PHP company Zend has just released the results of its annual developer survey. The exhaustive poll of 5,000 developers highlights a few interesting trends and one particularly heartening mobile web factoid.

Clearly, everyone and their dog is thinking mobile first these days. But what’s more interesting in the survey is that the majority of developers aren’t looking to iOS or Android to do so.

From a release on the report:

When asked how they intend to deliver content and services to their mobile audience, 79% of developers identified their intent to leverage web apps and open standards such as HTML5.

Of course, the devops trend marches onward with the increased need for efficiency in deployment. Zend’s results shows 87 percent of developers experience delays in moving their app from development to production, and a full 90 percent have worked weekends, vacations and holidays because of production emergencies.

Here are the results in a handy infographic form:

Image credit: Based on photo from ostill/Shutterstock

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The newborn was diagnosed with tracheobronchomalacia, a condition in which the airways collapse, not allowing oxygen to enter the lungs. That, tragically, caused repeated heart attacks … or, as the doctors said when writing up the case study for the New England Journal of Medicine, “ventilation that was sufficient to prevent recurring cardiopulmonary arrests could not be maintained.”

Doctors then printed a splint that is completely customized to the baby’s tracheal tubes, based on a “computed tomographic image of the patient’s airway.” It’s bioresorbable, made out of a material called polycaprolactone, so it will never need to be withdrawn and the baby’s body will just naturally absorb and discard the splint within three years.

But by that time, doctors say, the baby’s lungs and airways will have developed enough strength to stay open by themselves.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine

The 3-D printed tracheal insert being placed

According to LiveScience, prior to 3-D printing lung splints were carved by hand. 3-D printed splints can be fabricated in a single day, however, and cost about a third as much.

After inserting the device, doctors kept the baby on a ventilator for 21 days, until the child was discharged from hospital. One year after the surgery, no “unforeseen problems related to the splint have arisen.”

Doctors’ conclusions?

“This case shows that high-resolution imaging, computer-aided design, and biomaterial three-dimensional printing together can facilitate the creation of implantable devices for conditions that are anatomically specific for a given patient.”

Hewlett-Packard is moving into the innovative new category of tabletop computing today with the announcement of its HP Envy Rove 20 all-in-one computer. The touchscreen device has a 20-inch screen that you can fix at a variety of angles. You can even lay it flat as a tabletop computer.

The machine is part of a growing category of tabletop computers coming from major computer makers. Sony launched its Sony Tap 20 computer last fall, while Lenovo is coming out soon with a 27-inch tabletop computer that you can play Air Hockey on. These models are pricier, as computer makers hope to entice PC buyers to upgrade to the more versatile machines.

The device also comes with a built-in battery that can last for three hours while unplugged. In that sense, you can use it as a giant touchscreen tablet. You can carry it around the house or play games on it on the kitchen table.

The machine uses Intel integrated graphics and Haswell processors. It has an in-plane switching (IPS) panel with wide viewing angles and 10-finger multitouch. It has Beats Audio and comes per-installed with software including EA Monopoly, Fingertapps Jigsaw Wars Puzzle, Fingertapps Musical Instruments, and Disney Fairies. It will debut in July for an undisclosed price.

Advanced Micro Devices is launching two new families of mobile chips today for faster and more power efficient laptops.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD wants to become more competitive with its larger rival Intel, and it is doing it by creating all-in-one chips dubbed accelerated processing units (APUs) that combine graphics and processing in the same piece of silicon. Those kinds of chips have been built into the newest game consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

These new chips will go into a wide range of computers, from traditional PCs to new kinds of designs. One chip, formerly code-named Temash, will be called the 2013 AMD Elite Memory APU, a quad-core chip built with a 28-nanometer manufacturing process. The chip is aimed at smaller notebook computers, tablets and hybrids, which combine a tablet and a laptop in one device. It is aimed at machines with 13-inch screens and below.

A second chip is the 2013 AMD Mainstream APU, formerly code-named Kabini. That quad-core chip is a quad-core system-on-chip for entry-level and small laptops. The third chip is a low-power version of the 2013 AMD Elite Performance APU, formerly code-named Richland. It is aimed at thin laptops with high performance.

“The worlds of the tablet and PC are colliding,” said John Taylor, vice president of corporate communications at AMD, in an interview with VentureBeat. “These chips will have high-performance and operate on low wattage. We are targeting both PCs and Android devices. With Windows 8 and touchscreens, there is more flexibility in the market.”

“AMD is in its best position in a while with Temash, Kabini and Richland to field a differentiated offering, and doing it in time to hit the back to school selling season,” said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “We won’t know how they do until we can see how they are assorted with OEMs and at retail, which is as vital as having a good product.”

AMD has scored customer deals with big computer makers including Acer and HP.

“The client market has evolved – with greater diversity in the types of mobile form factors and higher performance demands from the software – and AMD is uniquely positioned to deliver the best processors to meet the needs of mobile device users today,” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD. “As computing becomes more visual and the graphics processor can be leveraged to do other types of processing, our dedication to the software community and the APU architecture sets us apart from the competition and enables us to deliver the best user experience whether on a tablet, a hybrid device or a notebook.”

The 2013 AMD Elite Mobility APU will be available as the AMD A-Series APUs. It will come with dual-core and quad-core configurations. The core, or main computing brain, will be based on the Jaguar microarchitecture, which combines an x86 central processing unit (CPU) with a Graphics Core Next AMD Radeon 8000 series graphics chip. It will have 172 percent faster CPU performance per watt of power consumed and 212 percent better graphics performance per watt than its predecessor. Computers using it will have up to 12 hours of resting battery life. AMD says it will have 45 percent longer battery life and five times the graphics performance than the closest competing chip from Intel.

The 2013 AMD Mainstream APU will have either two or four Jaguar cores with the AMD Radeon 8000 series graphics. That chip will be 132 percent better in visual performance per watt and 127 percent better on productivity apps per watt, compared with previous generations. It will be 88 percent better at graphics and 33 percent better at gaming than the rival Intel chips.

And the 2013 AMD Elite Performance APU will be used in top-of-the-line chips dubbed the A8 and A10. It will have 12 percent better productivity performance and 20 percent to 40 percent better visual performance than prior chips. It will have 39 percent to 72 percent better gaming performance than rival Intel chips, AMD says.

AMD is packaging gesture-control software with the chips so that developers can use it to do non-traditional computing tasks such as controlling the user interface with hand gestures.

Hewlett-Packard is unveiling a small army of computers today that will use Intel’s next-generation microprocessors, code-named Haswell, for better processing without an increase in power consumption. The new products are HP’s latest bid to get its mojo back and to embrace the change wrought by tablets on the struggling PC industry.

Some of the devices are already shipping, but many are still waiting on Intel’s official release of the Haswell processors, which are due in early June. The Haswell processors are built in a 22-nanometer manufacturing process that enables both faster processor speeds and low power consumption, mainly by combining graphics and processor functions on a single chip. Haswell promises twice the graphics performance of last year’s Ivy Bridge processors.

Intel introduces major processors about once a year or so, and HP is using the occasion to launch a wholesale redesign of its computers. It is launching a new lineup of laptops, all-in-one computers, and desktops. All of the devices are thinner, stronger, and sleeker in design.

Among the new offerings are a bunch of thinner, lighter, and faster touchscreen laptop computers. They include the HP Envy TouchSmart 14 Ultrabook, with a 3,200-by-1,800 full high-definition touchscreen display, better battery life, Intel’s Haswell, and a 10-point multitouch screen. That model will ship on June 26 for $700. Such low prices mean that Intel-based Ultrabooks will finally reach a sweet spot of good battery life, good performance, and lower prices. The HP Envy TouchSmart 15 notebook (pictured right) also has a full touchscreen with Beats Audio. it will be available on June 5 for $530.

The HP Envy 17 notebook computer will come with a 17.3-inch screen, an Intel processor and Nvidia graphics. It has 2TBs of hard disk space, Beats audio, and a full-HD display. It will start selling on June 5 at $700.

HP is also launching new versions of its mainstream consumer Pavilion-branded computers. The HP Pavilion TouchSmart notebook is a thin laptop with a capacitive touchscreen and 10-finger gesture support. It will sell for $400 starting on June 26. The HP Pavilion 15 notebook will have a 15.6-inch display, a 1-terabyte hard drive, and an optical drive, and it will come in a variety of colors. It will sell on June 5 starting at $430.

As for desktops, HP is introducing a cool new all-in-one PC dubbed the HP Envy Rove 20. The device has a 20-inch touchscreen that you can fix at a variety of angles. You can also lay the device flat.

The device also comes with a built-in battery that can last for three hours while unplugged. In other words, it’s a giant touchscreen tablet running Windows 8. The machine uses Intel integrated graphics and Haswell processors. It has an in-plane switching (IPS) panel with wide viewing angles and 10-finger multitouch. It has Beats Audio and comes installed with software including EA Monopoly, Fingertapps Jigsaw Wars Puzzle, Fingertapps Musical Instruments, and Disney Fairies. It will debut in July for an undisclosed price.

