Compute News

Microsoft's new Surface tablets make a solid first impression | ZDNet

2012-07-01T06:59:00.001-07:00

Microsoft's new Surface tablets make a solid first impression

By Ed Bott | June 19, 2012, 12:26am PDT

Summary: Microsoft’s new Surface tablets are exquisitely engineered, and no one can accuse them of being me-too products. Yesterday’s launch was impressive, but it also left many questions unanswered.

Monday, at an invitation-only media event in Los Angeles, Microsoft got the tech press to do something almost unprecedented: wait with eager anticipation for a Microsoft product announcement.

Even more astonishing is that the reveal lived up to the hype.

Microsoft’s new tablets, to be marketed under the Surface brand, are remarkable for many reasons:

They are exquisitely engineered. From a distance, the magnesium cases and ClearType displays are drop-dead gorgeous. The impression of world-class design and engineering is even more striking when you actually pick one up and play with it, as I was able to do (albeit briefly) following the press event.

The ARM-powered Windows RT model is one-tenth of a millimeter thinner than the latest iPad. It has a 10.6-inch screen with a 16:9 HD resolution, compared to the iPad’s 9.5-inch screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The larger display on the Surface means more weight—24 grams extra, to be precise, or just under an ounce more than its rival from Cupertino.

A second model, built around an Intel Ivy Bridge CPU, runs Windows 8 Professional. Compared to its Windows RT cousin it’s slightly less thin (13.5 mm instead of 9.4 mm) and heavier (903 g, or a sliver over 2 pounds, compared to 1-1/2 pounds).

This is no “me too” product. Both Surface models are unapologetically unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. The signature feature—one that probably has some Apple product designers wondering “Why didn’t we think of that?”—is the magnetic cover that snaps firmly into place and doubles as a keyboard. The Touch Cover (3 mm thin) comes in an assortment of bold colors and includes a full-size keyboard with slightly raised keys and a trackpad. The Type Cover, at 5mm, uses the same layout, but with keys that have the travel you would expect from a conventional keyboard. To appreciate the clever design and solid working of the magnetic latch, you really have to try it.

There’s also a kickstand integrated into the case itself. Snap it open to rest the tablet open at a 22-degree angle, which is ideal for watching a movie, chatting via webcam, or typing.

Both covers offer some of the power-saving features of the iPad Smart Cover, but the integrated keyboard and kickstand are a genuine improvement. You can turn a Surface tablet into the functional equivalent of a notebook without third-party add-ons. And the snug-fitting, rigid cover makes it possible to use the device in this configuration even on a lap.

Oh, and both models have full-size USB ports (USB 2.0 for the Windows RT model, USB 3.0 for the Windows 8 Professional version). That’s a key differentiator from the iPad.

It’s a bold break from Microsoft’s classic business model. For years, Microsoft has been telling OEMs to pay attention to user experience, stop loading machines with crapware, and concentrate on a few great models instead of a full line of dozens of mediocre offerings. This introduction is the same message, delivered with genuine emotion and the equivalent of a punch in the gut: “OEMs, please pay attention. This is how you build a PC.”

In the press release announcing the new tablets, Microsoft says, “OEMs will have cost and feature parity on Windows 8 and Windows RT.” But it’s safe to say that Steve Ballmer’s voicemail box is overflowing with colorful messages, delivered at full volume, by the heads of the OEMs who will have to compete with these new designs.

Microsoft kept this project secret, with not a single leak. One executive told me that the team working on Surface started its work three years ago, at the same time that development began on Windows 8. Using the trademark of an already-established product helped, as did a windowless lab protected by the kind of security normally reserved for government agencies with three-letter acronyms.

So how many other, similarly well kept secrets are in the pipeline?

The room full of reporters and analysts who watched the unveiling were generally approving and occasionally wowed by the spectacle. But the launch left many unanswered questions, a few genuine uncertainties, and a slight bit of disappointment.

How much will these gizmos cost? Microsoft isn’t talking details. The official line is relatively vague:

Suggested retail pricing will be announced closer to availability and is expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class PC.

If one assumes that “comparable ARM tablet” means an iPad equipped with 32 or 64 GB of memory, then the equivalent Windows RT Surface models should cost $600 and $700, respectively. Of course, that price will presumably include the keyboard cover (available as extra-cost add-ons from Apple and third parties). It will also include Microsoft Office. (In my hands-on tests, I was able to try out the Microsoft Office 2013 apps on a Windows RT Surface.)

As for the Windows 8 Professional Surface, the current crop of Ultrabooks runs $999, give or take a couple hundred dollars. That is, not coincidentally, the starting price of a MacBook Air.

Of course, one could make the case that a single Surface device is actually two devices in one—a tablet and a keyboard-equipped notebook. If prospective buyers accept that proposition, then a “competitive” price will seem like a bargain.

When can you buy one? Put your credit card back in your wallet:

Surface for Windows RT will release with the general availability [GA] of Windows and the Windows 8 Pro model will be available about 90 days later. Both will be sold in the Microsoft Stores in the US and available through select online Microsoft Stores.

The smart money expects Windows 8 GA in October, which means a four-month wait for ARM-powered Surface tablets. And you’ll have to wait till early 2013 to get your hands on an Intel-powered Surface.

That’s disappointing. As I wrote yesterday, “Whatever Microsoft unveils tomorrow, I hope it’s not another big announcement of an exciting future product that won’t reach customers for 4-6 months or maybe even until next year.” Oops.

One possible reason for the long wait is competitive pressure. If other OEMs will be releasing their own devices to compete with Microsoft’s designs, it would be unsporting—and attract the attention of antitrust regulators—for Microsoft to beat them to market.

Detailed specs are sketchy. In the private demo area after the event, Joshua Topolsky of The Verge and I peppered Microsoft reps for details on specs like screen resolution, but we got no definitive answers. The press release says the Windows RT model has a “ClearType HD display,” while the Pro model has a “ClearType Full HD display.”

In his onstage introduction of the Pro model, Microsoft’s Mike Angiulo noted its “1080 resolution,” which would explain the “Full HD” label. Based on my inspection of the Windows RT version, I suspect it’s a 1366×768 device, which can handle 720p HD content.

Still, we shouldn’t need to ask for basic specs like this.

Battery life? No comment. It’s reasonable to expect that the two devices will be able to match Apple’s specs for the equivalent devices, but we won’t know until we can test shipping hardware.

This announcement was unprecedented both in its form and in its substance, and it will take some time to digest the impact of it all.

Will these new, unquestionably impressive designs put to rest the doubts that some critics have expressed about the Metro user experience?

Will consumers be confused by the differences between two similarly named devices with very different capabilities? A TV reporter I spoke with struggled with what should be a simple question: Do both these devices run Windows 8?

How will Android device makers react? The current crop of Android-powered tablets is incredibly weak compared to the iPad. The new Surface designs offer another point of comparison where Android falls far short.

How will Apple respond? Tim Cook’s dismissive remarks about Windows 8 tablets—“You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator…”—might ring a little hollow now that the real thing is available for comparison.

We’ll learn the answers to those questions over time. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these sleek new devices for more than 10 minutes.

Microsoft's new Surface tablets make a solid first impression | ZDNet:

'via Blog this'

Who could -- and probably should -- buy RIM? | ZDNet

2012-07-01T06:58:00.001-07:00

Who could -- and probably should -- buy RIM? | ZDNet:

Who could -- and probably should -- buy RIM?

By Zack Whittaker | June 29, 2012, 6:40am PDT

Summary: BlackBerry maker Research in Motion can stick around, split off and share its products, or sell off completely. Who could make a bid for its patents, its network or phone unit — or even the entire business?

Research in Motion, the BlackBerry maker, is sinking.

The company’s first-quarter earnings paint a dire picture from the once-proud smartphone giant, which left the company with open wounds as it expects to miss further targets for the upcoming second-quarter.

A RIM spokesperson told sister site CNET it has hired advisors — notably J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital — to “examine ways to leverage the BlackBerryplatform through partnerships, licensing opportunities, and strategic business model alternatives.”

The first sign of a sale: get the ba nkers in, and RIM has done exactly that.

On Thursday, RIM announced it would cut 5,000 employees as part of a corporate restructure, after missing analyst expectations by a wide gap. It announced a $518 million loss on revenue of $2.8 billion, only a month after it said it expected to announce an operating loss.

The BlackBerry maker is still selling smartphones, and — believe it or not — it’s managed go get out 280,000 PlayBook tablets; but it is holding back on the forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system and compatible handsets.

Even Wall Street analysts said RIM could “run out of cash and ultimately fail, even with the launch of its now-delayed BlackBerry 10 device early next year,” according to Reuters.

RIM can stay and stand its ground, split off and share its products through strategic licensing, orsell off the company completely.

But who would want a floundering former smartphone giant? It’s more than just a smartphone-building unit. It has a data network and a valued $1.3 billion to $3 billion patent portfolio, according to Macquarie analysts.

Let’s see who could have what, based on analysts’ predictions and practical implications.

Apple

The Cupertino-based technology giant could make a bid for RIM’s data network. Its already-established place in the enterprise market could convince the company into buying the government-grade email service to bolster its government and enterprise iMessage platform. Many former BlackBerry users are defecting to the iPhone anyway.

But Apple already has iOS and doesn’t need another operating system, ruling out a complete company buyout, and large acquisitions are typically uncharacteristic for Apple.

Amazon

Retail giant turned tablet maker Amazon reportedly looked at buying RIM in late 2011. The originalReuters report, citing anonymous sources, said RIM turned down the officer because it wanted to “fix its problems on its own.”

Amazon could acquire the BlackBerry Messenger functionality for its emerging market presence, and could lead to a much-needed boost in Amazon’s market share among the bigwigs away from other Android-based devices and the iPad juggernaut.

TD Securities said in an analysts’ note that e-commerce could be a “vibrant use” of the secure RIM network.

Canadian or U.S. government

In August, I argued the Canadian government could extend an olive branch to the company, but this looks increasingly unlikely. RIM plans to cut 5,000 jobs by the end of this year, pegging the total employee base will be reduced to about 11,500.

If RIM was Nokia’s size and at the low hundred-thousand mark, Canada might step in to protect the vast number of jobs. Canada said previously it would not block a foreign sale of RIM should a company make an offer, but stubborn RIM may not even allow a sale until it’s too late.

