead clear that the law is a mess," Bankston said.

Bankston said a key point was that while overhearing conversations isn't crimes, capturing wireless communications is unless the communication "is readily available to the general public."

Markus considered wireless transmissions to be just that, since gear to "sniff" the airwaves is easily available.

"With the Wall of Sheep, we are kind of implying that people who can't figure out how to set up their routers deserve about the same level of protection as sheep," Blaze said.

"Don't punish people for not being able to figure out how to turn on the crypto."

Markus was quick to agree that the technically un-savvy don't deserve to have their privacy trampled.

"We are concerned about the everyday user, which is why we are trying to get the message out there," he said of the purpose behind the Wall.

"Legislation is not going to stop the problem," he continued. "The answer is to push companies to fix it."

WiFi gear that doesn't encrypt data by default is a dying breed, according to Blaze.

Bankston was worried that US justice officials would take advantage of the mood in Washington to expand how much wireless data they could grab from people.

"How about a little sniffer on every cop's belt, or in every cruiser?" he asked rhetorically.

"The Department of Justice hasn't said how they read the law right now, which is notable and worrisome."

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in April dropped its Street View investigation, saying it could not accuse Google of breaking US law but fining the company $25,000 for what it saw as slow cooperation.

The FCC began the investigation in late 2010 after Google announced that Street View cars taking photographs of cities in more than 30 countries had inadvertently gathered data sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems.

Information sucked up by passing Street View cars included passwords, emails, and other data that was being transmitted wirelessly over unprotected routers, according to the FCC.

Google has since stopped the collection of Wi-Fi data, used to provide location-based services such as driving directions in Google Maps and other products, by Street View cars.

Street View, which was launched in 2006, lets users view panoramic street scenes on Google Maps and take a virtual "walk" through cities such as New York, Paris or Hong Kong.

$45 solar-powered cellphone

2012-07-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

It doesn't cost much to invest in some green technology in India; the Micromax X259 is a solar-powered cellphone that's priced at just $45.

Solar-powered gadgets are not a new concept in the technology world, but one that powers a fully functioning cellphone for less than the average price of a monthly phone bill is definitely a rarity. Indian mobile phone manufacturer Micromax is offering $45 cellphone that takes advantage of the hot eastern sun to juice up the device as while featuring several other functions.

While it may not be able to rival big name smartphones like the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S3, the Micromax X259 does come with a modest 2.4-inch color screen with a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, built-in VGA camera (only 0.3 megapixels), Bluetooth connectivity, media player, and dual SIM card capability. Pretty reasonable for a budget phone if we say so ourselves.

The candybar style cellphone can be charged into a wall socket like your average mobile device, or can be left charging in the sun for three hours to provide up to 90 minutes of talk time. Although we doubt anyone would actually charge their phones solely with sunlight, the feature does help add backup battery life during emergency situations without users having to buy an additional battery pack or carrying chargers around.

According to Treehugger, such a device could be useful in places like India due to frequent power outages. The country already leads the world in solar energy growth, expanding more than 700 percent between 2010 and 2011 alone. Though the seemingly affordable retail value sounds more than reasonable to the American market, the 2,499 Indian rupees price tag could actually prove to be rather costly for low-income families who earn roughly 5,000 Indian rupees a month. Hopefully, as more renewable energy devices become more of a norm in India, prices will become lower and more competitive so that everyone could have access to such green technology.

Qantas latest company to swap BlackBerry devices for iPhones

2012-07-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

Another company turns its back on the BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone. This time it's Qantas.

Following consulation with staff, as well as a look at running costs, Australia’s flagship carrier Qantas has taken the decision to switch its staff from BlackBerry phones to iPhones.

The move, which Qantas chief information officer Paul Jones said could save the company millions of dollars a year, is the latest in a series of setbacks for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, which has seen a number of high profile businesses turning away from its handsets in favor of ones made by Apple.

Speaking about the decision, Jones said, “We haven’t started [the changeover] yet but it’s not just the crew. We’re actually moving away from BlackBerry across the board. Transition from the Blackberry to the iPhone is part of Qantas’s broader mobility strategy and once complete will result in significant cost savings.”

