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12/05/11--07:35: RIM boss in Indonesia faces charges following BlackBerry stampede (chan 1592482)

Research In Motion’s top executive in Indonesia is facing charges from the government after more than 90 people were hurt when chaos broke out during the launch of RIM’s BlackBerry 9790 in Jakarta. Police confirmed Monday that Andrew Cobham, who has been identified as RIM’s Indonesia CEO by Reuters, will be charged with negligence, which has a maximum sentence of 9 months in jail. Cobham has not been detained. An event organizer, a shopping mall manager and a RIM employee involved with security may also be charged. Read


12/05/11--08:30: Apple, Samsung and six more companies sued over Carrier IQ scandal (chan 1592482)

Apple, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Carrier IQ have been sued in a federal court by what the lawyers involved have deemed a “cell phone tracking software scandal.” Law firms Sianni & Straite LLP, Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy LLP, and Keefe Bartels L.L.C. have jointly filed a class action complaint in a Delaware Federal Court related to the “unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.” The complaint suggests that the aforementioned carriers and vendors violated the Federal Wiretap Act, the Stored Electronic Communications Act, and the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The suit of course refers to the companies’ use of Carrier IQ, the carrier and vendor-implemented cell phone spyware discovered recently


12/05/11--09:35: U.S. judge denies Apple’s attempt to ban Samsung Galaxy device sales (chan 1592482)

A United States judge has denied Apple’s formal request for an injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy family of smartphones and tablets. “It is not clear that an injunction on Samsung’s accused devices would prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed,” San Jose U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said. Samsung was pleased with Koh’s decision. “This ruling confirms our long-held view that Apple’s arguments lack merit,” Samsung lawyer Jason Kim said. Apple has accused Samsung of “slavishly copying” its products and could still come out as the winner in the patent infringement lawsuit. The two companies have similar cases ongoing around the world. An Australian judge recently lifted a ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia after ruling the initial injunction was “not terribly


12/05/11--09:37: The Clicker's Moment: After 60 Years, TV Remotes Get Zapped With Makeovers (chan 1592482)

Every TV manufacturer agrees, the remote control will change more in the next three years than it has the previous six decades. But how will it actually change? Sony, Samsung, LG, and Vizio tell us.



Sixty-one years ago, Zenith Radio Corporation developed the first remote control for televisions. It was wired, but you'd recognize its function.

Three years later, Watson and Crick would discover the double helix. Sixteen years after that, Armstrong and Aldrin would walk on the moon. TVs would get larger. Go flatter. Get cheaper, then get cable, videogames, and get called obsolete in the face of the Internet. And during all this progress, the humble yet ubiquitous TV remote remained mostly unchanged. Channel up. Volume down. There have been a handful of programmable universal remotes with touchscreens available for the high-end market. But the average remote that comes bundled with a new TV is about as advanced as the one my grandpa used.

Yet in the next three years, the TV remote--possibly the most overused and underrated gadget of the past century--will change more than it has since its birth. In fact, just this week comes news that the History Channel and Verizon FiOS will allow viewers to buy products from companies such as Schwinn, Crosley Radio, and the Franklin Mint by using their remotes while watching History Channel programs.

With this brave, new, remote-controlled world looming, designers and decision-makers at Sony, Samsung, LG, and Vizio, four companies that make up 50% of the global television market, tell Fast Company they are planning a new generation of remotes that could become the defining icons of television's future.

Why Has Nothing Changed in Decades?

"Especially in the U.S., there are certain reasons why the remote control has actually not innovated for the last decade or so--it has to do a lot with infrastructure. Cable and satellite provider remote controls are the ones that most consumers utilize...If that's the case, for manufacturers like us, we think, how much more influence could we have if we innovated around the remote? That's sort of the looming question for us." --Mike Abary, Head of Sony Home Entertainment of America.

Television manufacturers told me over and over again that their innovation has been thwarted by our set-top boxes. While Sony may be free to imagine any type of crazy remote scheme to control Sony TVs, it's inevitably thrown by the wayside for the remotes that are packaged, and often preprogrammed, by companies like Comcast and DirecTV.