HP is also launching the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 20 and 23 all-in-one PC models. These feature five-point optical touchscreens, widescreen displays, and new processors from both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The hard drives have up to 2TBs of storage. The machines have HP TrueVision WebCams and 25GBs of free Box cloud storage for U.S. users. The 20-inch model will sell for $620 starting June 23, and the 23-inch model will sell for $750 on June 5.

HP is also launching a series of new desktops. The HP Envy Phoenix 800 Desktop PC will have both Nvidia discrete graphics and Haswell processors. It will start selling on June 5 for $1,100. The HP Envy 700 Desktop PC will offer a choice of AMD processors or Haswell processors. It will be available on June 5 for $600.

The HP Pavilion 500 Desktop PC will have Haswell with a choice of discrete graphics from Nvidia or AMD. It will start selling on June 5 for $490. The HP Pavilion Slimline 400 Desktop PC will come with Haswell processors and Nvidia discrete graphics chips. It will start selling on June 30 exclusively at Best Buy starting at $400. And HP is launching the HP 110 Desktop PC. This low-cost machine has Intel processors or AMD processors, up to two terabytes of hard disk storage, and a 6-in-1 media card reader. It will be available on June 5 starting at $290.

HP is also extending the Envy brand name to its printers. The new products include the HP Envy 4500 e-All-in-One and the HP Envy 5530 e-All-in-One printers. Those printers are able to print from both mobile devices and web pages. They’re packaged in compact enclosures and offer Instant Ink subscriptions, which make it easy for a home user to get ink refills. Pricing for the printers will be announced later this summer.

Last week, HP unveiled a couple of new consumer notebook computers. Those included the HP Split x2, a laptop that can be used as a clamshell device or converted into a tablet by detaching the keyboard. Such 2-in-1 designs are an example of wider innovation in the PC industry and an attempt to change with the times. The HP Split x2 has a 13.3-inch touchscreen and two batteries. The Split x2 will sell for $800. HP also unveiled its HP SlateBook x2, an Android tablet that can be used either as a tablet or a laptop. It features an Nvidia Tegra 4 mobile processor and a 10.1-inch diagonal screen. The HP SlateBook x2 will sell for $480.

In fact, social media referrals represents just 1.55 percent of all traffic to major e-commerce destinations. And when that tiny trickle of traffic arrived, only .71 percent of it actually resulted in any kind of sale. Email marketing, by contrast, generates twice as much traffic as social media, and has four times the conversion rate to sales.

Those are not good numbers for social.

Source: Monetate

Conversion rates by traffic-referring sources

The darling of the omnipresent social media gurus on Twitter, social commerce was supposed to totally disrupt e-commerce. And, because people trust other people’s recommendations and spend a lot of time on Facebook where they meet other people and read what they say, social commerce was supposed to be huge, turning social media influence and shares into sales and revenue.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem:

“The challenge for social media — and for its big brother, word of mouth marketing — is that they are inherently additive pieces of the conversion funnel, rather than causative,” Monetate’s new report states.

But Monetate says that the problem isn’t in the social. It’s in how companies are using it.

Loyalty isn’t about clicking on an offer, report author Mitch Joel says, it’s about building a relationship. And a relationship goes far beyond “do you want to buy this.” Which means that social is not short term, social is not transactional, and social is not the same as direct response.

In other words: shocker, social media is, well, social.

Taken in that context, social can still be very worthwhile for brands, as marketing firm Syncapse found just a few weeks ago, valuing some Facebook fans at over $1,600. But it’s the relationship that’s valuable, not the episodic communications per se.

And that relationship can be very precious indeed. When an actual sale is made from a social referral, it’s often a large one, with the average Pinterest-referred sale clocking in at over $80, and the average Facebook and Twitter sale at about $70.

Source: Monetate

Average order value by social-referred sale

photo credit: zoomar via photopin cc

Following Microsoft’s 60-minute press conference yesterday, where the Xbox One was revealed to much anticipation, an unfortunate feeling of melancholy grew inside me. It was immediately and painfully clear that I am no longer Microsoft’s target audience. Instead, the company’s new key-demographic is the casual audience that has kept the Xbox 360 selling in recent years, and with this choice, the Xbox brand has transformed from a gaming system to an all-in-one entertainment device.

Over the course of the hour long press conference, I slowly felt more and more out of place as if this wasn’t intended for me … as if it wasn’t a place I should or want to be. The wild ride of buzzwords and snappy features introduced us to an impressive multimedia center, one that could stream films and live television or chat to friends via Skype, but a worryingly small amount of attention was given to games. This new console will obviously be innovative in how it “Kinects” people (har har), but the question I regularly asked myself over that hour was why, as a gamer, do I care about most of this?

It was frustrating to watch many big names march out and discuss features that will barely impact or improve the future of gaming. Being able to review fantasy football or basketball leagues during live matches sounds cool, but as I’m not a massive sports fan, the early sections of the press conference might as well have been white noise. Equally frustrating was how anything that did reference the gaming potential of the Xbox One did so through loose terminology, merely suggesting how this console was going to offer enhanced “experiences” or “content.” I can’t say I saw anything that could provide the innovation I was sorely hoping to see.

At least some of the specs for the Xbox One were revealed: 8 CPU cores, 8GB of (non-descript) RAM, multi-channel 802.11n WiFi, and a Blu-ray drive definitely sounded good. However, instead of showing us how this technology will be put to use, such as through the numerous demonstrations during Sony’s PlayStation 4 press conference in February, we were merely presented with a handful of cinematics and teaser trailers.

While the games shown looked good, the graphical fidelity wasn’t mind blowing. The visuals shown were not as ground-breaking as the HD leap from the previous generation. And sadly, the only new creative work announced, Remedy Entertainment’s Quantum Break, did so through a predominantly live-action trailer sprinkled with in-game cinematics. This teaser was severely underwhelming and didn’t provide nearly enough information — assuming the game isn’t about a little girl who makes boats collide with bridges — to create serious interest.

Because nothing resembling gameplay was shown, it’s difficult to picture how each experience will feel when they’re eventually in our hands. As a result, if these new titles do nothing but improve graphics, it’s hard to feel too excited about them. Even the new Call of Duty felt a little flat. Eric Hirshberg, the chief executive of Activision, presented a lovely trailer for Call of Duty: Ghosts, but I had to chuckle when Mark Rubin of Infinity Ward added, “America’s military is in disarray, and as the player, you’re the underdog fighting back against superior forces.” Not wanting to steal your thunder, Mark, but I’m pretty sure that’s the storyline of every Call of Duty since Modern Warfare 2 as well as numerous other shooters, such as Home Front. But hey, we get a really fancy looking dog so that’s innovative right? … Right?

Still the most surprising element of the conference for gamers was most likely not what Microsoft did mention, but in fact what they did not.

During this show Microsoft had the gaming world’s attention, now was their chance to put millions at ease regarding the worrying DRM and pre-owned rumors spiraling around this latest addition to the Xbox brand. However, rather than tackling any of the gaming populous’ concerns, Microsoft instead chose to ignore the communities queries about persistent internet requirements. This decision has led to evasive and confusing explanations spawning from Twitter, or interviews immediately after the event in Seattle.

It now appears that Xbox One will require access the internet to register and install games, as well additional regular connections, although the frequency of these connections is still being confirmed. Sharing or selling used games is also taking a hit, demanding an activation fee to access pre-owned games. If you’re going to take such drastic actions Microsoft at least have the balls to come out with it head on and explain why you feel such decisions are required, and how they potentially improve your console. Don’t sweep our concerns under the rug and hope we forget about it, because I can assure you we won’t.

Similarly, many of the most interesting pieces of information, for gamers at least, were barely covered during the press-conference, or were revealed in later interviews, such as the changes to the controller and the potential for computing assistance from the cloud. I understand that E3 is imminent, and you don’t want to blow your load now, but gamers need a reason to be excited for your console Microsoft, and presenting a lack lustre first impression can only hurt your sales potential. The dip in value of Microsoft’s shares – as well as an increase for Sony’s – is evidence of this.

Microsoft would be wise not to forget who bought the 360, and the original Xbox, during its infancy, core gamers. These early adopters and evangelists will buy your console at any price because they have a desperate need to play great games that can only be experienced on Xbox. Unfortunately, as it stands very little has been shown to make that audience NEED the Xbox One right now. Instead, this new focus as a futuristic home hub housing all your entertainment needs, while admirable, may back-fire as the hardware specs shown and the forced inclusion of Kinect will likely create a substantial price point. The casual market is unlikely to suffer from the same uncontrollable craving for new content as the core gamer, and may be put off until the price drops.

The beauty of the 360 was how its target market migrated from core to casual slowly, as its price fell and multimedia functionality improved. After all, $200 isn’t an overwhelming cost for a system that can fulfil multiple functions in the home, and the eventual inclusion of the Kinect presented additional novelty for young children and unconventional gamers.