RIM isn’t central to the financial interests of Canada. It’s not like General Motors, or the Royal Bank of Canada. They didn’t even step in to help Nortel, a company that was far more critical to Canada’s economic situation than RIM is or ever was.

The U.S. government could buy the data network to keep its existing range of enterprise-enabled BlackBerry smartphones with an eye on replacing the devices over time, but it would be a tough sell to justify to the taxpayer, who must ultimately foot the bill.

Facebook

The world’s largest social network, with around 950 million users, has been on and off with developing a dedicated Facebook smartphone. RIM could offer device-building expertise in not only smartphone design but in the manufacturing process.

But analysts warn that it has little enterprise value and could be a drag on Facebook’s margins.

General Patent Corp. chief executive Alexander Poltorak told ZDNet: “Facebook seems a possible buyer of RIM’s patents. They have money, they need more patents and they are in the market looking for patents to buy.”

Google

With Android, like Apple, Google doesn’t need another operating system. It also doesn’t need a data network because it has secure email provider Postini hooked into Google Apps to provide much of the same function as the RIM network.

What Google really wants is RIM’s patent portfolio. “RIM would be a patent play for Google,” TD Securities analysts said.

General Patent’s Poltorak said: “Google would be a logical candidate since they had bid for this patents last summer at the Nortel auction and lost. However, Google’s main purpose in buying up patents is to wield them at Apple, but Apple is already licensed under these patents so no one can assert them against Apple.”

Microsoft

Analysts believe that Microsoft’s pitch to buy the smartphone-building side of RIM’s business would be an “atypical” move, but would be a market share play. A smartphone business would boost Microsoft’s poor Windows Phone market share — currently at around 4 percent, according to comScore — to around 15 percent overall.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Microsoft had “explored the possibility” of a buyout bid along with Nokia. The two companies already work together on a BlackBerry enterprise email service for Office 365, but it remains unclear as to whether Microsoft would make a firm bid for the small-in-comparison number of part Exchange/part BlackBerry users.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley told me she doesn’t think Microsoft will or should buy any part of RIM.

“If they did, they would do serious damage to their lead Windows Phone partner Nokia. If Microsoft bought any part of RIM — other than RIM patents — it would seem that Microsoft wanted to be in the smartphone-manufacturing business. If Microsoft becomes a phone maker, why would they need Nokia any more?”

She noted that Microsoft executives this week denied it would build its own branded smartphone, saying it was “very satisfied” with its partnership with Nokia, seemingly ruling out any chance of a purchase.

Nokia

Unless Microsoft and Nokia joined forces, a buyout of RIM would all but certainly financially cripple Nokia. Not only would a major acquisition of new smartphones and a two operating systems — BlackBerry OS, and the forthcoming QNX-based BlackBerry 10 — add complication to the Windows Phone switch-over, which is currently in progress.

Nokia is also facing a restructuring following a reshuffle of its production plants, while at the same time cutting around 4,000 jobs. With its own dwindling market share, Nokia would likely steer clear of RIM altogether.

Back to the age-old question: who falls first, RIM or Nokia? At the moment, it’s likely the former but the latter isn’t faring so well either.

Samsung

Rumblings last year suggested Samsung may have wanted to put in a price for RIM, but “may have” are the two key words.

Samsung has experimented outside the realms of Android with Windows Phone software, and also sought diversification with Bada OS. The Korean smartphone giant is also looking for enterprise security approval, and a RIM acquisition could certainly help speed this process along.

According to reports, only days after RIM hired Goldman Sachs earlier this year to field potential buyout bids, it looked to Samsung as a company wanting to be sold. The flailing smartphone maker’s share price went up by more than 10 percent, despite Samsung’s announcement shortly after denying the claims.

The bottom line

The real fact here is that RIM may not be that attractive as a complete purchase from a single entity. Anyone who can afford to buy RIM — even at a $7 a share mark, which it reached on Friday — probably wouldn’t want to buy the company flat out.

Having said that, there is a chance a major player could swoop in and buy the company in full. With that, as part of the transaction, we could see assets being divested to third-parties at the same time, such as what we saw with Novell.

The Canadian and U.S. governments in coalition could buy the data network because both still operate BlackBerry devices in the field, while Microsoft might want to chip in a bit so it can operate secure and encrypted email from its Office 365 service.

The Chinese may want the manufacturing and design portfolio, Apple may want the patents, while Nokia — despite its own problems — may want to expand its hardware range with the BlackBerry smartphone ’shell’ devices.

Image credit: Research in Motion, CNET.

'via Blog this'

Sex Tech: Facebook’s “not so fresh” feeling, Google Glass porn | ZDNet

2012-07-01T06:56:00.001-07:00

Sex Tech: Facebook’s “not so fresh” feeling, Google Glass porn

By Violet Blue | June 29, 2012, 12:48am PDT

Summary: Google Glass porn plans, Facebook and Femfresh face off, OkCupid privacy report, reactions to Lara Croft’s rape-tinged reboot, Zynga’s new game might have sex in it, and more.

Facebook’s agony over vaginal nicknames, Google Glasses already sized up for porn, OkCupid on trial for privacy and tested for fun, reactions to Lara Croft’s potential rape and more.

Google Glasses destined to be pornified

When Google announced its “Project Glass” eyeglasses were about to be made available to developers at Google I/O this week, Pink Visual spokesman Quentin Boyer said his company will be first in line to develop and innovate with them for porn once as soon as Pink Visual can get a set.

Porn on Google’s Project Glass Is Inevitable (PCWorld)

Facebook fight over vaginal pet names

Femfresh, the brand specialising in feminine hygiene is facing an escalating social media storm about its terms for female genitalia.

Things got worse when it updated its cover photo on its Facebook page claiming that Femfresh is ‘one of the kindest ways to care for your kitty, nooni, lala, vagina, froo froo!’.

Femfresh in Facebook storm over infantile terms for ‘vagina’ (ZDNet)

UK ISP porn block idea worsened, wrapped in double-speak

You’ve already heard that the UK government wants to implement porn and “unsuitable material” blocks at the ISP level for all residents of the country.

The UK government is to consider putting (even more) extra pressure on computer users to filter out pornography when setting up internet accounts, suggesting that people should automatically be barred from accessing adult material (and other types of material considered “unsuitable”) in order “to protect children.”

The latest proposed system proposed is called “active choice-plus.”

Automatic bar on net porn considered (BBC)

Chuild porn made legal, then made illegal in New York

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and leaders of the Senate and Assembly reached agreement on legislation making all viewing of child pornography online illegal.

It is in response to a Court of Appeals ruling in May that said New York’s law was outdated, technologically, because it required a viewer to download or otherwise directly access child porn for it to be considered possession.

Cuomo, lawmakers agree on online child porn bill (WSJ)

Reaction hostile to Lara Croft as “sympathetic rape victim”

After it was announced at E3 that Lara Croft would be rebooted as a sympathetic character because she is weaker and rapey-er, lots of people were furious.

An op-ed in the New Statesman said,

(…) let’s talk about the sh*t storm broiling over the pre-release material for the next Tomb Raider game, in which the protagonist, Lara Croft, is retconned as a survivor of sexual and physical assault.
(…) Industry mandarins seem to have assumed that gamers, by which they mean male gamers, can only carry on loving cold, powerful, beautiful Lara Croft if someone “break[s] her down”.

Lara Croft and rape stories: breaking down the b*tch(New Statesman)

Tomb Raider game makers go on damage control after Lara Croft PR disaster

Eidos life president Ian Livingstone says the upcoming reboot of Tomb Raider still features a strong, capable heroine and believes reaction to the game’s controversial trailer - and the, you know, interview with stuff about rape and Lara Croft - have been blown out of proportion.

Livingstone: Tomb Raider controversy “blown out of proportion” (Edge Magazine, thanks Darkstar)

Spammers trade porn for CAPTCHA crackers

Spammers – not hackers, as the title states – are wooing patsys with free porn or games in exchange for help cracking CAPTCHAs on targeted websites, security researchers say.

Hackers Offer Free Porn To Beat Security Checks (Informationweek)

New Zynga game doesn’t really have “virtual sex” in it

Zynga, makers of the groundbreaking social network games “FarmVille” and “CityVille,” launched today “The Ville,” a “house-and-people” themed game that people are saying includes virtual sex, but in truth only has level-unlock scene where hearts float over a bed.

New Zynga Game ‘The Ville’ Includes Virtual Sex (XBIZ)

OkCupid tested with fake profiles

Data analyst Jon Millward published the results of ten fake OkCupid profiles to asess the male-female dynamic in online dating.

Ten fake profiles, one OkCupid experiment: OkCupid On Trial(ZDNet)

…But OkCupid still has privacy issues

A new report shows that privacy on OkCupid, which was acquired by Match.com last year, is all but nonexistent.

OkCupid Offers 7 Million Potential Dates but Little Privacy (ReadWriteWeb)

New best practices on gender in tech forthcoming

The Commission on Science and Technology (CSTD), in collaboration with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), plans to publish a series of case studies highlighting best practice in gender equality policies in science, technology and innovation (STI) of governments around the world.

UN to survey gender sensitivity of science policies (SciDev)

Crazy porn file-sharing lawsuit would make everyone guilty

Liberty Media Holdings (LMH) is suing two roommates in New York, alleging the illegal downloading of a pornographic film, even though LMH argues that only one made the infringing copy.

Remarkably, LMH claims that the non-downloading roommate is also responsible for copyright infringement, simply because the Internet subscription is in his name and he might have known his roommate sometimes made illegal downloads.

Porn maker’s lawsuit against roommate threatens free Wi-Fi

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

'via Blog this'

How To Scale A $1 Billion Startup: A Guide From Instagram Co-Founder Mike Krieger | TechCrunch

2012-04-12T15:13:00.001-07:00

How To Scale A $1 Billion Startup: A Guide From Instagram Co-Founder Mike Krieger | TechCrunch:

Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have been noticeably silent since their photo-sharing app Instagram was bought by Facebook earlier this week for $1 billion.

In the meantime there has been a lot written about that deal, from praise to backlash, parsing what it meansand why.

But if you’d like to hear a little (actually, a lot) about how Instagram got to where it did, read on.