He added that there had been “strong demand” from workers to allow them to use Apple’s popular handset, citing the iPhone’s “user-friendly interface and simple access to emails, contacts and calendars,” as reasons for the choice. Jones confirmed that the iPhone met all of Qantas’s security requirements.

And as if to rub salt into the wound for RIM, Jones also said that the airline was looking at ways to allow staff to use Android devices on a bring-your-own basis.

Qantas isn’t the country’s only major corporation to have turned its back on the BlackBerry, The Australian reported. Earlier this year IBM Australia also announced it would no longer be buying the handset for corporate use.

Global companies including the likes of oil giant Halliburton have, in recent months, also outlined plans to stop using BlackBerry devices, as has the US government’s main procurement agency, the General Services Administration (GSA).

The gradual disappearance of BlackBerry business customers is a matter of enormous concern for RIM executives. The company’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, said in March that in order to get the beleagured company back on track, he wanted to “focus on the enterprise business.”

With the rise in popularity of Apple’s iPhone, as well as devices powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, RIM has seen its business decimated, especially in North America. Its image has also been tarnished by its dismal attempt to make an impact in the tablet market with its PlayBook device and delays in the launch of its next-generation BlackBerry 10 devices, currently due for release in the early part of next year.

In other Qantas-related news, it seems that the iPhone is not the only Apple product that Australia’s national carrier has fallen for. A recent report said that from September the airline will be handing out 2200 iPads to its pilots, allowing it to reduce weight on its aircraft by doing away with the usual paper-based flight manuals.

Qantas is far from being the first airline to start equipping pilots with iPads. Those at American Airlines, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines have also been using Apple’s tablet in place of heavier, paper-based manuals.

Only Three Types of People Are Guaranteed Continuing Employment. Do You Make The List?

2012-07-15T09:48:00.001-07:00

Only Three Types of People Are Guaranteed Continuing Employment. Do You Make The List?

We are working on a sequel to our last book which explained how to deal with uncertainty in all forms. Clearly, there is nothing more uncertain today than trying to predict if you are going to have a job tomorrow. So, that is going to be the focus of book two.

The Donald is right. You could be fired.

As far as we can tell, there are only three types of people who can depend on continuing employment.

1. Skilled tradesmen like plumbers and electricians. Their only concern, other than the overall health of the economy—which, of course, is no small thing—is the increasing trend toward using plug-in parts. When customers can do the work themselves—quickly, safely and for less cost—there is little reason to hire you.

2. People who can live with how their required profession is evolving. There is always going to be a demand for nurses and teachers. And if you can accept the trends—heavier workloads and more online (as opposed to face-to-face) interactions—then you can continue as you are. You might grow progressively unhappy in the job (“this is not why I signed up to be a nurse; “I hate teaching to the test”) but you will have a job in a field that will sort of, kind of, resemble the one you entered.

3. People who can coast safely into the sunset. This used to be far more prevalent than it is today. There were employees who would, in essence, retire in place five or even sometimes 10 years before their official retirement age. Today, companies are still nice enough to allow long-time valued employees to coast, but it is going to be likely to be for five or 10 months.

But these are the only exceptions we have found. If you are in a industry that is: in total flux (publishing; music); starting to unravel (finance); or one that you suspect might soon change radically, or, if your career has recently been up-ended (or soon might be); or has never really gotten going; or you feel stuck/frustrated, your job is probably going away.

Since that is incredibly depressing, next time (Wednesday) we will outline a specific course of action to take before your job disappears.

Paul B. Brown is the co-author (along with Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer) of Just Start: Take Action; Embrace Uncertainty and Create the Future recently published by Harvard Business

Robots in Africa

2012-07-14T09:52:00.002-07:00

Ten dollars doesn’t get you a lot of parts. Then again, $35 for a computerseemed pretty outrageous not too long ago. The success of that Raspberry Pi Micro-Computer prompted professors Ken Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah to stage a contest: Design a $10 robot. Conceived as a teaching tool for use in African classrooms, such a low-cost machine could prove to be revolutionary for education in poorer countries around the world.

Launched last month and ending on Sept. 15, the contest offers prizes for any professional, student, or hobbyist who can design a $10 robot — or at least one in that neighborhood.

“Obviously a $10 is very … it’s a bit unrealistic,” says Goldberg, a professor of engineering at UC Berkeley. “But we wanted to set [a price] that would really get people thinking. And in volume, it’s not that farfetched.”