Now, however, Microsoft appears confident that the casual market is ready to throw down substantial cash to replace their 360 with a new and improved Xbox, effectively bypassing the core gamer in the process. But will the casual market be prepared to spend double or more of the current cost of a 360 just for enhanced social and multimedia functionality? Do people like our parents really care about a device that can make phone calls while watching a movie? The system will obviously sell in the thousands after release, but what portion of the casual audience won’t see a need to replace their 360? And how big will this impact be on Microsoft?

But, maybe I’m speaking prematurely. E3 is right around the corner, and Phil Spencer, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios, did make a bold statement announcing 15 exclusive titles heading to Xbox One within its first year of release. Even then though, I’m dubious how many of these 15 will actually release in that time – console releases never go to plan, see the Wii U launch window – and I also wonder how many of these 15 will be exclusive Sports, Fitness or Family games designed for the Kinect, which core gamers will have close to zero interest in.

I may be wrong, I hope I’m wrong. I hope Microsoft come out at E3 and wow us all with some incredible new IP and a revelation in how the Xbox One will change how we game. But, unfortunately right now I can count the things that interest me about this new Xbox on One hand.

Thanks for reading. For this and other rambles, please check out my blog or follow me on Twitter.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Carl Esposti is CEO of crowdsourcing advisory firm massolution.

If you think that participating in crowdfunding simply means investing in smaller companies that launch games and devices on Kickstarter, think again. With crowdfunding volumes reaching $2.7 billion in 2012, it has emerged as a viable, scalable alternative to public and private finance across the globe.

After surveying more than 350 active crowdfunding platforms, including IndieGoGo, CrowdCube, Symbid, and Gambitious (full site directory at crowdsourcing.org), and completing an in-depth analysis of market trends, research firm Massolution has identified five major crowdfunding developments for 2013 and beyond.

1. Niche platforms

As crowdfunding platforms try to benefit from market differentiation, niche-, industry-, and sector-specific platforms are emerging.

Platforms offering reward-based crowdfunding see an especially high value in serving a common niche or industry. Examples include platforms focusing on video games, recording art, performing art, real estate, food and beverage, fashion, journalism, and more.

While it’s smart for a new platform to choose a specific niche simply to differentiate its service, there is another big reason why this trend is likely to prevail—it helps build a repeated crowd on the platform. Having crowdfunders visit a platform, not just because they have been invited onto a specific campaign, but because the campaigns appeal to their tastes, is extremely valuable.

#2. Locavesting

In her 2011 book, Locavesting, business and finance journalist Amy Cortese describes how “a revolution in local investing” is emerging and that crowfunding is boosting it. This year, we are going to see increased momentum in this revolution because many new crowdfunding platforms will actually specialize in locavesting.

It’s been over a year since President Obama signed the JOBS Act, but legislation is stymied in the hands of the SEC.

However, at least four states – Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia and Kansas – have taken the initiative to allow crowdfunding for business loans. Crowdfunding platform Rebirth Financial is specializing in locavesting and offers intrastate, lending-based crowdfunding. Although Rebirth’s offerings are open to anyone within state borders, successful campaigns have so far been driven by very local support – all the way down to the customer-base level.

#3. Enterprise crowdfunding

Large enterprises and associations have begun to look into crowdfunding and how this tool carries new potential for their companies, including raising social profiles, market testing, and spin-ins of entrepreneurial ventures. The perceived benefit is not the additional funding itself, but the democratization of specific decisions that would otherwise be made internally in the company.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) represents the interests of more than 85,000 member architects across the U.S., a sector that has been hit particularly hard by the recent financial crisis. Recently, the AIA published a report examining crowdfunding’s potential as a new source of capital for residential, commercial, and industrial infrastructure projects.

Crowdfunding shows significant promise for attracting investors to smaller projects and getting them off the architect’s drawing board. In this case, crowdfunding will be used to spur community support and financing for an assortment of infrastructure ventures that would ordinarily have difficulty finding money due to their smaller size.

#4. Crowdfunding economic development

Major development banks and similar institutions — including The World Bank and The Inter-American Development Bank — are seeking to leverage crowdfunding for economic development. Crowdfunding’s social profile and its strong connection to micro-finance are the main drivers.

Crowdfunding has historically been embraced by philanthropic ventures, especially for donation-based crowdfunding and interest-free lending. The models naturally merge with micro-finance because the funding needs are very small, and individual donations or loans are likely triggers of funding success. The next step for crowdfunding in this particular space is the evolution and scaling up to economic development at the macro level.

The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank is currently exploring the potential of crowdfunding in Latin America, and how crowdfunding can be used to improve small businesses and bring financing to entrepreneurs who have less access to it. In Latin America, crowdfunding is just gathering momentum with about 40 online platforms, including Crowdfunder.mx and Idea.me, established over the last couple of years.

Platforms in the areas of solar energy, education, and urban development are expected to be the most promising in this region.

5. LIVE crowdfunding

The final trend that we see emerging in the crowdfunding space are launch-party events at the initiation of campaigns or LIVE crowdfunding expos. Besides creating media attention and offering a great marketing opportunity, LIVE Crowdfunding taps into an investor need that is hard to come by through the web: exclusivity.

Exclusivity in access to new products or deal flow can be a triggering factor in itself, and LIVE crowdfunding augments online crowdfunding with exactly that.

This October, the CrowdfundingRoadmap is hosting its second Global Crowdfunding Convention and Bootcamp, this year with its first ever LIVE Crowdfunding Expo, where anyone will be able to participate in donations- and rewards-based crowdfunding campaigns right on the spot.

All attendees will need to do is simply walk up to the booth!

In addition, if entrepreneurs are unable to attend the event or are launching their projects after October, CrowdfundingRoadmap is offering them the opportunity to showcase their crowdfunding pitch videos on the big screen at the expo, with a designated QR code, to help them get in front of potential investors and industry influencers.

Crowdfunding represents a breakthrough in how businesses and local projects are funded and disrupts centuries-old financial flows. While 2012 was the year of acceleration for the crowdfunding markets, these new developments above will fuel its growth for years to come.

Image credit: Shutterstock/Hands with dollars

Twitter released its two-factor authentication option today, after major media organizations were tricked into giving out their login information to hackers.

Two-factor authentication is an extra form of security when logging into an account. It can come in a few different forms but generally involves some kind of code that users must input alongside their username and password. This code can be supplied through a mobile application such as Google’s Authenticator app, a text message, or a piece of hardware like RSA dongles. The code is often activated and deactivated within a short period of time, so if one code is leaked out, it can’t be used in the future to access an account.

Twitter is using a text-messaged code approach, according to its announcement today. Text messaging covers a much larger portion of the population, as opposed to an app, which requires users to have a smartphone. Twitter warns that some carriers may not support the technology.

You can turn two-factor authentication on by going to your account settings in Twitter and selecting “require a verification code.” You’ll then have to enter a phone number. After two-factor is set up, you will have to enter the code every time you log in to Twitter.

A number of big-name companies have rolled out two-factor authentication as a result of hackings, including Apple. Twitter recently experience a rash of “break ins” involving the accounts of major media publications CBS, NPR, the Associated Press, and more. The Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-regime group of hackers that often attacks publications for their coverage of the conflict in Syria, has taken responsibility for the majority of these hacks. It says it usually gets access through phishing expeditions, where the group will send emails that look legitimate to employees of their target company asking for login credentials.

In the case of the AP, a tweet about an explosion at the White House caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop one percent in a minute. PhishMe chief executive Aaron Higmee explained that consumer-facing sites often leave these codes active for longer than usual because consumer sites don’t like having any barriers to entry. If a hacker phished a code and it still worked, then the two-factor authentication is useless. Jim Fenton, the chief security officer of OneID, also argues that two-factor authentication is breeding a false sense of security.

Twitter explains that now it has the two-factor technology in place, this opens the doors to future security elements to be introduced.

Image via Twitter

The world’s largest streaming music service, Pandora, is finally adding some deep integration with the world’s largest social network, Facebook, giving its users a much easier way to socialize their musical activity with friends.

Following on the heels of yesterday’s Pandora Premieres announcement, the new Facebook integration adds a helpful social layer to the streaming music service, and may help assure investors that Pandora is moving forward despite a grim business outlook ahead of tomorrow’s Q1 FY2014 earnings report. Previously, Pandora’s now former CEO Joe Kennedy testified at a congressional hearing that Pandora would be unable to sustain its business if music royalty rates weren’t lowered, (and it doesn’t appear the rates will drop). There’s also the matter of increased competition in smart radio services from giant tech companies with lots of money to burn. Google recently launched its own Google Play All Access streaming radio service, while Apple and Amazon are rumored to debut similar offerings later in the year.

As for the new Timeline app integration, Pandora isn’t following other media companies that have provided deep integration with Facebook’s Open Graph, which allows people to see all of your activity from both the Facebook news feed and from an activity ticker. Streaming services like Spotify allow friends on Facebook to see songs you’re currently listening to, which I’ve never found very compelling.