Last night, Krieger gave a presentation at an Airbnb event for employees and members of the network, part of a regular series called the Tech Talk. The subject was “Scaling Instagram.”

Considering his company was just bought for $1 billion, it’s a pretty remarkable effort, 185 slides in all.

The talk, as the name of the event would suggest, is mainly about engineering and back-end work. It goes through some of the obstacles and solutions that Krieger and team faced as Instagram instantly picked up millions of users. Some notable points:

It’s true that Instagram never had to create a “fail whale” but they had some clear 404′s early on and “tons of errors.”

Possibly the truest test of scaling: “replacing all components of a car while driving it at 100mph”. Also: Don’t try to reinvent the wheel in your work. And be open to getting knowledge from others (“awesome advisors”) — without passing the buck (“don’t think ‘someone else will join and take care of this’”).

In Krieger’s view, that Android launch it had earlier this month ranks right up there with some of the most important aspects of running Instagram smoothly. (One slide notes “scaling for Android” as just as essential as choosing the right database and technology and staying nimble.) Figuring out how they could get that right was one reason why it took so long to bring that Android app to market.

And simplicity, one of the things that makes Instagram so attractive, appears to be a philosophy and approach that Krieger & Co. follow right through to the most back-end parts of the site.

“The cleanest solution with the fewest moving parts as possible,” he says is the goal. We look forward to seeing how that evolves with Instagram’s next chapter.

Google’s Page, Founders’ Letter: 2-for-1 Stock Split An Investment For The Long Term, Not Big Acquisitions | TechCrunch

2012-04-12T15:07:00.001-07:00

Google’s Page, Founders’ Letter: 2-for-1 Stock Split An Investment For The Long Term, Not Big Acquisitions | TechCrunch:

Larry Page kicked off Google’s earnings call today with a run-down of his statements in the Founders’ Letter and some broad brushstrokes around the company’s new stock structure, which will see Google create a new class of shares, effectively a two-for-one stock split for existing shareholders.

As with the company’s original two-class voting structure, Page today reiterated that this new structure is a sign of the company’s long-term investment in its future, but not a signal that it is planning “any big acquisitions.” It is also something of a bold statement on the part of Google — possibly to show the company’s confidence in its business in the run-up to Facebook’s IPO, and to give its founders more control over how Google develops in the future.

Some points on the new structure, which is explained in more detail below, and will be further laid out next week in a proxy statement that Google will file with the SEC:

The new class, Class C, will have many of the same existing rights as Class A and B but no voting rights, Page said. “Everyone will retain the same voting interests.”

If Larry Page, Sergey Bring and Eric Schmidt sell shares in the Class C stock in the future, their voting rights will also diminish proportionately via a “stapling” provision.

What to make of this? One take we have seen: this could essentially give a lot more power to Google founders. Effectively the new class will not have voting rights while the Class A shares, held by Page, Brin and Schmidt will continue to hold voting rights. Currently, the three control 66 percent of voting power over the company’s shares.

This is an aggressive move but considering that Mark Zuckerberg will essentially be in control of Facebook (per his shareholding as outlined in the S-1) it is perhaps natural that Google’s leaders want that level of control as well.

Page explains it otherwise in the Founders’ letter: First he explains how many the products that Google builds require years of commitment. But “the day-to-day dilution from routine equity-based employee compensation and other possible dilution, such as stock-based acquisitions, will likely undermine [Google's current] dual-class structure and our aspirations for Google over the very long term. We have put our hearts into Google and hope to do so for many more years to come. So we want to ensure that our corporate structure can sustain these efforts and our desire to improve the world.”

Google will be filing a proxy statement with the SEC next week with more detail on how the stock split will work.

The full Founders’ Letter below.

2012 Founders’ Letter

INTRODUCTION

Throughout our evolution, from privately held start-up to large, publicly listed company, we have managed Google for the long term—enjoying tremendous success as a result, especially since our IPO in 2004. Sergey and I hoped, though we did not expect, that Google would have such significant impact, and this progress has made us even more impatient to do important things that matter in the world. Our enduring love for Google comes from a strong desire to create technology products that enrich millions of people’s lives in deep and meaningful ways. To fulfill these dreams, we need to ensure that Google remains a successful, growing business that can generate significant returns for everyone involved.

CORPORATE STRUCTURE

When we went public, we created a dual-class voting structure. Our goal was to maintain the freedom to focus on the long term by ensuring that the management team, in particular Eric, Sergey and I, retained control over Google’s destiny. As we explained in our first founders’ letter:“We are creating a corporate structure that is designed for stability over long time horizons. By investing in Google, you are placing an unusual long term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me, and on our innovative approach…

We want Google to become an important and significant institution. That takes time, stability and independence…

In the transition to public ownership, we have set up a corporate structure that will make it harder for outside parties to take over or influence Google. This structure will also make it easier for our management team to follow the long term, innovative approach emphasized earlier…

The main effect of this structure is likely to leave our team, especially Sergey and me, with increasingly significant control over the company’s decisions and fate, as Google shares change hands…

New investors will fully share in Google’s long term economic future but will have little ability to influence its strategic decisions through their voting rights…

Our colleagues will be able to trust that they themselves and their labors of hard work, love and creativity will be well cared for by a company focused on stability and the long term…

As an investor, you are placing a potentially risky long term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me. …. Sergey and I are committed to Google for the long term.”

I wanted to quote all that because these were the clear, well-publicized expectations we established for investors in 2004. While this decision was controversial at the time, we believe with hindsight it was absolutely the right thing to do. Eight years later, these statements are still remarkably accurate, and everyone involved has realized tremendous benefits as a result. Given Google’s success, it’s unsurprising that this type of dual-class governance structure is now somewhat standard among newer technology companies.In our experience, success is more likely if you concentrate on the long term. Technology products often require significant investment over many years to fulfill their potential. For example, it took over three years just to ship our first Android handset, and then another three years on top of that before the operating system truly reached critical mass. These kinds of investments are not for the faint-hearted.We have protected Google from outside pressures and the temptation to sacrifice future opportunities to meet short-term demands. Long-term product investments, like Chrome and YouTube, which now enjoy phenomenal usage, were made with a significant degree of independence.We have a structure that prevents outside parties from taking over or unduly influencing our management decisions. However, day-to-day dilution from routine equity-based employee compensation and other possible dilution, such as stock-based acquisitions, will likely undermine this dual-class structure and our aspirations for Google over the very long term. We have put our hearts into Google and hope to do so for many more years to come. So we want to ensure that our corporate structure can sustain these efforts and our desire to improve the world.

EFFECTIVELY A STOCK SPLIT: AND A NEW CLASS OF STOCK

Today we announced plans to create a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be listed on NASDAQ. These shares will be distributed via a stock dividend to all existing stockholders: the owner of each existing share will receive one new share of the non-voting stock, giving investors twice the number of shares they had before. It’s effectively a two-for-one stock split—something many of our investors have long asked us for. These non-voting shares will be available for corporate uses, like equity-based employee compensation, that might otherwise dilute our governance structure.We recognize that some people, particularly those who opposed this structure at the start, won’t support this change—and we understand that other companies have been very successful with more traditional governance models. But after careful consideration with our board of directors, we have decided that maintaining this founder-led approach is in the best interests of Google, our shareholders and our users. Having the flexibility to use stock without diluting our structure will help ensure we are set up for success for decades to come.In November 2009, Sergey and I published plans to sell a modest percentage of our overall stock, ending in 2015. We are currently halfway through those plans and we don’t expect any changes to that, certainly not as the result of this new potential class. We both remain very much committed to Google for the long term.It’s important to bear in mind that this proposal will only have an effect on governance over the very long term. In fact, there’s no particular urgency to make these changes now—we don’t have an unusually big acquisition planned, in case you were wondering. It’s just that since we know what we want to do, there’s no reason to delay the decision. Also note that there will be no immediate change in votes, because everyone will still have the same number. In addition, Eric, Sergey and I have all agreed to “stapling” arrangements so that, above set thresholds, if our economic interest in Google were to decline, our votes would as well. We also have provisions to ensure all shareholders are treated fairly from an economic perspective.For more details on all of this, please see the postscript below from our Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, and the preliminary proxy statement we will file with the SEC next week.

CONCLUSION

We have always managed Google for the long term, investing heavily in the big bets we hope will make a significant difference in the world. Some of these bets have been tremendous, funding our activities and generating significant gains for our shareholders. Others have been less successful. But the ability to take these kinds of risks has been crucial to Google’s overall success and we aim to maintain this pioneering culture going forward.The proposal we announced today is consistent with the governance philosophy we articulated when we took the company public, as well as the trend for newer technology companies to adopt strong dual-class structures. We believe that it will provide great competitive strength—insulating Google from short-term pressures, whatever the source, for a long time to come, while also giving us more flexibility around equity grants.Investors and others have always taken a big bet on us, the founders, and that bet will likely last longer as a result of these changes. We are honored that so many of you have put your trust in us and we recognize the tremendous responsibility that rests on our shoulders. We think this is a good thing because users rely on Google to produce and operate amazing technology products and to safely and responsibly store their data. This is our passion.Sergey and I share a profound belief in the potential for technology to improve people’s lives and we are enormously excited about what lies ahead. I couldn’t write a better conclusion to this founder’s letter than what we wrote in 2004… so here goes: “We have a strong commitment to our users worldwide, their communities, the web sites in our network, our advertisers, our investors, and of course our employees. Sergey and I, and the team will do our best to make Google a long term success and the world a better place.”Larry Page CEO and Co-founderSergey Brin Co-founderApril 2012

Postscript from David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer, Google Inc.