The AFRON 10 Dollar Robot Challenge offers three prizes, from $100 to $500, plus a Raspberry Pi, in each of three categories, based on the type of robot. The $10 limit is flexible — more a target price for a high-quantity production run. The prototypes, Goldberg expects, will cost more like $100, still a long way short of even a Lego Mindstorms set.

The contest is part of Goldberg and Korsah’s African Robotics Network (AFRON), a new organization built to bring robots to Africa, not for industry, but as a learning tool for students.

The contest is designed to bring robots to Africa, not for industry, but as a learning tool for students.

On a trip to Ghana, Goldberg noticed students in Korsah’s class at Ashesi University College using Mindstorms kits … then packing them up and sending them to another school to use the next week. If the $280 cost of a Mindstorms kit is prohibitive, he wondered, what could AFRON do to bring the price down?

“We set the bar high (or in this case low) to provoke really new ideas,” Goldberg says.

Still having trouble imagining a robot that can be built for $10? Goldberg is reserved in his description of what one might look like. “We wanted to be careful not to say too much,” he says. “That could bias people and basically push the design in one direction or the other.”

What the robots do isn’t as important as what the schools can do with them. They’re simply a tool for education, to teach programming and engineering. Still, he points out, using a refurbished laptop for brains (which is not included in the contest’s price limit), simple inexpensive tools like laser pointers, electric motors, microphones, and even mirrors can produce a lot of potential function.

The winning designs must use open source software, and AFRON will publish them online. The hope, says Goldberg, is that educators around the world will be able to use the design and the software, and eventually even order an inexpensive, mass-produced kit.

“My hunch is that this will be really inspirational,” Goldberg says. “People will start writing code for it.”

A ball-transporting robot, made from cardboard.

whats new

2012-07-14T05:44:00.002-07:00

In 1990, Bill Gates showed off Windows in one of its traditional forms: a shrinkwrapped box.

Way back in 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft to sell a version of the BASIC programming language for MITS’s Altair microcomputer. Their idea–producing essential system software for computers manufactured by others–turned out to be one of the greatest business models in the history of business.

And now, thirty-seven years later, the company may be about to try something new. It’s scheduled a press event for next Monday in Los Angeles, and Sharon Waxman and Alexander Kaufman of The Wrap are reporting that it will announce a Microsoft-branded tablet which will presumably run Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 for iPad-style tablets using ARM chips.

Microsoft isn’t new to the hardware game, of course: It’s created everything from mice to the ill-fated Zune to a robotic version of Barney. But if it’s ever sold a true computing device under its own name before, I’ve forgotten about it.

[UPDATE: On Twitter, James Kendrick reminded me of the Xbox, which, even if it didn't start out as a "computer," is looking more like one all the time.]

It’s pointless to speculate much until we know more about the device in question–assuming it exists–but it’s not hard to see why Microsoft might want to do this, even though the company runs the risk of ticking off other hardware manufacturers who it wants to use its software. The iPad is doing so well mostly because it’s so good; it’s so good mostly because Apple controls every aspect of the experience, from the hardware to the software to the services. By putting its own operating system on its own tablet, Microsoft can create a far purer iPad rival than if it relies on other companies to design the device.

(If third-party manufacturers treat Windows 8 as poorly as they usually treat Windows–larding it up with useless utilities, pushy security software and unwanted demoware–it’s going to be ugly, and the iPad will continue to stand alone.)

Surprisingly, given how much of a head start Android tablets have on Windows 8 ones, Microsoft still has a shot at building the first truly polished, popular iPad alternative. I never thought things would pan out this way, but it seems possible at this point that Android tablets will never quite take off.

Of course, the last time that Microsoft attempted to take on Apple with a hardware product of its own, it was the Zune, which never went much of anywhere. Nor did it really deserve to succeed: While Zunes weren’t without their virtues, every new model seemed to be chasing after last year’s iPod.

Until now, iPad rivals have suffered from a similar fate. Just when manufacturers figure out how to make something roughly comparable to an iPad, Apple releases a new iPad that raises the bar. But if a Microsoft tablet manages to make for a worthy alternative to the new iPad–either because it’s in the same ballpark or because it goes off in another direction–this could be fun.