Pandora’s Facebook integration is a bit different because it focuses on adding things to your Timeline under a music section. When people are exploring your Timeline page, they’ll see a record of your songs played, favorite artists, and custom radio stations that others can then listen to. It also pops up in the Facebook news feed, but as a past event that behaves more like a news story than an activity. And determining exactly what listening activity you want people to see is pretty easy — meaning I can hide most of the random 90s slow jams that pop up. You can toggle the automatic sharing on and off as needed, which I can’t really say about the fire hose of activity offered by other music services that integrate with Facebook. Those sharing controls are also available on Pandora itself.

The new Facebook Timeline integration is available across all of Pandora’s applications and platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Pandora’s website, etc.) today. Obviously, the company is committed to a more social Pandora experience, but the more interesting observation is in how it’s not at all trying to promote an increase in listening (or consuming) activity.

Media companies like Spotify, Viddy, Vevo, Ustream, and others all saw a “Facebook bump” in new users and time spent on their respective services after integrating with Facebook’s open graph. But that sort of move could actually hinder Pandora’s overall business strategy. It’s already one of the largest streaming music service almost to a fault, with 200 million total registered users and over 1.49 billion hours of music listened to per month.

Despite record growth, the company said it’s unable to generate revenue and grow long-term profitability without the aid of any “Facebook Bump” due to what it sees as unreasonably high music licensing fees. Those fees have forced Pandora to implement a 40-hour monthly music listening cap on users of its free, ad-supported service. Therefore it would appear that a large growth spurt would end up hurting the company’s bottom line, since its advertising revenue isn’t able to keep pace with Pandora’s operational growth and increasing music licensing costs. But preventing the service from growing and attempting to lower the amount of interaction spent on it from its most loyal would be a very backwards strategy — not that I think Pandora’s Facebook Timeline integration is an attempt to do either of those things; still, the addition focuses more on keeping current users than grabbing new ones.

We’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s earnings call to find out if recent developments (Kennedy’s departure back in March, the Facebook Timeline integration, and new unreleased album station Pandora Premieres) are enough to keep the company’s stock from taking a dip.

There are two key problems that require immediate remediation in Congress, according to the coalition of companies, politicians, and nonprofits: jobs and fairness.

“Our outdated immigration system is costing our economy talent, jobs, and innovation, not to mention the toll it’s taking on families and potential immigrants,” the organization says. “America can’t afford to fall behind in the race for global talent — a race we’re already losing. Already, other countries have incentivized innovation and encouraged startups while we make it difficult for talented immigrants to even apply for a visa.”

That sounds like a reference to Canada, which recently created a “startup visa” that gives immigrants who are founding companies instant permanent residency and had its minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, visit Silicon Valley to drum up applicants who might be having trouble staying in the U.S.

The result could be a net drain on the American economy:

Holy crap! @alexisohanian ‘s mom was an illegal immigrant. If she had been deported? No #reddit for the USA. That’s why #iMarch #latism

— AnaRC (@AnaRC) May 22, 2013

When I chatted with Kenney last week, he called the U.S. immigration system “dysfunctional.”

The U.S. has made attempts to address the situation with a Startup Act of its own, but even that would only allow founders to stay for up to three years. The March for Innovation is looking for much more comprehensive reform that would include help for undocumented immigrants already in the country.

March for Immigration is supported by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Steve Case, Mark Cuban, Arianna Huffington, and numerous other business and technology leaders.

If you’re interested in participating, here are four things you can do to help:

1. Tweet or Facebook your senator
2. Spread the word on Twitter or Facebook
3. Change your Facebook profile picture to iMarch
4. Email your friends

The ultimate goal is immigration reform that supports innovation and delivers on the promise at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.

photo credit: gerson721 via photopin cc

Neurotrack, the startup that won the health prize at this year’s SXSW, has pulled in a round of seed funding, according to a Form D filing.

The $90,000 boost from angel investors is the first outside capital for the company with a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease.

CEO Elli Kaplan is aiming her life’s work at Alzheimer’s and related disorders. “I watched two of my grandparents die ‘alone’ because they could no longer remember their family members who were sitting at their bedsides,” she said.

Neurotrack’s test is bolstered by 25 years of neuroscience research. Millions of dollars from foundations and grants have already been poured into the technology, which was developed by researchers at Emery University.

The company offers a computer-based cognitive test that can detect an impairment on the Hippocampus, the first structure in the brain to be impacted by Alzheimer’s. The program evaluates patients’ eye movement — and the time spent looking at familiar and new images.

Related: The founders launched the company at DEMO — read the full VentureBeat story here.

Kaplan was impressed by the technology, which she claims could predict patients with a high risk of Alzheimer’s up to six years prior to the onset of the disease. So Neurotrack licensed it and is beginning to commercialize the test by selling to pharmaceutical companies.

“The biggest issue that pharma companies have is populating clinical trials with people who are pre-symptomatic,” said Kaplan. To develop drugs to treat Alzheimer’s, they need access to patients before irreparable damage is done.

The Alzheimer’s Association reports that about 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s – and that number is expected to rise to 16 million by 2050. But Kaplan is convinced that we’ll someday develop a drug that can cure the disease.

For now, informed patients can make lifestyle changes (exercising more, adapting eating habits) and take medication to delay the onset of the disease. “We know that some of the symptom-treating drugs are more effective the earlier you can start them,” said Kaplan.

Results from the most recent research is very promising — according to Kaplan, the participants who scored below 50 percent on the test have all received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis within six years. None of those scoring above 67 on the test have converted to Alzheimer’s. Ninety-two people participated in the study.

Neurotrack isn’t ready for the public yet — but if and when it becomes available, Kaplan said, people in their 50s will get tested every year. Patients with a family history of Alzheimer’s may receive the test earlier.

Kaplan would not yet disclose pricing information for the test when it becomes available. The company is in the midst of fundraising for its next round and is still fleshing out its go-to-market strategy. It is a graduate of Rock Health Boston, which has a strong relationship with venture firm Kleiner Perkins, and first launched at DEMO.

Top image of the founders at DEMO via Flickr

There’s a hacker who’s sure
All that glitters is old
And he’s buying a stairway to funding.

In Toronto he knows
If the doors are all closed,
On Sand Hill he can get what
He came for.

Ooooh, ooo-ooh, and he’s buying a stairway to funding!

There’s a term sheet that sucks
But for some fewer bucks
He says he can keep more of his equity.
In a bank run by crooks, there’s an old dude who sings,
“Sometimes all of our thoughts are collusion.”

And it makes me wonder.

Zalora scores $100M

Zalora, the Zappos-like fashion and beauty store for Southeast Asia, announced this morning that it has closed a $100 million financing round. That’s a lot of lipstick and high heels. Zalora focuses on 10 countries in Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The year-old startup says it has already achieved “annualized double-digit million USD revenues.” Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Urturn raises $10.7M

Urturn, a U.K.-based social networking startup for iOS and desktop, has just taken a whopping $10.7 million in its first round of institutional funding. First time at bat, Urturned knocked it outta the park. I believe the expression is, “Nailed it.” The remarkable Series A was led by European Union firm Balderton Capital, which previously invested in Bebo. “It’s an important vote of confidence from a well-recognized VC for the company,” said a Urturn rep. From what we can see so far, the vote of confidence is, to be blunt, badly needed. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Cloudscaling climbs to $10M

Elastic cloud infrastructure startup Cloudscaling has raised $10 million in its second round of funding so it can keep growing at a quick clip and innovating its cloud technology. The San Francisco-based startup ‘s core product is the Open Cloud System, which can deliver the same benefits as providers like AWS and Rackspace. But unlike those companies, Cloudscaling’s solution is deployable in a client’s data center under an IT team’s control. It can also run its solution on Amazon and Google’s public clouds if a customer wants to do so. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Remote Medical raises $8M

Seattle-based Remote Medical just scored $8 million to bring health care to virtually anyone in need, anywhere in the world. Remote Medical serves companies and individuals in remote places; it’s a good option for military personell, research teams, law enforcement groups, or those lucky billionaires living out their days on private islands. Remote Medical offers a variety of services, including telemedicine (physicians can securely chat with patients via video), medical training, drugs, and equipment. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Ex-Facebook/Dropbox product guy gets $1.2M for stealth startup

Mystery meat of the day is YesGraph, a stealthy recruiting startup. Founder Ivan Kirigin, a former product manager at Facebook and Dropbox, has already secured $1.2 million of a $1.8 million round, according to a Form D. “The financing has enabled us to build a good product and hire talent — there is a lot that is hard about this space,” said Kirigin on a phone call. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

UpOut comes up with $850K

Bay Area find-stuff-to-do app UpOut has raised an $850,000 seed round. The app serves up quirky, hipstery, “interesting” personalized recommendations for local events — so basically, it’s Stefon in your pocket. That sounded weird. Moving forward, the funding came from leading Silicon Valley angels. The company claims “tens of thousands” of users in and around San Francisco and has desktop and mobile apps.