This is not the usual yada yada… so please read on.Although we’ll be filing a comprehensive proxy statement soon, I wanted to share some details about today’s proposal to create a new class of stock and the process our board of directors followed to approve it.As Larry and Sergey note above, the stock dividend we are announcing today will have the basic effect of a two-for-one stock split. Each holder of a share of Class A or Class B common stock will receive one share of the new non-voting Class C capital stock. So after the dividend, a stockholder who currently owns one Class A share with a single vote will continue to own that share plus one Class C share without a vote.The Class A shares will continue to trade under the “GOOG” ticker symbol, while the Class C shares will trade under a different ticker symbol, so stockholders will be able to trade these shares, just as they can with Class A shares today. Except for voting rights, the Class C shares will have the same rights as the existing Class A and Class B shares. As is typically the case with stock splits, the Class C stock dividend will be tax-free.One thing to keep in mind is that immediately after the Class C dividend, all stockholders, including Larry, Sergey and Eric, will retain the same voting interest they hold prior to the dividend. In addition, Larry, Sergey and Eric have agreed to subject their shares to a Transfer Restriction Agreement. This agreement will maintain the same link between their voting and economic interests that exists today, even if they sell some of their non-voting Class C shares. If the founders or Eric wish to sell or transfer their non-voting Class C shares, a “stapling” provision in the agreement requires them to either sell an equal number of Class B shares, or convert an equal number of Class B shares into Class A shares. No other stockholders will be subject to these restrictions upon the transfer or sale of their shares. The stapling requirement will terminate as to the founders when their collective ownership falls below a certain threshold, and as to Eric when his ownership falls below a certain threshold. Further details of the Transfer Restriction Agreement will be included in our proxy, but it’s important to note that the stapling provision is designed so that, subject to the thresholds, the votes held by the founders and Eric will be reduced proportionally as their economic interest in the company declines.Our board of directors carefully considered this proposal to create a new class of stock before reaching a decision. In January 2011, the board established a special committee, comprised of independent, non-management board members to consider a new class of stock, or other alternatives. This committee retained its own financial and legal advisers to assist with its deliberations, and met on numerous occasions over the 15 months that the special committee considered the proposal separately from the board. The committee recommended, and the board unanimously approved, today’s proposal.The proposal is subject to the approval of a majority of the voting power of Google’s common stock, voting together as a single class, at our annual meeting on June 21, 2012. Given that Larry, Sergey, and Eric control the majority of voting power and support this proposal, we expect it to pass. The Board of Directors has not set a record date for the issuance of the Class C dividend and currently expects to set the date following the annual meeting.Next week, we’ll file a preliminary proxy statement with the SEC, which will contain further details regarding today’s proposal.David Drummond Chief Legal Officer, Google Inc.April 2012

Windows Phone Better Than iPhone - Business Insider

2012-04-12T15:04:00.001-07:00

Windows Phone Better Than iPhone - Business Insider:

Despite its flaws, there's still a lot to like about Windows Phone 7.

It's a unique take on a mobile operating system.

Unlike Android, which is in many ways a copycat of the iPhone, Windows Phone stands out as a fresh take on mobile.

And in some ways, it's actually better than iPhone, the top-selling smartphone at the moment. We've been playing around with Windows Phone 7 a lot since the launch of the Nokia Lumia 900 and put together a few features that make it better than the iPhone.

WARNING: Before you go nuts in the comments, let's be clear. We're not saying Windows Phone is better overall. We're not saying iPhone is better overall. These are just individual things we think Windows Phone does better than the iPhone. That's it.

Larry Page Just Dropped A Huge Hint That A Google Tablet Is Coming Soon - Business Insider

2012-04-12T15:02:00.001-07:00

Larry Page Just Dropped A Huge Hint That A Google Tablet Is Coming Soon - Business Insider: "Larry Page strongly hinted that Google has plans for a cheaper tablet during the company's earnings call today.
When asked by an analyst about Google's tablet plans, Page noted cheaper tablets running Android have seen great success. (He specifically mentioned one that doesn't run a "full version of Android," e.g. Amazon's Kindle Fire.)
Page then said he thinks there will be a lot of success with budget tablets, saying "it's an area we're quite focused on."
There have been a lot of rumors lately that Google plans to release it's own tablet running a clean version of Android. The tablet will likely be sold by Google via a special online store.
The rumors also say the tablet will be a 7-inch device made by Asus and cost about $200, the same price as the Kindle Fire."

'via Blog this'

Boeing To Release A Super-Secure Android Smartphone Later This Year | TechCrunch

2012-04-12T15:00:00.001-07:00

Boeing To Release A Super-Secure Android Smartphone Later This Year | TechCrunch:

As if producing commercial airliners, helicopters, and satellites didn’t keep Boeing busy enough, the company revealed earlier this week that they would soon be branching out into a slightly different market.National Defense Magazine reports that Boeing is currently working on an highly-secure Android-based smartphone of all things, and that it should see a release later this year.

Boeing President Roger Krone declined to go into specifics when it came to the device’s hardware or release date, though he did note the Boeing Phone (the company hasn’t officially decided on a name yet) is nearing the end of its development cycle. It seems as though the device has been in the works for a while so it’s a safe bet that the spec sheet won’t be the most competitive, and I wouldn’t expect to see anything newer than Froyo or Gingerbread running on it.

If you hadn’t already guessed, this isn’t the sort of device you’ll be able to pick up at your local mom-and-pop cell phone store. In developing their Android phone, Boeing kept an eye on big competitors in the secure communications market, who often price their proprietary devices in the five-figure range. Thanks in part to the inclusion of a free (not to mention robust) mobile operating system, Boeing plans to introduce their smartphone at a much lower price, which should please the procurement folks within the Defense Department and other security-conscious operations.

Cost apparently isn’t the only reason that Boeing opted to create an Android device — with Google’s OS accounting for over around 50% of the U.S. smartphone market, users are coming to expect more out of their work-issued devices. As Krone told National Defense Magazine’s Stew Magnuson, the Boeing Phone will give customers “what they are used to seeing [on consumer market smartphones] and give them the functionality from the security perspective.”

Boeing isnt the first company to surprise us with news of a security-conscious mobile device — Dell surprised us late last year when they announced that the their discontinued (and oft-maligned) Dell Streak 5 was the first Android device to be given the official seal of approval by the U.S. Department of Defense. Folks within the organization were apparently fond of the mini-slate’s design, though I have to wonder how well those things actually hold up in the field.

Google Announces A New Stock Structure So It Can Still Pay With Stock Without Losing Founder Control - Business Insider

2012-04-12T14:59:00.001-07:00

Google Announces A New Stock Structure So It Can Still Pay With Stock Without Losing Founder Control - Business Insider:

Google just announced plans for a new stock structure, which effectively creates a 2-for-1 stock split.

Every shareholder will get a non-voting share of Google stock which will be listed on the NASDAQ.

Google will basically have two types of stocks trading on the NASDAQ. It will have an "A share" which is the stock with voting powers, and a "C share," which doesn't have voting powers.

Google is doing this so that its founders can maintain control over the company, while still paying out equity based compensation.

This was a much more common maneuver years ago. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has a similar structure. In general, the "C shares" tend to trade at a discount to the "A shares."

The stock is up 1% on the news in after-hour trading.

Here's the explanation of the move:

Today we announced plans to create a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be listed on NASDAQ. These shares will be distributed via a stock dividend to all existing stockholders: the owner of each existing share will receive one new share of the non-voting stock, giving investors twice the number of shares they had before. It’s effectively a two-for-one stock split—something many of our investors have long asked us for. These non-voting shares will be available for corporate uses, like equity-based employee compensation, that might otherwise dilute our governance structure.

We recognize that some people, particularly those who opposed this structure at the start, won’t support this change—and we understand that other companies have been very successful with more traditional governance models. But after careful consideration with our board of directors, we have decided that maintaining this founder-led approach is in the best interests of Google, our shareholders and our users. Having the flexibility to use stock without diluting our structure will help ensure we are set up for success for decades to come.

Nokia Launches Its First Windows-Based NFC Phone, the 610, With Orange | TechCrunch

2012-04-11T15:33:00.001-07:00

Nokia Launches Its First Windows-Based NFC Phone, the 610, With Orange | TechCrunch:

Nokia has been weathering a series of glitches around the launch of its Lumia range of Windows Phone devices — the most recent of which saw the company issue credits to users affected by data connection issues on the new Lumia 900. It is pressing on with new devices, though, and we have confirmed with sources close to the company that it will be launching its first NFC-enabled Windows Phone in Europe, a version of the Lumia 610, at 1pm UK time today — along with a partnership with a European operator, France Telecom’s Orange, to launch the device “across Europe.”

Update: Orange and Nokia have now officially announced the 610. The details are noted as below. The pair say that the device has been certified for contactless payments both with MasterCard PayPass technology, and with Visa’s mobile application for payments at the point of sale, Visa payWave, which means it will work when activated and used with merchants that have linked up with this technology.

Nokia first unveiled the phone accidentally via a video on YouTube, which it then made private. Before it did that, a copy of it was made by TheGadgetBuff and picked up by The Next Web, which also published a photo of a display noting a 2pm launch. We have confirmed with sources that the launch is taking place at 1pm UK time.

The source told us the device will be launching with an operator, and in the video (embedded below) Nokia’s lead program manager for NFC, Andrea Bociaccola, says that the operator is Orange. We have confirmed that the launch will be “across Europe” according to our well-placed source.
It is not clear whether this launch is going to be in one of Orange’s market or several
Orange has mobile operations throughout Europe, including the UK, as well as Africa and the Middle East.

Orange has made a big push into rolling out NFC in its home market of France, and more recently has also committed to services in the UK. In March the company said it had sold 500,000 NFC-enabled handsets in France — a mix of Samsung, Acer and BlackBerry devices. Rollouts of actual commercial services to use them more widely, however, have been slower in coming.

Today’s launch, it appears, was scheduled to take place in Monaco at the Global NFC Products, Applications & Services Congress, where Nokia’s VP of product marketing and smart devices, Ilari Nurmi; and Orange’s mobile contactless services director, Didier Durand, are scheduled to speak together at 2pm Monaco time. TechCrunch understands that may now be moved forward in light of the video leak.

Bociaccola demonstrates how the NFC can be used with (Nokia) speakers to manage music, and he notes that in future it can also be used for monetary transactions — although this doesn’t seem to be something that will be available at launch.

It will also be usable with Foursquare check-ins, judging by the video, as well as to interact with other social networks (eg ‘tap to follow us on Twitter’).

Nokia was one of the first handset makers to incorporate NFC into mobile phones. However, up to now NFC has not gained much critical mass among other handset makers, merchants and others that might utilize the technology (like other consumer electronics companies) — so Nokia hasn’t had much of an early mover advantage as a result.