It's no coincidence that cable and satellite providers have developed the gaudiest remotes in the industry. That redundant array of buttons keeps the hardware low-cost and flexible in the face of long-term upgrades to your set-top box, for one thing. But the real reason is purely human: Data shows that consumers love their buttons. Our minds quickly and blindly map even the strangest array of tiny rubber nobs, meaning that these thousand-buttoned-monstrosities of the contemporary cable provider are really just manifestations of our own tacit talents.

"I actually hate physical buttons," laughs Vizio's CTO Matt McRae. "From a design standpoint, I'd love to get everything off this remote and make it so simple you didn't need to learn the muscle memory to use it."

But Vizio's user testing revealed a divergence between what people want and what they use. Participants in a study were presented with two remotes, one with a "crap-load" of buttons on it, and another that was stripped down. People gravitated toward the simple remote first, says McRae. "Then you leave it with them for a week or two, and they'll say, 'I love the look of the thing, but it's just a pain.'"

Another, more practical reason that remotes haven't evolved with newer technologies is that no company sells a TV based upon its remote. Think about it. When you bought your last TV, what was the deciding factor? Most people look at price, resolution, and size. But how many of you, whether in the store or online, took a look at the bundled remote first?

"We shipped a universal remote control with Bluetooth embedded and a slider QWERTY keyboard with game controls, and it didn't affect our sales whatsoever," says McRae. "We garnered a lot of customer loyalty...but for somebody standing in a Costco, looking at two boxes, it didn't affect their purchase decision at all."

This could change soon. Cell phones have driven the prices down on several handheld control technologies. And a new generation of TV technologies will offer manufactures another chance--some might say, one last chance--to sell consumers on their own innovation. It's the era of the smart TV, and it's both the reason behind and the justification for the remote revolution.

It's also why you may look at the remote attached to your next TV before purchasing it.

New Control Standards

If your next TV is going to have built-in Wi-Fi, apps like Netflix and Skype, and even access the Internet via Google TV, there are two direct results:

1. The TV industry believes their services give them leverage over cable operators.

2. The contemporary remote scheme, with more and more buttons, becomes untenable.

It's good news. Smart TVs will usher in a new era of fancy remotes. The bad news is, there are a lot of similarly plausible technologies--motion, touchscreens, and voice--that are all competing to be part of that remote. Manufacturers are looking at each of these three technologies quite seriously.

After a multi-decade draught of creativity, the industry is about to inundate us with new ideas--maybe too many new ideas. In the next three years there will be experimentation, then fragmentation, even with a single brand. Sony calls this UI Darwinism a "natural evolution" rather than some preplanned "consortium," citing Apple's iPhone pinch-to-zoom as control scheme that just worked, and so it immediately engrained itself in consumer consciousness and smartphones everywhere--patent issues aside.

But not everyone in the industry is so eager to adopt the same control schemes as the next guy.

"For gestures or voice...I don't think there's a great motivation to create a standard, because that's how we want to differentiate ourselves," says Tim Alessi, Director of New Product Development for LG Electronics USA. "We want to be able to say, if you buy an LG TV, you're going to have the most intuitive and easy-to-navigate experience against all of our competitors."

LG's argument makes sense if you consider the market from the perspective of right now: There are two major products that differentiate themselves on unique control schemes alone, and each just happens to be squeezing itself into the TV market.

Microsoft's Kinect is an Xbox 360 controller that supports voice and full-body gesture inputs without a remote. Right now, it's used mostly for games and Netflix in the U.S. market. But as Microsoft pushes to bring more IP-based content through their Xbox 360, it's only growing more relevant to TV watchers.

Apple's iPhone 4S features Siri. We've all seen the commercials, but consider the real impact of Siri for the industry: It's a single voice input feature that's been powerful enough to drive the upgrades of millions of new iPhones (hundreds in millions of dollars in actual sales), and it's especially relevant as strong rumors point to Apple developing their own TV set.

"Apple has set a bar now that you need to meet or beat for a user to have a good experience, and I'm actually glad now that they did that," says Vizio's Matt McRae. "It shows not only what's possible, but the benefits of voice...It won't come this year, most likely, but we're doing some Android products based on Google TV, and Android has a whole voice engine built in."