Video robotics company Swivl raises $500K

Swivl makes personal robots with a video twist, and the company has just raised a $500,000 round from Grishin Robotics. Swivl — well, think of it as a Roomba for Facetime or YouTube. It swivels (hence the name) to track a speaker and capture video without the need for a dedicated cameraman. It’s designed with iOS devices in mind, but it works with any smartphone or video camera. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Neurotrack gets $90 for its tech to predict the onset of Alzheimer’s

The $90,000 boost from angel investors is the first outside capital for the startup with a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease. Neurotrack offers a computer-based cognitive test that can detect an impairment on the Hippocampus, the first structure in the brain to be impacted by Alzheimer’s.
Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Worlds are shaking as the father of the Graphics Interchange Format, ye trusty old bitmap image standby for animated images on Cheezburger and Reddit and every where geeks wanna have fun, says it’s pronounced JIF, not GIF.

“It’s pronounced JIF, not GIF.” ~ Steve Wilhite, the father of GIFs. Well that’s settled. #Webbys

— Brian A. Hernandez (@BAHjournalist) May 22, 2013

Steve Wilhite invented the venerable image format in 1987 for CompuServe, the first commercial online service in the United States. It supports a not-very-staggering 8-bit color palette, although it can go higher, and uses a loss-less data compression algorithm to reduce file size without degrading quality.

And according to Wikipidia, the creator’s “intended pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand, Jif … although an “alternative pronunciation with a hard ‘G’ … is in widespread usage.”

Wilhite disappointed those who believe GIF is pronounced the one true and right way, with a hard G, when he accepted a lifetime achievement award yesterday at the Webbies.

Response has varying, but true believers on the side of right and justice and the American way — not to mention syntactical and elocutionary excellence — have bravely stepped up to the plate to correct this horrific wrong:

@bahjournalist i don’t want to hear these communist lies

— Trevor Harmon (@maelstrommusics) May 22, 2013

@bahjournalist totally still disagree…even if he did make it. Graphic. Not jraphic. If I made apple and called it ahpple…no dice.

— Jarred Rowe (@JarredRowe) May 22, 2013

Unfortunately, the forces of evil are strong, and they have music on their side. Jonathan Mann, who has been making a “song of the day” for an astonishing 1,602 days, has made a song about the controversy which is mildly amusing, even if completely wrong-headed:

Take it back, Wilhite … or give back the award!

Image credits: Shocked Kramer/GifBin, Baby cringing/Reaction GIFs

Seattle-based Remote Medical just scored $8 million to bring health care to virtually anyone in need, anywhere in the world.

Remote Medical serves companies and individuals in remote places; it’s a good option for military personell, research teams, law enforcement groups, or those lucky billionaires living out their days on private islands.

Remote Medical offers a variety of services, including telemedicine (physicians can securely chat with patients via video), medical training, drugs, and equipment.

One customer, a remote worker on an island in the South Pacific had a heart attack, but a Remote Medical physician and nurse were able to treat his symptoms. The company’s operations team based at the Seattle headquarters booked a plane and crew to fly him to the nearest hospital in Honolulu.

The company will use the funding to expand its team of some 100 employees, enter into new international markets, and beat out competitors like RemoteMd. Remote Medical has been around since 2003, but hopes it can really establish itself this year and predicts a 60 percent revenue growth.

CEO Brian Vincent said he is looking to hire medical professionals and EMTs as well as sales and operations folk.

The funding comes from Columbia Pacific, a firm that owns 23 hospitals across Asia. Remote Medical will use these hospitals as bases of operations as it expands across the region.

joyfull / Shutterstock.com

Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman said that “you can feel the turnaround taking place at HP” in the company’s earnings call today. She touted that the company hit its earnings per share target, but she ignored that the company’s revenue fell short in her celebratory comments.

But in a conference call with analysts, Whitman took a swipe at Dell, which is amid a struggle to go private under founder Michael Dell. After hours, HP’s stock is up 13 percent on the stock market, at $24.09 a share.

“You saw a competitor, Dell, completely crater earnings,” Whitman said in response to a question. “Maybe that is what you do when you are going private. We are setting up the company for the long term.”

She implied that Dell did that on purpose, since Michael Dell is motivated to repurchase shares in the company as cheaply as possible, and deliberately lowering earnings is a good way to get the share prices to fall. Dell hasn’t responded to Whitman’s comment yet.

Whitman is probably more than a little angry at Dell because it and other PC makers evidently competed aggressively on price at the low-end of the PC business, stealing market share away from HP, which saw its consumer PC unit sales fall 29 percent in the second fiscal quarter ended April 30. HP hit its earnings targets, but it fell short on revenue, reporting earnings per share of 87 cents on revenue of $27.6 billion today.

Whitman said she could see the turnaround taking place based on conversations with employees, customers, and partners. But she reiterated that the turnaround is a multiyear journey.

While it isn’t as cool as Apple and it doesn’t make games like Microsoft, HP is a critical piece of the electronics industry, as it straddles both the consumer and enterprise markets across a bunch of product lines. The company has $120 billion in annual revenue (the biggest in the industry by that measure) and more than 330,000 employees. It has made 70 acquisitions in the past 15 years, but its stock price has been hurting lately.

“I must say I am encouraged with where we are,” Whitman said.

She said HP is investing in innovation, bringing cost in line with revenue, improving profits, lowering its debt, optimizing cash flow, and exceeding financial performance. In the call, Whitman said the balancing act was tough when it comes to taking market share or growing profits. At the low end of the PC market, HP lost share and gave up some business rather than lose money on deals. She said the team is evaluating what it can offer at the low end.

She said HP was getting better at electronic commerce, making its e-ordering portal more streamlined in the quarter and reducing cycle time for quotes up to 20 percent in Asia.

Meanwhile, she said she was cautious about guidance for the second half of the year, noting “macroeconomic headwinds” as Europe and China slow down economically. In printers, Whitman said HP was doing well as it moves to high-end printer and ink sales. She said HP gained strength with products like a new OfficePro printer, high-value ink, and multifunction printers. She said HP will roll out a subscription-based service for ordering ink in the home.

Whitman didn’t dwell on HP’s controversial $10 billion acquisition of Autonomy, which is the subject of litigation. She said that the division was starting to generate revenues thanks to turnaround efforts.

But she did say that the $1.6 billion 3Par acquisition is paying off nicely for the storage company, with a revenue run rate above $1 billion. HP launched its Moonshot server at the “hyperscale” server market. The server is 89 percent more energy efficient than HP’s Proliant servers. It uses less 80 percent space, and reduces complexity by 97 percent while costing 77 percent less. That product will take time to grow it sales, Whitman said. HP’s switching revenue also grew in the quarter while its largest competitor declined, Whitman said.

HP reduced its debt during the quarter. Personal systems (PC) revenue was down 20 percent from a year ago, with a 3.2 percent operating margin. Commercial PC revenue was down 14 percent, and consumer revneue was down 29 percent. Total unit sales were down 21 percent, while desktops were down 18 percent and notebooks were down 24 percent. HP is poised like other PC makers to introduce new machines based on Intel’s latest microprocessors, code-named Haswell. Whitman said HP had to do a better job managing the transition from the technologies that powered the past to those that will power the future.

HP has been dealing with a couple of negative trends. The PC market has slowed down because of rising tablet sales. And it has also had to deal with a downward shift in printing habits as the growing use and accessibility of the Internet makes paper less necessary. HP’s financial services business has been growing, but most of the other parts have been weak. On top of that, HP hasn’t been participating in the mobile market at all. She said that signs of interest in HP’s $169 Chromebook device are encouraging.

Whitman said HP saw a slowdown in sales of industry standard (Intel) servers. HP chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak said that Itanium server sales were particularly weak.

This is a guest post by entrepreneur Agu De Marco

In the international startup world, there are numerous options when it comes to accelerators.

Those options are even greater if you have a solid idea, strong team, and a sound execution plan. Being a startup from Argentina, our team could also choose between any number of international programs.

After being invited to TechCrunch Disrupt last October, our Wideo team toured the 500 Startups offices. We joined Dave McClure outside for a smoke, and chatted to him about gaining entry to the Fall class of 500 Startups accelerator program.

It was a fantastic opportunity, but we also realized that our team was about to split up. While I relocated to Mountain View, Calif. alone, the rest of the team remained at home in Argentina.

Fast forward eight months, and we reunited to take part in the NXTP Labs accelerator program in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The biggest question we get now is, “why are you joining NXTP after 500 Startups?” Followed by, “would you do another accelerator?” It really got me thinking about whether it’s a good idea or a mistake to participate in more than one accelerator program.

What are the cons?

The most obvious is the loss of equity. As you enter each accelerator, you give up part of your equity. Logic follows that the more accelerator programs you enter, the more of your company you’re forced to give up.

Depending on your negotiations, this can be a huge loss for your company or a non-issue.

Another con is that you may simply be repeating what you already learned.  Though each acceleration program is different, you might just end up wasting your time. Consider whether this program is offering something that you don’t already know. Ask yourself what you can really stand to gain.