On top of that, there have been a multitude of solutions rolled out that bypass NFC altogether (Square and PayPal’s Here being two notable examples). That raises the question of whether NFC really will be as central to mobile commerce and other kinds of mobile transactions as people once thought it would be.

However there are plenty of companies out there putting big stakes into NFC, including the big payment processors as well as Nokia competitors, and so it’s an important area to keep pursuing.

Nokia’s putting NFC into the 610 means also that Nokia is continuing to forge ahead and make sure that it’s bringing along some of its legacy innovation into the next stage of its strategy to remain relevant in the mobile world.

Facebook campaign ‘Strip for Likes’ breaks the rules | ZDNet

2012-04-11T15:23:00.002-07:00

Facebook campaign ‘Strip for Likes’ breaks the rules | ZDNet:

Advertising agency Arnold Amsterdam today launched a Facebook marketing campaign for clothing brand Stüssy that is very controversial, to say the least. In fact, it’s actually not allowed, according to Facebook’s own rules. You can see the Facebook app which is featured in the above video here: Strip for Likes.

The firm found a model on Facebook, dressed her up in every piece of men’s clothing from Stüssy’s Spring/Summer 2012 line, and then had her strip off all the clothes as the Facebook Page gets more Likes. Facebook users can also invite their friends to the Page so they can Like the campaign as well.

Here’s how Arnold Amsterdam describes the campaign:

We always complain about brands that are begging for Likes. But “Strip for Likes” for Stüssy’s Facebook fanpage at least uses the mechanism in an original way. The more likes, the more clothes come off. What’s smart about it is that once you’ve liked the stripper, you’ll be inclined to come back and see what her status is. On top of that you’ll see a whole bunch of Stüssy clothes; she thus actually becomes a catwalk stripper. Nice, simple, and effective.

I’m not quite sure why Stüssy wants to associate its brand with a stripper. What is clearly directed at Stüssy’s male audience could easily alienate its female consumer base. Furthermore, Stüssy probably isn’t aware the campaign isn’t allowed on Facebook.

Under the Facebook Pages Terms, there’s a section called Promotions, which features these two points (the second one is almost exactly what is happening here):

You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.

“As you can imagine the model must be suffocating under that many layers of clothing,” Colin Lamberton, Creative Arnold Amsterdam, said in a statement. “It is almost a public duty to free her out of this misery so we are expecting Facebook fans to help out here. Like and undress.”

“As a contemporary brand you need to be wherever your fans live, shop or play,” Sean Thompson, Head of Creativity of Arnold Amsterdam, said in a statement. “Facebook plays an integral part of their lives, Stussy AMS’ Facebook is therefore an important platform to engage with fans inform them or just share the fun.

Google's latest Chrome OS: You now have a desktop, but... | ZDNet

2012-04-11T15:23:00.001-07:00

Google's latest Chrome OS: You now have a desktop, but... | ZDNet:

By Larry Dignan | April 11, 2012, 2:31am PDT

Summary: Google’s latest Chrome OS for developers looks a bit like Windows, Ubuntu and Mac OS X. Is that enough?

Google updated its Chrome OS and users of Chromebook are now free of a full browser window. It’s unclear whether the Chrome OS updates will make it more popular.

I downloaded the latest Chrome OS via Google’s developer channel. There’s a Samsung Chromebook that has been on my desk for a while. I started to use the Chromebook, but got this stuck in a sandbox feeling. After a while I resented the full browser window view. I felt trapped.

Google’s latest build of the Chrome OS changes that equation. There’s a dock bar (limited to the Chrome browser, search and apps) and you can resize the browser screen. In other words, Google’s Chrome OS looks a bit like Windows, Ubuntu and Mac OS X.

Also: Google’s new Chrome OS: Back to the future | Say hello to Google’s new, old Chrome OS (gallery)

It’s obvious to me that Google is at least subliminally admitting that its first approach with the Chrome OS was just off. Now that the Chrome OS looks a little more conventional perhaps it’ll gain traction.

But I doubt it. In a nutshell, Google’s latest dev version of the Chrome OS does the following:

Takes your Chrome OS icons and puts them on an icon;
Gives you a limited doc bar;
And allows you to minimize the browser window.

Those changes give me a larger sandbox, but I still feel a bit trapped. I want the Chrome OS to do more. The app selection has improved on the Chrome OS, but Google is building a lot of that software to seed the ecosystem.

The end game for Chrome OS is a merger of sorts. Google is likely to take the Webtop it’s getting from Motorola Mobility, stir in Android, update the Chrome OS and slap it all together.

Today, Chrome OS is a fine experiment. But it’s an experiment that probably won’t entice you to buy a Chromebook just yet unless prices fall dramatically and you’re an enterprise clamoring for a Web terminal.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

PC shipments in Q1: Could have been much worse | ZDNet

2012-04-11T15:19:00.001-07:00

PC shipments in Q1: Could have been much worse | ZDNet:

By Larry Dignan | April 11, 2012, 2:08pm PDT

Summary: HP is the top PC maker globally, but Lenovo is surging. In the U.S. standings, HP, Dell and Apple hold the top three spots.

PC shipments in the first quarter didn’t scorch any growth charts, but they did avoid a predicted decline.

According to Gartner data, PC shipments in the first quarter checked in at 89 million units, up 1.9 percent from a year ago. Gartner has projected a 1.2 percent decline. IDC data shows PC unit growth of 2.3 percent in the first quarter.

In other words, the PC patient has a pulse despite a tablet onslaught.

However, there are plenty of things to worry the PC industry. For starters, India and China growth wasn’t that great. Europe Middle East and Africa PC shipments were up 6.7 percent in the first quarter compared to a year ago. In the U.S., PC shipments were 15.5 million, down 3.5 percent from a year ago.

Globally, HP grabbed share with 17.2 percent of the market. HP has been able to secure hard drive supplies and that helped a good bit. Overall, the hard drive shortage didn’t hurt PC sales too much.

Lenovo delivered the most growth with 28 percent first quarter unit growth. Lenovo is now the No. 2 PC maker worldwide.

In the U.S. HP had 29 percent market share, followed by Dell and Apple.

Google+ rolls out new look - CNN.com

2012-04-11T15:18:00.002-07:00

Google+ rolls out new look - CNN.com:

(Mashable) -- Google announced on Wednesday that it is rolling out a significant redesign for its social networking platform Google+, which will allow users to create a more customized experience on the site.

The company said it will introduce a variety of new features to the site in the next few days, from customizing apps and the navigation bar to more flexibility with profile pages and pictures. In addition, the update introduces a new Explore page that posts what's interesting and trending across the site.

Google also noted that the social network now boasts more than 170 million users since it's 2011 launch.

Google+ will now offer profile pages that will include bigger photos, a la Facebook's Timeline, and feature a chat list that puts friends front and center on your page. Another major update involves how users can navigate around the news stream. Instead of static icons at the top, there's a ribbon of apps on the left.

The ribbon allows users to drag apps up or down to create the order, hover over certain apps to reveal a set of quick actions and show or hide apps by moving them out of the section.

"Taken together, these powers make it easier to access your favorites, and to adjust your preferences over time," Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra wrote on Google's Official Blog. "We've also built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That. So stay tuned."

A dedicated Hangouts page has also been added to the site, so people can have quick access to public and On Air video chat hangouts. This will allow Google+ users to meet new people and watch live broadcasts, as well as enter new rooms via a rotating billboard of Hangouts.

"It's still early days, and there's plenty left to do, but we're more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google," Gundotra said.

What do you think of the redesign? Do you think Google+ will ever be able to compete with Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

Web tips for the newly unemployed - CNN.com

2012-04-11T15:15:00.001-07:00

Web tips for the newly unemployed - CNN.com:

Editor's note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book "Stuff Hipsters Hate." Got a question about etiquette in the digital world? Contact them atnetiquette@cnn.com.

(CNN) -- Raise your hand if someone you know was laid off in the last month. The odds are pretty good (meaning awful). Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that hiring slowed dramatically in March.

Although more people are being taken on than cut loose in the private sector as a whole, the public sector continues to hemorrhage jobs, and recently we've seen dismissals in everything from magazines to nursing homes.

You know the Web is critical to a thorough job search, but when you get the boot you must clomp around a trickier minefield than if you were simply seeking to switch jobs.

We talked to a few career experts about the wise digital moves for the newly unemployed. Tune in next week for part 2 of 2: How to survive beyond that first week of employment.

Let's say you haven't been fired just yet

(Social) network, (social) network, (social) network.

Yes, you should be schmoozing with contacts in real life, informational interviews are important, the whole nine yards. But you should also be strategically networking online, hooking up with new friends on Facebook, new professional peeps on LinkedIn, and new potentially interesting contacts on Twitter, Instagram and the like.

Spend a few minutes a week stoking cyber-relationships: liking posts, congratulating your contacts on promotions, and offering up clever commentary. Like IRL elbow-rubbing, it's only slimy if you're completely feigning interest in a Machiavellian scheme to eventually crush your competitors.

"You want to start taking advantage of social media networking opportunities prior to being laid off so you're not scrambling when you need a favor," says Nicole Williams, LinkedIn's connection director. In other words, it'll look a lot more suspect if you wait until after you're laid off to pipe up with the "remember me's."

Volunteer to write recommendations

"Start taking opportunities to help out other people," Williams suggests, "so you feel comfortable asking for their help when you need it."

You don't have to be creepy about it (There's just no way "YOU ARE SO GREAT! CAN I WRITE YOU A RECOMMENDATION?" will come across as normal), but let your co-workers and former interns know you're always happy to put in a good word. LinkedIn has a handy tool for posting recommendations right on people's resume-like profile pages, but even saying nice things about people on Twitter, Facebook or your blog can get you on their good side.

Right after you're canned

Don't bad-mouth the company.

We know, we know, we know: The boss is totally unfair and plays favorites, plus she makes tuna melts for lunch and leaves the break room reeking of fish, and your lazy co-workers take all the credit for your work.

Kindly gulp some air and keep all those thoughts to yourself.

"B----ing online about being laid off is not good reputation management and puts a negative spin on the job search that ensues," says Donna Flagg, founder of the consulting firm The Krysalis Group. "The world is smaller than ever now with these social networks. It's just not worth it."

Even seemingly protected Facebook statuses or tweets are far from private. Constrain the complaining to teary phone calls with Mom.