"It's certainly something we here at Sony are thinking about, in terms of what are the possibilities that could come about from Apple's track record of disruption across industries," admits Sony's Mike Abary. "I'd be lying if I didn't tell you we're thinking about it."

 

The Future Of Remote Control Tech

[ VIZIO ] General Outlook: New technologies will be physical button supplements, not replacements. Motion: "If you have a gyro, you can take almost every button off a remote and it looks beautiful. But you give it to a consumer, and after a few weeks, they're sick of it." Touch: "If you look at usability and watch people use this in the living room, there's this look up look down problem with touchscreens…you just watch their necks and it's hilarious." Voice: "Voice I think is going to be pretty important for navigation, but it needs to be very accurate…imagine, it's 11 at night, you're exhausted, you have to wake up at 5 a.m., and your kid is crying in the middle of the night. It's got to be one of those things that is bulletproof or consumers will reject it." [ SAMSUNG ] General Outlook: Consumers will choose their preferred remote, every day. Motion: No comment, we're too close to CES 2012 in January. Touch: "If you're in love with your smartphone and you want to download an app to your internet enabled TV, you can control everything that way…if you want to pick up a remote and tell it to switch to channel 206, you can do this, too." Voice: "Voice is one of those technologies that's being looked at…certainly it's something that us and any other manufacturer is looking at." [ SONY ] General Outlook: TVs need to keep up better with other technologies. Motion: "There is now, especially with the younger generation, a growing, let's call it, expectation that anything that has a screen on it is going to be touch capable or gesture capable. Certainly, I think, the way we interact with a TV will need to change because a TV is the last screen that actually doesn't yet have gesture control capability." Voice: "In the next 3-5 years, maybe the way people will interact with a TV will not be primarily through a remote--maybe it will be voice, for example. It depends on the demographic. I think the younger demographics...are going to expect and demand a different type of [wholly new] interface." [ LG ] General Outlook: The "Holy Grail" is to reduce the remotes on the coffee table. Motion: "Motion [will come] in a big way." (In fact, LG has a gyroscope remote on the market) Touch: "Everyone has really responded strongly to things like iPhones and tablets. Making remotes that function in that same familiar way is something you'll see more of….[though] my sense is touch won't be the de facto. It's supplemental. " Voice: "Voice is an interesting one. The days of saying one thing and having it understand another are coming to an end…[but] I don't think you'll see anyone go all in. It will start in premium sets."

Vizio and Sony are in good company. Every TV manufacturer is looking closely at what I'm calling the Big 3 in future remote control tech: Motion (waving your arms around), Touch (touchpads or touchscreens), and Voice commands.

So What Is the Future of the Remote, Really?

No manufacturer would divulge full specifics about their next models of remote, but I was able to glean a bit in practical terms, reading between the lines as much as possible.

Everyone plans to include a remote of some kind with their TV for the foreseeable future. Kinect and Siri schemes won't stop that. No one (who isn't Apple) will feature voice in 2012, beyond maybe one manufacturer (I'm guessing Samsung, if it happens) using only the most simple of command logic. Gesture control will be part of the premium ends of most lines of TVs within two years. Everybody appreciates gestures, and the words "Nintendo Wii" popped up more than once. You'll be able to control every smart TV on the market with a smartphone or tablet app (you can now, actually, even though most of us don't). Super premium, iPhone-like touchscreens won't be bundled with any TVs as remotes because downloadable apps can handle that job for free (less cost to manufacturers and consumers). Every manufacturer is interested in leveraging this screen to provide supplemental content to TV programming. Oh, and let's just admit it: Each company is waiting to see what Apple does before they go all-in with the next era of remote, or commit to ditching the remote altogether.

For all the potential, the near-future of remotes is neither romantic or utopian. Every TV buyer will be a guinea pig for the next few years as each manufacturer offers us its unique bake of hard buttons, gestures, touch and voice control. The average couch potato will need to choose from a cacophony of technology far more varied than HD or 3D, all until one company just makes it click.

And our beloved remote, much like the television industry itself and every other single thing in this world, will evolve or die trying.

Hang on tight to that gyroscope, little buddy. Everything's going to be alright. Probably.