Finally, you may end up delaying your product launch. Is this a big deal?  It’s hard to say, but it could prove detrimental if a competitor launches before you.  In the startup world, there is always a risk of someone getting ahead of you on an idea. The “first mover” advantage is very real.

And the pros?

The biggest pro is the mentors; the people who help you along in the startup process are such talented, intellectual individuals that you can’t walk away without learning something from each one.  The connections you make at an accelerator are simply unmatched in the real ‘non-accelerated’ world.

If you participate in global accelerators, you have a better handle on your market.  Our market is English and Spanish speakers, so we did one of each.  Our market is thoroughly tapped in both the US and Argentina, simply because of our efforts in the accelerator programs.  The awareness of your brand grows when you go global.

Third, sometimes, but not always, validation comes from certain acceleration programs.  We’re a 500 Startups startup and that means a lot, especially since we were one of the first Argentine startups to be accepted.

Would we do a third accelerator?

Maybe. I honestly can’t say no because we might discover that our major market is in Brazil.  We can’t say we wouldn’t like to take advantage of an accelerator program there.

When we entered 500 Startups, our product hadn’t even launched yet.  That program taught us about our market, how to launch, and gave us contacts that we really appreciate. However, we lost focus and our team was separated.

Entering NXTP Labs, we have a strong product that we can actually accelerate, so the decision was relatively easy. We are taking advantage of where we are in product development and what each accelerator has to offer.

Participating in more than one accelerator may not be for every new startup; for us, we just try to make the best decisions at the time for our company.

Agu De Marco is the founder of Wideo.co, a tool to make cool videos. Wideo participated in 500 Startups in the Fall class (one of the first two Argentine startups to be accepted), and will begin NXTP’s program this Spring.  

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“I am not an unfair person,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told lawmakers yesterday. “Apple is not an unfair company.”

And yet, Apple was summoned to congressional hearings focusing on how Apple paid almost no tax — basically 2 percent – on over $100 billion in overseas income. Income that if brought home to the good-old USA would have resulted in $35 billion in tax revenues for Washington.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) certainly disagrees. He asked Cook, Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and especially Apple’s head of tax operations, Philip Bullock, tough questions for long minutes as Bullock’s face grew shinier and shinier with perspiration and the lines on Cook’s face grew deeper and grimmer.

“Let’s get a straight answer,” Levin said. “You’re not bringing the $100 billion in foreign cash home unless we reduce our tax rates … you are able to shift profits to places where you, an American company, don’t pay taxes. That is not right.”

But it’s fairly easy to see a scenario in which both Cook & company feel perfectly justified in doing what they’re doing, and lawmakers feel like Apple is acting in an underhanded, un-American, unpatriotic, and tricky manner.

Big clue here: These ain’t American dollars

Cook and fellow Apple executives are officials of a publicly traded company. As such, they are not just encouraged but obligated to maximize shareholder value. If they don’t, they could be subject to dismissal or lawsuits. Any corporation’s shareholders naturally expect the leadership of the company to minimize expenses in any reasonable way — include tax expenses.

That alone could influence Apple to utilize whatever tax shelters it can. And most big multinationals feel the same way — Google, after all, makes almost $10 billion in its Bahamas subsidiary alone. Avid searchers, those Bahamians.

But there’s another important point.

Lost in all this discussion of how Apple should “bring that money home,” as Levin says, or “repatriate its profits” is that the money is not American to begin with and cannot be “brought home” in any real sense. While it could perhaps be “patriated,” there’s no “re”patriation possible.

The money that Apple earns overseas is exactly that: overseas income. It’s not spent in the U.S., not earned in the U.S., and, one might therefore quite reasonably argue, should not be taxed in the U.S. Which is precisely how Cook sleeps very well at night, thank you very much.

“Everything that we sell in the U.S. is taxed in the U.S,” Cook said. “For a foreign country, everything we sell is generally taxed in the local market.”

(Cook did not mention, of course, that it is primarily due to Apple’s ingenuity and Ireland’s complicity that this foreign market turns out to be largely Ireland, and therefore largely one that taxes Apple at an effective 2 percent rate.)

But, as Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) noted, the United States is one of the last countries in the world to move to a territorial tax system, whereby income is taxed in the jurisdictions it is earned. Most countries do not tax overseas corporate income. As he also pointed out, “no other country in the world has such high barriers to bringing international income home.”

Which means, Portman highlighted, global Apple competitor Samsung can bring its cash home without any penalty. So while Samsung is free to bring profit out of the U.S. and invest it in Korea, Apple cannot do the reverse — without losing 35 percent of it at the border.

“That would be great for growth in this country, Cook said. “We can’t use our overseas cash to make any investments in the United States … which would create more jobs and create more investment.”

But, but, but … it was American know-how that created those dollars

The flip side is also easy to miss.

While on the one side Apple doesn’t feel it should be taxed on overseas income just because it is an American company — “proud to be an American company,” Cook said — on the other side there’s the question of what enabled those profits in the first place.

Source: Foster and Partners

Apple’s proposed “spaceship” campus in Cupertino, Calif.

“Ninety-five percent of the creativity that goes into those products is in California,” Levin told Cook, nailing him with his own testimony. “Most of your global profits are sitting in three Irish companies that you control that don’t pay taxes … and there’s a huge drain as a result.”

In other words, without the environment in which you were created — the access to skills, talent, education, subsidies, ecosystem, everything — Apple would not be what it is. And the products that it created that revolutionized the world would not have been built. Which is precisely why Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked Cook an impossible question: ”What would it cost you to move out of California?”

The implication, of course, is that while it would currently cost Apple $35 billion to take its overseas earnings home, it would cost Apple its very existence to move out of the womb that birthed the company. Fifty thousand of Apple’s 75,000 global employees reside in the United States, of course, and it is ludicrous to assume that even a sizable fraction of them would follow Apple to some foreign country so that the company could avoid income tax.

Which is why Cook came to testify before the lawmakers in the first place.

“I feel good about participating,” Cook told Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in spite of the hard questioning. “Apple is ready to help.”

So, who’s right?

Levin sounds pretty unequivocally on the side that Apple is doing something wrong. Portman is pretty sure that the problem is an “antiquated, uncompetitive tax system” that is a “relic of the 1960s.” UCLA law professor Edward Kleinbard told the New York Times Apple’s actions showed “unbelievable chutzpah,” and international opinion is similarly divided.

Richard Murphy of the United Kingdom nonprofit Tax Research UK singled out Ireland for blame.

“Ireland is completely complicit in this low tax rate and in the process is guilty of deliberately undermining the tax revenues of states around the world and of destroying fair competition in international markets,” he said.

Pulitzer Prize-winning tax expert David Cay Johnston says the problem is the tax code itself, calling for simplicity. Which, interestingly enough, is exactly what Apple says needs to be done.

“Apple has always believed in the simple, not the complex,” CEO Tim Cook said yesterday. “It is in this spirit that we recommend a dramatic simplification of the tax code … a lower tax rate … and a reasonable tax on foreign earnings.”

Which means that Apple, at least, wants to meet somewhere in the middle.

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc, Shutterstock/Cash

HP released its second fiscal quarter earnings this afternoon, hitting its profit targets but missing on revenue.

HP reported revenue of $27.6 billion for the three months that ended on April 30, down 10 percent from $30.7 billion a year ago. Earnings per share were 87 cents, down 11 percent from 98 cents a share a year ago.

While it isn’t as cool as Apple and it doesn’t make games like Microsoft, HP is a critical piece of the electronics industry, as it straddles both the consumer and enterprise markets across a bunch of product lines. The company has $120 billion in annual revenue (the biggest in the industry by that measure) and more than 330,000 employees. It has made 70 acquisitions in the past 15 years, but its stock price has been hurting lately.

Analysts estimated HP would report non-GAAP earnings of 81 cents a share on revenues of $28.08 billion. Analysts had previously expected third-fiscal quarter earnings of 84 cents a share and full-year earnings of $3.49 a share.

Meg Whitman, chief executive, accentuated the positive. In a statement, she said, “We beat the upper end of our non-GAAP diluted EPS outlook for the quarter by 5 cents per share, driven by better than expected performance in Enterprise Services and Printing, coupled with the accelerated capture of restructuring savings and improvement in our operations.”

Last quarter, the company had net income of $1.2 billion for the first quarter of 2013, compared to $1.5 billion in the same quarter a year ago, as revenue fell to $28.4 billion. That translates to $0.82 per share, which is down 11 percent from 2012 but is well above HP’s previously provided guidance of $0.68 to $0.71 per share.

It’s better than HP’s outlook in November, when the company had just reported bad numbers and came clean on its awful acquisition of Autonomy. And it’s much better than the second quarter of 2012, when HP faced its biggest-ever quarterly loss.

Whitman said, “I am encouraged by our performance in the second quarter, and I feel good about the rest of the year. As I have said many times before, this is a multi-year journey. We have a long way to go, but we are on track to deliver on our fiscal 2013 non-GAAP diluted earnings per share outlook.”