The days following the reaping

Update your LinkedIn profile, Google profile, etc.

No one's going to recommend you for an opening if they don't know you're job-searching. Put an end-date on your current position on LinkedIn, and drop the company name from your blogger profile. "At the end of the day, there's no sense lying about your employment status," Williams says.

Or don't.

...unless you think the benefits of strategically misleading outweigh the risks, of course, as does Steve Cohen, president and partner of the Labor Management Advisory Group and HR Solutions: On-Call.

"It is never a good idea to broadcast being laid off or out of work," he says. "For most people, what we do is who we are. If we are unemployed, then we are nobody."

His fire-and-brimstone words aren't unfounded: UCLA and State University of New York-Stony Brook researchers found that, all things being equal, unemployed job applicants are viewed as less competent, warm and hireable than employed folks -- whether they were fired, laid off or quit voluntarily.

Still, we have a hard time picturing someone getting through a job interview while simultaneously telling the truth and answering all those questions about your "current position." Evade at your own risk.

Ask for recommendations.

You get one week, a mere seven days, before everyone forgets about you. Strike while the iron's hot and ask newly former colleagues, their faces pinched with pity, to write you recommendations on your LinkedIn profile.

"Outline exactly what bullet points you'd like them to hit on so that it's easy for them to put it together," Williams suggests. "These recommendations verify the fact that you're a talented employee with a solid track record, and the layoff was just circumstantial."

And -- bonus! -- their guilt and simpering sympathy will translate into especially sentimental endorsements.

Get the word out in a positive way.

A histrionic broadcast along the lines of, "SOOOOOOOOO I JUST GOT LAID OFF TODAY! Welp" isn't exactly the most tactful way to let the world know you're on the market again.

"If you control the message and take on a tone of, 'It's your lucky day, I'm free to share my talent with you!' it reflects the fact that you expect to be in demand," Williams says. That can help deflect some of the furrowed brows and tacit assumptions that maybe, just maybe, you were "laid off," with flamboyant finger-quotes.

Target contacts who might actually be able to help you (Facebook friends, probably; the followers of your blog on minor characters in circa-1960s Marvel comics, definitely not) and sum up in a sentence or two the kind of position you seek and why you're an absolute catch for a company.

Then settle in, because if current data are any indication (which, inherently, they are), you'll be in this for the long haul.

Check back next Wednesday for our experts' tips on those long, dark months of job-seekery.

I.B.M. Aims to Sharply Simplify Corporate Data Center Technology - NYTimes.com

2012-04-10T16:59:00.001-07:00

I.B.M. Aims to Sharply Simplify Corporate Data Center Technology - NYTimes.com:

By STEVE LOHR

Published: April 10, 2012

Corporate data centers are the slowpoke laggards of information technology. But suppliers of hardware systems are working on new ways to speed things up.

Enlarge This Image

Noah Berger for The New York Times

Steven A. Mills, I.B.M.'s senior vice president in charge of hardware and software.

Enlarge This Image

Jon Simon/Feature Photo Service for IBM

The PureSystems technology, the product of a major investment put at $2 billion.

It can take up to six months, research shows, to get a new business application up and running, from buying the hardware to fine-tuning the software. An estimated 70 percent of corporate technology budgets is spent on installing, updating and maintaining current technology — keeping the digital lights on.

Although the problem has been developing for a long time, technology managers and analysts agree it is growing worse. That’s because the pace of technological change is accelerating and business users expect more services, faster. The difficulties, by all accounts, are worldwide.

“The current model is broken, it doesn’t scale,” said Sunil Bajpai, group general manager for the Center for Railway Information Systems, the technology arm of India’s state-owned railway system. “The demand for new applications and the demand for data are endless. We have to simplify.”

I.B.M. is bringing its answer to the marketplace on Wednesday — an effort that industry executives and analysts say is the most ambitious step yet to simplify and streamline data center technology. With this initiative, I.B.M. will sell bundles of server hardware and software packaged in simplified systems, with setup and maintenance automated by intelligent software. Tasks that now take days or weeks can be reduced to hours, the company claims.

The so-called expert integrated systems, known as PureSystems, are the product of a $2 billion investment in research and development and acquisitions over the last four years, I.B.M. says.

Other major suppliers — including Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, EMC, Cisco and Dell — are moving along the same path.

Without real progress in making data centers nimble and efficient, more corporate computing chores, analysts say, will be farmed out to the cloud — remote data centers managed by others, with programs delivered over the Internet. The major technology companies all have cloud offerings, but their mainstay business remains selling hardware and software to corporate customers.

Hardware suppliers like H.P., EMC and Cisco, analysts say, are getting together to sell server computers and storage and networking equipment in packages. But these companies, they say, lack the extensive software assets and expertise of Oracle, the database and business applications giant, which acquired Sun Microsystems, a maker of both hardware and software, in a $7 billion deal that was completed in 2010.

Oracle offers hardware and software packages, tailored for specific computing chores like database queries and data analytics, which carry the branding prefix “exa,” as in Exadata and Exalytics.

I.B.M. is taking a similar approach, but going further in terms of the variety of software options offered, including systems that are ready to run Web applications on top of I.B.M.’s Websphere middleware, according to John R. Rymer, an analyst at Forrester Research.

The I.B.M. options include four operating system environments — Linux running on either Intel microprocessors or I.B.M.’s Power chips, I.B.M’s AIX and Microsoft’s Windows. And there are four choices of load-juggling, virtualization software including VMware (a unit of EMC), Red Hat’s KVM, Microsoft’s Hyper-V and I.B.M.’s PowerV.

“It’s not an I.B.M. proprietary design — this is a multivendor offering,” said Steven A. Mills, I.B.M.’s senior vice president in charge of hardware and software.

The hardware is a bundle of I.B.M. processing, storage and networking, and it includes systems management software that has been under development for years. The company says the management software allows for automated installation and updates of programs, and monitoring of the performance of all the hardware and software — operating systems, virtualization programs, databases, middleware and applications.

Software applications suppliers, who have been briefed on I.B.M.’s plans, are enthusiastic about the automated tools to peer into all the layers of software and hardware. Infor, the third-largest maker of business applications software, after SAP and Oracle, fields about a million customer-support calls and online inquires a year.

Only about 3 percent of the customer problems are directly attributable to issues with Infor applications, said Charles Phillips, Infor’s chief executive. Typically, Mr. Phillips said, an Infor application will begin performing poorly because of changes elsewhere in a computer system, like an operating system patch or the addition of storage disks.

“But we always get the first call because the application is what users see,” he said. “So we end up having to diagnose the entire stack.” The automated tools in the I.B.M. systems, he added, could cut Infor’s support costs.

Larry Augustin, chief executive of SugarCRM, a supplier of Web-based customer relationship management software, said the automated installation and configuration software in the I.B.M. systems could be a big help. For customers who want to run SugarCRM from their own servers, Mr. Augustin said, “We won’t have to spend as much time getting them up and running.” He added, “This is going in exactly the right direction.”

How well the new I.B.M. systems, which start at $160,000 and become generally available in June, will do in the marketplace is uncertain. But analysts say they represent a shift toward simplifying corporate technology that seems inevitable.

“Enterprise technology is really struggling to keep up with the demands of businesses that have to move faster and faster,” said Matthew Eastwood, an analyst at IDC. “This is the next step that needs to take place in data centers.”

Jumptap: Early Days For The New iPad Show A ‘Heavy’ But Still Marginal Impact On Traffic | TechCrunch

2012-04-10T16:54:00.001-07:00

Jumptap: Early Days For The New iPad Show A ‘Heavy’ But Still Marginal Impact On Traffic | TechCrunch:

INGRID LUNDEN

posted 12 hours ago

2 Comments

The new iPad from Apple has so far smashed all of its own sales records for previous tablet models, selling 3 millionunits in its opening weekend, with total sales projections for 2012 at up to 66 million.

But according to some early (possibly too early?) figures from the mobile ad network Jumptap, that is not yet translating into a surge of traffic from the devices.

On the opening day, the iPad represented 0.52 percent of total iPad network traffic. That figure peaked at 2.28 percent on day three, and then declined to 1.92 percent of traffic by day six. In contrast, the iPad and iPad 2 each had 45 percent or more of total iPad traffic, Jumptap says in its latest MobileSTAT Report.

But is this too early to call? It seems that the low numbers are mainly due to the fact that even with sales going strong in its opening days, the total number of new iPad devices is still small compared to the embedded base of iPads.

In Q1 2012 alone, Apple noted that it sold 15.43 million iPad devices, a 111 percent increase over the same period a year ago. That embedded base is bound to outweigh that of 3 million-plus new owners.

What’s perhaps more notable here is where traffic appeared to decline with the introduction of the new iPad. Paran Johar, Jumptap’s CMO, notes that in its network of 107 million mobile users, traffic on the iPad 2 slightly declined after the introduction of the new iPad. That seems to run counter to the idea that the most likely people to upgrade will be those owning the first iPad. But what it might really appear to illustrate is that
fanboys
early adopters are simply remaining true to form, with the first buyers being those who bought the iPad 2 just when it came out.

Another noteworthy trend picked out by Jumptap in its latest report looks at how Wi-Fi is being used by smartphone owners. It turns out that just as users of the iPad tend to use Wi-Fi more than 3G and 4G connections, the same goes for iPhone consumers, who are opting for it more than Android and BlackBerry device owners.

Jumptap notes that 58 percent of iPhone users turn to Wi-Fi on their devices to use data, compared to 35 percent of Android users and 41 percent of BlackBerry users. Jumptap’s guess: no 4G on iPhones. But others might argue that it has to do with cellular connectivity simply being more patchy on the iPhone than on other devices. It could also be down to data plans still priced at a premium for iPhone owners.

Figures from Localytics last month found that only six percent of iPad traffic on its network was coming from cellular connections.

Jumptap also dove into providing some demographics on users of two comparable gaming apps, Angry Birds and Words With Friends.

While Angry Birds is significantly more popular (20 million daily active users, compared to 7.9 million on Words), Words with Friends appears to attract more monied players: 24 percent of Angry Birds’ user base have incomes of over $100,000, compared to 40 percent for Words. Words With Friends also had more Democrat users (75 percent compared to 51 percent for Angry Birds) while Angry Birds users were more tablet friendly and twice as likely to use a tablet as another user, compared to Words With Friends’ users being half as likely to use a tablet.