HP reduced its debt during the quarter. Personal systems (PC) revenue was down 20 percent from a year ago, with a 3.2 percent operating margin. Commercial PC revenue was down 14 percent and consumer revneue was down 29 percent. Total unit sales were down 21 percent, while desktops were down 18 percent and notebooks were down 24 percent. HP is poised like other PC makers to introduce new machines based on Intel’s latest microprocessors, code-named Haswell.

Printing revenue was down 1 percent, but its operating margin is still strong at 15.8 percent. Hardware unit sales were down 11 percent from a year ago, with commercial units down 5 percent and consumer units down 13 percent.

Enterprise revenue was also weak, down 10 percent. Networking revenue was up, industry standard server revenue was down 12 percent, and business critical systems were down 37 percent. Enterprise services were down 8 percent from a year ago. Software revenue was down 3 percent, and financial services were down 9 percent from a year ago.

HP has been dealing with a couple of negative trends. The PC market has slowed down because of rising tablet sales. And it has also had to deal with a downward shift in printing habits as the growing use and accessibility of the Internet makes paper less necessary. HP’s financial services business has been growing, but most of the other parts have been weak. On top of that, HP hasn’t been participating in the mobile market at all.

Whitman has previously stated that HP will not be releasing a new smartphone until 2014. HP is reportedly working on Android-based tablets and phones.

Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed today that the company will be producing its first Made in America Mac product in none other than the Republic of Texas. Yee to the haw!

In statements made to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Cook said the $100 million setup will use machinery made in Kentucky and Michigan and components from Illinois and Florida.

“But there’s nothin’ dirty goin’ on,” the CEO may or may not have said in conclusion.*

Apple manufacturer Foxconn has assembly facilities in Texas and has been a longtime Apple partner in its Asian manufacturing and assembly process, so most folks are assuming Foxconn will be involved in the Lone Star State operations as well.

Apple’s date with the Senate is all about its offshore operations — specifically, how income from those offshore operations netted the company a whole boatload of money that Apple never got around to paying taxes on. Maybe there is somethin’ dirty goin’ on after all.

*Note: He did not say this.

Image credit: Universal Pictures

Adobe has just bought up Thumb Labs, mobile dev/design shop and maker of the Behance iOS application.

Behance, another recent Adobe acquisition, lets users (read: designers and other digitally/visually oriented creatives) make online portfolios, show off their work, and do a bit of social-professional online networking.

Behance features were a big part of Adobe’s recent Creative Cloud string of announcements. The design software company is making big bets on cloud-based software paradigms, trading in its decades of cereal-box software expertise to keep pace with the changing times.

In a nutshell, Adobe killed off its Creative Suite product line and branding, reimagining the flagship brand (and Adobe’s revenue model) under the subscription service known as Creative Cloud.

Behance (and Thumb Labs) represent Adobe’s best attempt to be social and give designers and developers more and better tools for showcasing their work.

Thumb Labs was founded in 2010 in New York City.

“It is clear that this is an exciting time at the company,” said Thumb Labs co-founders Rich Kern and Jared Verdi in a joint statement on the startup’s website.

“We are looking forward to contributing to these efforts, as Behance’s vibrant community becomes more deeply integrated into Adobe’s tools.”

Adobe also recently started integrating other Behance features into its products, including portfolio sites and community features.

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Mystery funding of the day? That’d be YesGraph, a stealthy startup in the recruiting space founded by Ivan Kirigin, a former product manager at Facebook and Dropbox.

Kirigin today secured $1.2 million of a $1.8 million round, according to a Form D. A total of seven angel investors participated in the funding.

“The financing has enabled us to build a good product and hire talent — there is a lot that is hard about this space,” said Kirigin on a phone call.

Ivan Kirigin

Kirigin would not say much about the product at this stage. But he did reveal that YesGraph is building tools for tech companies to improve the hiring experience — and not just the “output.” To that end, Kirigin just released a survey, an attempt to find patterns in how startups make their first hires.

“Companies have a hard time hiring good people — we are trying to help them,” he added.

Serial entrepreneur Kirigin is also the founder of a micro-payments service called Tipjoy, which both Facebook and Twitter considered acquiring, TechCrunch reported. After negotiations fell through with Facebook, the company made Kirigin an offer, and he joined in 2009 to work on a virtual currency product. He would later join Dropbox, where he claims on his LinkedIn page to have helped drive growth 12X over 2 years.

Investors in Kirigin’s previous company Tipjoy include Chris Sacca and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham.

Top image via Shutterstock

Tarun Wadhwa is a writer, researcher, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and public policy.

You would think that it would be a terrible idea for a company accused of helping teenagers send each other sexually explicit images to feature bikini-clad young girls in their marketing. Most would avoid such direct associations, for good reason – it’s immature, and edgy when it doesn’t need to be.

But not the makers of the enormously popular app, Snapchat, which allows people to send images and videos that “self-destruct” after a few seconds.

The company claims messages are deleted once they are opened, but there have been a series of recent scandals showing that this may not be completely accurate.  Their product is far from perfect, and there are several ways to compromise the protection they offer.  It is never a good idea to send something over the internet that would damage you or your reputation if it became public.  While this may be common sense, it has little to do with how we actually act online.

The makers of Snapchat are right to reject the “sexting app” label — it’s not clear that this is what it is even being used for, and everyone deserves the option to communicate privately when they want, without automatically being branded as a pervert.

Within a few months of launching, the company has made an enormous and lasting impact on the culture of communication on the Internet, and we should all be grateful.

They have simplified a security process enough to the point that anybody can use it, while validating the market of the next generation of privacy-preserving ephemeral communication.  Most importantly, we may finally get a break from the forced permanence of the Facebook and Google world, where everything you do and share is a data point to be monetized and re-sold to the highest bidder.

And Snapchat isn’t even the best product out there — there’s a whole slew of communication tools that are more secure and functional making their way into the public eye.

One of those is Wickr, created by RSA veteran Nico Sell, a more serious security-focused app that uses “military-grade” encryption to send text, video, voice, and document files that can self-destruct after a given period of time.  Hospitals and law enforcement have expressed interest in a similarly functioning Android app, Gryphn.  Although it’s not “self-destructing,” keep an eye on the exciting and powerful suite of communication apps developed by encryption legend Phil Zimmermann’s Silent Circle company – they are not for “average” users, but they could provide enterprise and more serious clients a massive improvement in security.

What apps like these do is allow us a little bit more freedom to be ourselves, for better or worse.

In the copycat world of Silicon Valley startups and funding, expect to see a lot more “Snapchat for _____” type companies.  Finally, the lack of app creativity may work in the favor of consumers.  We have accepted the notion that what you do on the internet is permanent – a statement that is partially a truthful observation, and partially a threatening promise from the companies and entrepreneurs who are making it a reality – but it doesn’t have to be that way for everything.

Perhaps the greatest impact of this rising industry will be when the giants try to co-opt them, as Facebook attempted with Poke.  The issue of trust in these companies aside, it would be a winning situation for everyone for ephemeral features to be built into the services we already use.

We need more human-behavior-friendly default settings.

Privacy is complicated, and nothing is ever completely secure.  Nobody is immune from this, as Nicholas Weaver wrote in Wired, “even the head of the CIA can’t email his mistress without being identified by the FBI.”  But in the billions of messages already sent through Snapchat are a few people who didn’t have their lives ruined because of something they shouldn’t have shared.

The media can continue to ridicule the “sexting app” that so many young people are using, but they are entirely missing the point.  The same generation being blamed for the supposed “death of privacy” has become wiser than those who are criticizing them.

In a candid admission at the Milken Conference this year, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, when recalling his college days playing in a band, told the audience, “thank God social media didn’t exist then, because if it did, I wouldn’t be here.”  The Internet wasn’t built with security in mind, and we’re still dealing with the consequences of that.  The next generations are going to be the ones who pay the true cost of the design decisions we make today.

Tarun Wadhwa is a writer, researcher, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and public policy. You can follow him on Twitter – @twadhwa – or contact him directly at VB@tarunwadhwa.com. Also, check out his upcoming book, Identified, which will be out later this year. 

Image credit: Shutterstock/Shocked man

If you had asked me last week to pick a single device that embodied everything Microsoft was trying to accomplish in 2013 and beyond, I’d instantly point to its Surface tablets. After yesterday’s Xbox One reveal, though, the answer is no longer as clear-cut.

Building on its experience with the original Xbox and Xbox 360 (and to a certain extent, its work on the Windows CE operating system for the Sega Dreamcast), Microsoft has fashioned a powerful gaming system in the Xbox One that will also serve as a media hub for the entire family. The Xbox One can integrate with your TV service, multitask like a computer, and give you instant access to media in the cloud.

It’s more a powerful home theater PC than it is a game console, making it a great tool for bringing Microsoft’s services into your living room. More so than the Xbox 360 — which started out as a simple gaming machine but evolved into an entertainment powerhouse thanks to a slew of regular software updates — the Xbox One is built to take advantage of Microsoft’s web services right from the start.

And it’ll only become more integrated over time.

Skype becomes a living room staple

While rumors have swirled for a while that Skype would eventually head to the Xbox 360, it turns out that the service is actually making its console debut on the Xbox One. You can thank the revamped Kinect sensor for that — it’ll be packed in with every Xbox One, and it also sports a much higher resolution camera than the initial Kinect (which essential for getting decent video from wide living room shots).

It’s not the first time Skype has hit the living room. The video chat app is also available on Google TV devices (with a special Logitech camera) and some smart TVs. But launching on the Xbox One will give Skype its largest living room audience yet, and it’s something no other video chat service will be able to easily match.

You’ll be able to participate in Skype group video chats on the Xbox One, and since the console supports true multitasking, you’ll also be able to jump into video calls while playing a game or watching a video. And of course, the Skype integration will let you easily chat with your friends using Skype on other platforms, like PCs and smartphones.

After two years, it seems like Microsoft’s $8.5 billion Skype acquisition will finally pay off with the Xbox One.

Azure brings console gaming to the cloud

Even though it was a fairly minor bit of the Xbox One’s announcement yesterday, the console’s integration with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform has far-reaching potential over the next few years. It could be used to scale Microsoft’s Xbox Live service (the company is already adding 300,000 servers to power Live for the Xbox One, while it’s only running on 15,000 servers right now) and store your games and saves. Most intriguingly, Microsoft also mentioned that it could be used for offloading computational tasks to the cloud.

With Azure’s infrastructure, “Xbox Infinity” may have been a better name for the Xbox One.

The promise of cloud computation means that games on the console will only become more complex over time — imagine better in-game physics when you’re connected to the web or seamless loading for maps for massively multiplayer games. Console developers typically manage to eke out better performance from systems as they age, but with Azure’s cloud computing capabilities, Xbox One games could conceivably keep getting better indefinitely. The only limit will be our Internet connections.

Xbox with a touch of Windows

A simplified version of Windows is one of three operating systems powering the Xbox One, which means Microsoft’s new Windows platform now lives on your television in addition to tablets, PCs, and smartphones (Windows Phone 8 has a big chunk of Windows 8′s kernel, the main component of the OS). You can also see a hint of Windows 8′s flat live tiles on the Xbox One’s new interface.

On the Xbox One, Windows powers nongame applications like Skype and Netflix. This means developers can also create new apps easily — potentially with some of the code they’re using for existing Windows 8 apps.

Having Windows baked in makes it easier for Microsoft to integrate even more of its services into the Xbox One down the line. It also helps to power the Xbox One’s intriguing multitasking capabilities, a first for a console. While the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 often struggled just to do more than one thing at once, the Xbox One will let you snap apps to the side of the screen just like Windows 8. During Microsoft’s demonstration yesterday, moving between apps on the console was also incredibly fast.

Voice commands have also been greatly improved with the new Kinect, a combination of the Xbox One’s faster processing power and multitasking capabilities. You can command the Xbox One to turn on (which flips on your TV and home theater receiver at the same time) and switch from game to media environments. Instant and accurate voice commands remove the delays it currently takes to navigate the Xbox 360, and it opens the door for even more creative uses of the Xbox One (perhaps as a central hub for home automation, or to remotely give commands to your PC).

I’ve always been intrigued by Microsoft’s initial strategy with Windows 8. Rather than repeat what’s worked with Windows for so long, Microsoft took a radically different route and built an OS that’s optimized for touchscreens. Simply looking at the Surface devices tells you that Microsoft envisions a feature where tablets and laptops merge.

With Windows on the Xbox and Windows Phone 8, it looks like Microsoft’s future isn’t just focused on predicting what computers will look like in 10 years — it’s also attempting to unify its platform on every screen in your life.

What does this mean for Sony?

While Microsoft seems dead-set on showing us the many ways the Xbox One fits into your life with its many services, Sony seems more focused on appealing to gamers with the PlayStation 4. We saw plenty more games during the PlayStation 4′s launch event, and there was also more talk about how its hardware will improve the gaming experience.

I can’t blame Sony for making its pitch to gamers, but Microsoft may have had the better idea by focusing on a more general audience. Microsoft isn’t just targeting gamers — it’s targeting everyone who sits in the living room. And unlike Sony, it has a wealth of services to make that pitch stick.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Microsoft’s announcement of its Xbox One video game console landed with a thud on Wall Street, where the company’s shares are falling this morning. Other reactions have focused on what Microsoft didn’t talk about (it’s saving a lot for E3 in June) and consumer rights issues that it didn’t fully address.

Unfortunately, stock traders are reacting to the partial information that Microsoft released yesterday, and they’re not inclined to care if Microsoft was keeping its powder dry until the official E3 press conference June 10.

Microsoft touted features such as the integration of Kinect motion and voice controls into the heart of the system and the addition of new entertainment services and Skype. It showed glimpses of games such as Call of Duty: Ghosts (with exclusive downloadable content), EA Sports titles, and Microsoft’s own Quantum Break, promising they would look awesome. It touted clever hardware innovations such as cloud processing, which uses data centers to complement the processing power inside the machine. It also said it would integrate SmartGlass app controls into the system. Instant Kinect command recognition is Microsoft’s main selling point for how entertainment will become better on Xbox One. But those features didn’t capture a lot of the headlines.

Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities said in a research note that he liked what he saw so far but details that will determine long-term success will likely have to wait until the E3 trade show in June. Ben Schachter of Macquarie Research wrote there were great new features in Kinect integration for multimedia, some exclusive content and a confirmed 2013 launch.

“However, we saw nothing earth-shattering, and there was no word on pricing, not that we were expecting pricing just yet, which we think will be absolutely key in determining the pace of adoption beyond the initial launch surge,” Schachter wrote. “If a low initial-cost subscription model is announced at E3, it would be a meaningful positive in our view.  If not, we may need to wait and see if any key must-have platform-exclusive features or titles appear.”

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird Equity Research, said that Xbox One should “be a contender in the living room battle.” He called the “all-in-one” living room box a “significant upgrade.”

“We view the broad capabilities of the Xbox One as likely to appeal to a broad market, although price remains an important unknown,” he wrote.

That battle isn’t just about games but in countering the incursion of iOS and Android platforms into the living room and overall consumer behavior.

“Overall, we believe the Xbox One reveal demonstrates that Microsoft has a capable platform in the living room battle, even if there is a narrow window of opportunity to build share before other platforms gain a foothold,” he said.

Based on reaction in forums, Xbox One hardcore fans appear to be upset about Microsoft’s failure to address three issues that go to the heart of a consumer’s “rights” when it comes to buying and owning their games and consoles. Microsoft said there would be no backward compatibility for Xbox 360 games, not even the digital versions of games downloaded from the Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft also said there would be limitations on the trading of used games, though it offered a vague promise that it would have a solution for second-hand trading of games. And Microsoft conceded that, while the machine does not require an always-on connection, you will have to log into the internet about once a day to keep the console and games updated.

Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett raised those issues in a story headlined “That Xbox One Reveal Sure Was A Disaster, Huh?” Indie game developers expressed disappointment over the lack of self-publishing of apps on the platform. Rob Fahey wrote for GamesIndustry.biz that “After an awful start, Xbox One must redeem itself at E3.”

Meanwhile, Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said that the news was also mixed for GameStop, the world’s largest video game retailer. The fact that Xbox One is launching worldwide in 2013 is a good thing for the retail chain, but he said that Microsoft’s position on used games (including misinformation about that) hurt GameStop shares. Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison told us in an interview that Microsoft would release details later on how consumers can trade in and resell games. Clearly, the nuances of this policy on games — which will have to be installed on a hard drive and tied to a user’s identity — could have an effect on GameStop’s capability to buy and resell games.

“Xbox One appears to be the next logical step in Microsoft’s ambitions to dominate the living room with an all-purpose entertainment device,” Bhatia wrote. “A significant amount of time during the presentation was dedicated to showing nongaming functionalities such as the capability to switch to live TV, browsing, Skyping, etc. The mainstream media has generally praised this console, though the reaction from the gaming-focused media has been somewhat mixed.”

Microsoft said it has 15 games in the works at its own studios for release in the next year. Those include eight brand-new properties, and it is working on a Halo TV show with Steven Spielberg.

Microsoft left out some important pieces of the puzzle, probably to keep Sony guessing. The price, launch date, and supply levels will be important factors in how competitive the machine will be compared to Sony’s PlayStation 4, which is launching this fall.

“The user interface looked simple and seemed to be very responsive with no visual lag,” said Billy Pidgeon, a longtime game analyst. “It’s a powerful console loaded with many features, and it looks like Microsoft didn’t cut any corners. We’ll learn more about the most important aspect of Xbox One, the games, at E3. There could be a downside to the high-powered hardware — the price could also be very high.”

Schachter wrote in his conclusion, “Price, price, price will be key.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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