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn Just Resigned | TechCrunch

2012-04-10T16:53:00.001-07:00

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn Just Resigned | TechCrunch:

MATT BURNS

posted 10 hours ago

19 Comments

Best Buy’s Brian Dunn just stepped down as the retailer’s CEO and director effective immediately. This comes just days after Best Buy missed Wall Street’s estimates last quarter and the retailerannounced plans to shutter 50 large stores and open smaller, likely more lucrative Best Buy Mobile locations. Director G. Mike Mikan will replace Dunn as interim CEO while the company searches for a new skipper.

Wall Street reacted positively to the news. Best Buy’s stock price jumped over 3% with heavy trading after the announcement but seems to be dropping back towards its opening price as of this post’s writing. Update: The stock price now crashing.

The company’s full press release follows below.

Best Buy Announces Leadership Transition
Interim CEO Named to Lead Company

INNEAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The board of directors of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) today announced that Brian Dunn has resigned as chief executive officer and director. There were no disagreements between Mr. Dunn and the company on any matter relating to operations, financial controls, policies or procedures. There was mutual agreement that it was time for new leadership to address the challenges that face the company. Director G. Mike Mikan has been named interim CEO to lead the company while a search for a new CEO is underway. Richard Schulze, the founder of Best Buy, continues to serve as chairman.

“We thank Brian Dunn for his many years of service to the company and wish him well in his next endeavors”

“I have enjoyed every one of my 28 years with this company, and I leave it today in position for a strong future. I am proud of my fellow employees and I wish them the best,” said Dunn.

“We thank Brian Dunn for his many years of service to the company and wish him well in his next endeavors,” said Schulze. “As we move forward, we are very pleased to have a strong leader with Mike Mikan’s credentials as interim CEO.”

“The Best Buy team and I will be extremely focused on successfully managing this period of transition. I want to assure our employees, customers and other key stakeholders that we will work together to achieve our company’s growth and profitability goals,” said Mikan.

Mikan, who will remain on the board while serving as interim CEO, has been a Best Buy director since April 2008. He formerly served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of UnitedHealth Group Incorporated and chief executive officer of Optum, a health care services company and affiliate of UnitedHealth. Mikan has strong financial and operational expertise, as well as public company leadership experience.

A search committee of the board of directors has been created consisting of the founder and members of the nominating, corporate governance and policy committee. The committee will oversee the process for the identification and selection of the next CEO.

In the cloud era, let's start calling IT what it is: 'Innovation Team' | ZDNet

2012-04-10T16:51:00.001-07:00

In the cloud era, let's start calling IT what it is: 'Innovation Team' | ZDNet:

By Joe McKendrick | April 10, 2012, 3:54pm PDT

Summary: Cloud, the third great shift in 50 years of computing, presents a golden opportunity for IT to get out in front and lead.

Dr. Irving Wladawsky Berger, credited with transforming Big Blue IBM from legacy systems vendor into an Internet giant, recently posted a thought-provoking piece on the new mantle IT managers and teams are assuming in the age of the cloud.

He says cloud is only the “third model” of computing to emerge in the 50-plus years IT has been in existence, following the first model, centralized computing, and the second model, client/server computing. Cloud computing is real, he says, and is needed now to integrate and manage the huge numbers of end-users and devices proliferating all over the globe. There’s no getting away from cloud.

This may well prove to be information technology managers’ and professionals’ finest hour as well. Wladawsky-Berger sees an impending massive shift as companies work to cloud-enable their legacy IT infrastructures and applications, the same way many of these systems were Web-enabled in the 1990s.

However, unlike the 1990s, the process will not be as simple as slapping a Web front-end in front of 3270 green-screen legacy applications. Major organizational changes will be required, Wladawsky-Berger says — especially within IT departments themselves. “Many companies have not exercised the needed discipline in their IT operations,” he says. “They have allowed different departments in their organization to architect their own systems and applications. As a result, these disparate systems do not work well with each other, application take a long time from development to deployment, and systems management costs are quite high.”

It will be up to IT to get out in front and lead this next shift in the computing age. “IT organizations must embrace a more standardized, process oriented, industrialized management approach,” Wladawsky-Berger says. “Ad-hoc, custom IT infrastructures will not be able to achieve the kinds of volumes, costs and quality needed to successfully compete in the emerging cloud computing marketplace.”

The shift to cloud may be elevating the role of IT-savvy managers within enterprises. Many line-of-business people are not qualified for — or really interested in — sifting through and evaluating all the cloud options out there, at least for technical merits. They just want to get things done, and are turning to IT executives to assist in the process. IT is no longer just a department full of people who code, build and maintain systems. IT is the business partner that plans and strategizes what types of technology solutions the business needs to move forward.

The solutions IT executives identify may be cloud services from somewhere else; or they may be from the company’s own on-premises solution (or private cloud). Cloud may be significantly increasing their visibility within organizations.

On many occasions, I have had the opportunity to speak with end-user companies executives about the somewhat elusive notion of innovation, and how information technology can make it more of a reality. One thing came through from the discussions: to be the enabler of innovation, IT needs to be able to turn things around faster than ever, and at the same time, let the business guide the process. Gone are the days where IT would spend six to nine months working on an application, then present it to business users to digest and figure out.

Bahija Noell, VP for IT business partnership management at Aflac, put it this way to me in an interview a couple of years back: “We have to figure how how is it that we can provide the most value to the business in a shorter timeframe, without compromising quality and not compromising expense.”

A survey released by CA Technologies at the end of last year found that a majority of CIOs, 54%, agree that cloud computing has enabled them to spend more time on business strategy and innovation. The CA survey also found that CIOs who have adopted cloud computing seem to be more driven to advance in their companies than their non-cloud-adopting peers. Approximately 71% who have adopted cloud computing see their position as a viable path to pursue other management roles, compared to only 44% of non-cloud adopting CIOs. Also, 39% of cloud-adopting CIOs see their current jobs as a stepping stone to the CEO position, versus 24% of non-cloud- adopting CIOs.

With the rise of cloud as the core of many businesses — and ability of IT managers to deliver capabilities — we may even see tech executives assuming leadeship positions within companies as well. As the CA study’s authors point out, “a business leader who is fully in tune with emerging technologies and with the ability to navigate possible pitfalls will prove an invaluable asset for many firms. With nurturing and targeted learning, there are a lot of talented people in the CIO position who are well positioned to take the top job directly, or make the journey via COO to become CEO.”

Despite all the hand-wringing about lack of “business-IT alignment,” there seems to be some measure of alignment taking place. But it’s not because business executives are enamored by the gee-whiz effects of computers (though some may be). Rather, it reflects the importance of technology in helping businesses to run faster, smarter, and more agile. And it’s hard work to maintain a foundation that will keep springing new innovation year to year, month to month, and even day to day. As Noell put it: “We have to learn as IT professionals to see how we can drive that cycle. We need to keep up with the business.”

In a hyper-competitive and unforgiving global economy, innovation is needed, every day in every way. IT can be the innovator.

Microsoft + Facebook = A Year in the Like | ZDNet

2012-04-10T16:50:00.001-07:00

Microsoft + Facebook = A Year in the Like | ZDNet:

Microsoft + Facebook = A Year in the Like

By Emil Protalinski | April 10, 2012, 3:13pm PDT

Summary: Microsoft has built a little Facebook tool for you to enjoy. Just login with your Facebook account, and Microsoft will put together a beautiful timeline of your Facebook activity during the last year.

Microsoft is always up to something with Facebook. Sometimes the software giant is partnering with the social networking giant, and others times Microsoft is mocking Facebook. Today’s news is a new website from Redmond for a new project called “A Year in the Like.”

To use it, you have to login with Facebook. Once you do, it will compile all your Facebook data over the last year and present with you a timeline (not to be confused with the Facebook Timeline) of chosen comments and events that occurred over the last 12 months.

You can customize any of the content the Microsoft webpage choose. Frankly, it looks much better than the Timeline that Facebook is going to force everyone to upgrade to later this year. Then again, you could argue that it’s nowhere near as practical.

The tool also gives you the option to “Make a Movie” based on your timeline events during the past year. It either picks the events itself, or lets you pick them by hand, and then stitches them together to make a single video clip (warning: this takes a while). Of course, we’ve seen this before: Facebook launches Timeline Movie Maker.

In October 2007, Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for about $240 million, giving Facebook a valuation of $15 billion. Ever since then, the two companies have been best friendsand have worked together on many different products, although now it’s just mainly Bing (see links below). Microsoft even provided display ads for Facebook at one point, but that deal has since expired and Facebook now competes with Microsoft in the online advertising market.

Google's new Chrome OS: Back to the future | ZDNet

2012-04-10T16:49:00.001-07:00

Google's new Chrome OS: Back to the future | ZDNet:

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Summary: Many new desktops, like Windows 8’s Metro, default a single window that takes up the whole screen. The latest developer build of Google’s Chrome OS goes back to the multiple windows on the display model.

It's back to the future with Chrome OS' new Aura desktop interface.

I have little love for the new generation of desktop interfaces, such as Windows 8 Metro. They use a smartphone/tablet like metaphor in which each application takes up the entire screen. So, why did I buy all these 20-inch and larger displays? Google, in the latest developer release of its Linux and cloud-based Chrome OS, has reversed this trend. This developer Chrome OS update adds a taskbar and support for multiple windows to its light-weight, desktop operating system.

Say hello to Google’s new, old Chrome OS (gallery)

This new interface, Aura, is both a new desktop window manager and shell environment. Aura is an optional replacement for last year’s Chrome OS single Web browser interface. With it you can have multiple, small browser windows, each with its own set of tabs, against a desktop screen background. These windows can be overlapped like the Windows on older desktops such as GNOME 2.x, Windows 7 or Mac OS X.

You also get, like OS X’s dock, a status bar on the bottom of the screen with icons for each of the open windows and system status displays for as the clock and battery. When you maximize a window to full screen, the task bar vanishes. You can always bring it back though by moving your pointer down to the screen’s bottom.

You can also tear off browser tabs and drag their windows to new positions or merge tab with another window’s tab strip. Each window also gets a rectangle in the upper right that you can toggle to switch between its maximized and smaller displays. You can also resize windows by dragging any edge. If you click on an icon in the dock you’ll see icons for all your installed apps and bookmarks. You can also find these on Chrome OS’ new-tab page.

If Aura sounds familiar, it should. While so many of the new operating systems want to force you to have only one application at a time in front of your face, Chrome OS is returning to the older way of enabling you to have multiple windows up at once. This is a win as far as I’m concerned.

This latest edition of Chrome OS, 19.0.1048.17, includes numerous security fixes. In addition, it now includes better support for multiple monitors and it provides native support for the tar, gz, and bzip2 compressed file archive formats.

This is a developer’s release, so it’s for power-users only. While technically it’s only available for users who already own a Acer AC700 or Samsung Series 5 Chromebook–the first Chromebooks, the CR-48s, are not supported in this release-you can also run Chrome OS from a USB stick or in a VirtualBox virtual machine.

I’ve always like Chrome OS. To me, it’s a nice mix of Linux and cloud computing. Thanks toHexxen, it’s easy for a power-user to check it out. So, even if you don’t have a Chromebook, give it a try. I think you might just like it.

When did Facebook become so uncool? - CNN.com

2012-04-10T16:40:00.001-07:00

When did Facebook become so uncool? - CNN.com:

Something strange happened Monday on the Internet.

Facebook -- the once-underdog social network founded by a kid in a hoodie in a dorm room -- may have officially cemented its status as a titan of the tech establishment it once challenged.

What changed? Facebook -- no longer a feisty startup but a 3,000-person, soon-to-be-public corporation with $3.9 billion in cash and an $85 billion to $100 billion valuation -- spent $1 billion to gobble up a much-smaller competitor, the photo-sharing app Instagram.

When it did so, it stirred up a caldron of ill will that the "People of the Internet" have been harboring toward Mark Zuckerberg's once-hip company. Some Instagram users said they were downloading all of their photos and then deleting them from the app just so Facebook couldn't get its hands on them.

Pundits weren't kind to Facebook, either. David Horsey of the Los Angeles Times, writing about the Instagram purchase, noted that the company is looking more and more like "Big Friend," a gentler variation on George Orwell's all-seeing Big Brother. Data indicate others share that view, too. A new poll, conducted before the Instagram news, found that 28% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Facebook -- twice as many as disapprove of Apple and nearly three times as many as Google.

This backlash highlights a new reality: As a technological juggernaut, Facebook is more Microsoft than Tumblr. To use amusical analogy employed on Twitter, it's the Nickelback to Instagram's Bon Iver.

Facebook and Instagram's images couldn't be more different, so it's tempting to say that this Goliath-buys-David event is a turning point for Facebook. But people have been writing about Facebook losing its mojo for years now. In 2009, AdWeek ran this headline: "Is Facebook getting uncool for 18-24s?" A year later, mainstream news websites noted the phenomenon of parents and grandparents joining Facebook, scaring off younger people.

"It's official, Facebook is becoming uncool," CBS declared.

It's hard to pinpoint the moment when Facebook's image problem started. Maybe it was when users realized how much data Facebook was collecting about them. Maybe it was when CEO Zuckerberg started to seem less like that geeky, counterculture college kid and more like a run-of-the-mill billionaire.

But it is possible to take a look at the conversation and tease out a few factors that seem to have led to Facebook's current status as an inescapable, perhaps Orwellian, Internet giant.

First: Money. Nothing leads to public skepticism quite like a few billion dollars in pocket change. Compare that kind of situation at Facebook to Instagram, which as CNNMoney notes, hadn't monetized its product. It didn't support advertisements and apparently didn't sell its users' data.

Facebook, on the other hand, is accused of profiting wildly on the backs of the 850 million people who share personal details about their lives on the social network. For more on that, see The Wall Street Journal's recent feature "Selling You on Facebook," which analyzes the info that Facebook apps collect.

Second: Size. As companies get bigger, people tend to question their motives. Google is a good example of this view. The Silicon Valley company once was the darling of the Internet -- the search engine that didn't have ads on its homepage and declared its company ethos was "Don't Be Evil." As the tech blog Gizmodo writes, Google "built a very lucrative company on the reputation of user respect."

That was easy enough when Google was small. As it grew, however, some people started to lose faith in the company -- and to question its motives.

Gizmodo: "In a privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services -- Gmail, Search, YouTube and more -- and sharing data on user activity across all of them. So much for the Google we signed up for."

People never talked that way about Instagram, which only had 13 employees and 33 million users. It's the kind of company journalists love to use the word "scrappy" to describe.

Third: Trust. As the company has grown, some people have come to trust Facebook so little that they're pulling photos from Instagram in advance of the takeover.

According to Megan Garber at The Atlantic, 25,000 people visited Instaport's site in six hours on Monday after the news broke, compared with 400 people on a normal day. Instaport is a service that helps people pull photos off Instagram for home storage.

"You could read that spike, on the one hand, as a mass freak-out on the part of users who don't trust Facebook -- despite Mark Zuckerberg's promises -- with their networks and memories," Garber writes. "You could also read it as an insurance play, a just-to-be-safe move on the part of people who want to feel sure that their photos are secure."

Mistrust of Facebook stems in part from concern about its privacy policies, which have been described as overly confusing. Facebook itself acknowledges that privacy concerns could trip up the company in the future.

In its initial public offering filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company wrote: "We have in the past experienced, and we expect that in the future we will continue to experience, media, legislative, or regulatory scrutiny of our decisions regarding user privacy or other issues, which may adversely affect our reputation and brand."

Finally: The cool factor. Maybe it's less that people see Facebook as evil and more that the site just isn't as cool as it used to be -- partly because it's so popular and also because it's not the new kid on the block anymore. Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004, which is eons ago in Internet time. MySpace and Friendster -- all of Facebook's predecessors -- didn't survive (or didn't continue to grow) for this long.

Instagram, meanwhile, was founded in late 2010 and was only in recent months becoming part of the zeitgist. iPhone-toting hipster types liked the app for its mobility -- you cold post photos easily from your phone -- and filters that gave their pics a retro, vintage vibe.

"Instagram is, in a word, cool. Facebook is losing its 'cool', rapidly,"wrote Allan Swann at the Computer Business Review.

Instagram managed to create a cache in part from its status as an underground hit. Even with tens of millions of users, the app was praised by reviewers as intimate -- a place, true or not, where it was safe to post personal photos and share stories with a relatively small network of friends. (Just to throw in some data: I have 815 Facebook friends but only 67 people whom I follow on Instagram, and I actually know almost all of them.)

It's not clear that any of that will change for Instagram. Zuckerberg says the app will continue to operate as a product that's independent from Facebook and that people won't have to post Instagram photos to Facebook just because the company owns the app. But the backlash helped crystallize the idea that Facebook no longer is seen as the always-cool company that everybody implicitly trusts.

"Some Instagram fans are acting as if this is a tragedy," Horsey of the Los Angeles Times writes of the acquisition. "They liked the idea that there was a little corner of the online world where they could gather and be outside the reach of the Zuckerberg empire. ..."

There was a time when people clamored to be part of Zuckerberg's network, which launched at first only for Harvard students. But now, as the Instagram backlash shows, Facebook has long stopped being an exclusive club. It's seen as the big, bland company that theapp's users worry will ruin the cool thing they had going.

Court Rebukes DOJ, Says Hacking Required to Be Prosecuted as Hacker | Threat Level | Wired.com

2012-04-10T16:38:00.001-07:00

Court Rebukes DOJ, Says Hacking Required to Be Prosecuted as Hacker | Threat Level | Wired.com:

Behind the Scenes at Instagram: Tools for Building Reliable Web Services | Webmonkey | Wired.com

2012-04-10T16:36:00.001-07:00

Behind the Scenes at Instagram: Tools for Building Reliable Web Services | Webmonkey | Wired.com:

Google Chrome OS Busts Out Of Browser With New Interface | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

2012-04-10T16:35:00.001-07:00

Google Chrome OS Busts Out Of Browser With New Interface | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com:

Google is giving Chrome OS a makeover, revamping its browser-based OS look a lot more like classic desktop operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X.

On Monday, as it does every six weeks, the company released a new test version of the OS, and this includes a new user interface called Aura. As it stands, Chrome OS behaves very much like a single browser window. But with Aura, you can open multiple, overlapping windows as you would on a classic desktop OS.

“Our vision with Chrome OS is to provide a user experience that gets better every 6 weeks,” a Google spokesman tells Wired. “One of the areas we’ve thought a lot about is the desktop and windows manager environment, and creating a simpler, more intuitive experience for our users.”

With Chrome OS, the browser was essentially the only local application. All other apps and data sat into the browser. Google first released the operating system in May of last year, offering it on “Chromebook” laptops manufactured by Acer and Samsung. The laptops were originally envisioned as consumer devices, but at some point before their release, Google decided they should be sold to corporations as well. Because the OS is contained in a browser, Google says, it’s more secure than traditional OSes, and it can be updated over the wire. For those two reasons, the company believes its ideal for businesses.

“There’s not a whole lot to manage, the operating system is so lightweight,” Zeus Kerravala, a senior vice president at market research outfit the Yankee Group and a Chromebook user, told us last year. “You don’t have to deal with Windows service packs, which is like installing a new OS. You don’t have to deal with security patches. And with everything stored in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about backup.”

But the laptops are limited — and, at about $450 a pop, relatively expensive. Google has not released official sales figures for the devices.

In addition to offering adjustable, overlapping Windows, the new Chrome OS alpha also offers a taskbar and an app launcher are reminiscent of Windows Taskbar and Apple’s LauchPad, judging from screenshots posted to the net. Under the hood, Google says, it has also improved Chrome’s media players, and it has added a recovery tool for rebuilding the OS when it’s damaged.

The Chromebooks manufactured by Acer and Samsung are they only models that can run the new release. Prior to the release of these notebooks, Google offered a beta laptop known as the Cr-48, and this will not the new alpha. But Google engineer Orit Mazor said that the company is not killing support for the Cr-48. She said that Google that Chrome OS version 19 is skipping Cr-48 “due to platform considerations” and that the company would bring the laptop 48 “back onto the release train” after the version 19.