Follow Mark Wilson on Twitter, and Fast Company, too.

[Images: Flickr users icedsoul; carbon design]









12/05/11--10:33: BGR Interview: Sony Ericsson President of North America Paul Hamnett (chan 1592482)

We recently sat down with Sony Ericsson President of North America Paul Hamnet to discuss the company’s future as a wholly-owned division of Sony Corporation, its upcoming smartphones and strategy pertaining to the U.S. market, Sony Electronics’ “four screen” opportunity, and much more. Check out the full video interview after the break.


12/05/11--11:09: Hertz Takes A Road Trip With Live Nation (chan 1592482)

Hertz puts music at the center of its marketing strategy with a Live Nation partnership that aims to link concert-going and car rentals.



Few things go together like music and road trips, so how about a Hertz rental car with those concert tickets? As of January 1, 2012, you’ll be able to book both through Ticketmaster.com as well as LiveNation.com. The integration of a rental car into the ticket-buying process is a key component of a multi-year sponsorship and marketing alliance Hertz has entered into with Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment.

“Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, Hertz will be integrated into the core of our ticketing business,” says Russell Wallach, president of Live Nation Network, the company’s entertainment marketing division.

The Live Nation deal is actually part of an larger “Movin’ with Music”-themed effort on the part of Hertz to tap into the power of music to reach a younger demographic--more specifically, 18- to 34-year-olds. The initiatives make Hertz the latest brand to forge connections with musicians and the music industry to boost its brand identity.

Through Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com, Hertz will offer ticket buyers the chance to rent vehicles--ranging from luxury sedans to SUVs to sports cars--from a specialized Hertz Concert Collection. Concertgoers who rent a car from Hertz will get driving directions to the concert through NeverLost, the car rental company’s navigation technology, as well as access to VIP parking at the venue. And here is a plus for members of the 25-and-under crowd who book with Hertz through Ticketmaster: They won’t have to pay a young renter’s fee.

Additionally, Live Nation is including Hertz in all sorts of band promotions, including one in the first quarter of 2012 that will give Hertz customers the chance to see up-and-coming pop/soul band Fitz and the Tantrums perform. The winner will also go backstage to conduct an interview that will be shared through social media. “We’ll be building these experiences throughout the year to bring Hertz closer to the audience,” Wallach says.

While partnering with Live Nation, Hertz is launching its own streaming radio station--Hertz Live Radio, which will be heard at Hertz facilities and on Hertz buses--in the second quarter of 2012 as well as a Hertz Music Store later in the year through which members of the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards program can use points to download music.

“We’re trying to make our brand synonymous with music to the degree that we can,” says Jerry Preyss, Hertz vice president, Global Branding and Innovation, noting, “Our category is a mature category, and the default places to go include sports, but we want to go in a different direction from our competitors, and we want to reach a lot of new customers.”

Hertz certainly isn’t the first company to try to capitalize on the power of music to bond with consumers. “We’re just falling in line with brands like Nike and Cadillac and Starbucks who use music to make their brands relevant to more people,” Preyss acknowledges. “It makes sense for them, and it makes sense for us.”

Why is music such a valuable marketing tool? Wallach says Live Nation research shows that young people aren’t just interested in music--they are passionate about it. And, according to Wallach, the concert-going experience is a particularly engaging experience for a brand to be involved with. “You buy the ticket three to six months ahead of time. You might even plan a trip around the concert and rent a car. You upload photos of yourself getting ready for the show, and you tweet about the experience while you’re at the venue. After the show you write a review and share the set list, and you save your ticket stub,” Wallach muses. “There are very few experiences in life that people spend so much time on.”

While we won’t be able to judge the success of the Hertz/Live Nation pairing until the summer concert season heats up, the relationship with Live Nation could prove to be a huge driver for Hertz--Ticketmaster.com is one of the web’s top five eCommerce sites with more than 26 million unique monthly visitors.

According to Preyss, both sides have committed to the Hertz/Live Nation partnership for at least three years, and while it is first being activated in North America, it will roll out globally. The companies are currently structuring programs for Europe, South America, and Australia/New Zealand. Meanwhile, there is a B2B element to the pact as well. Live Nation employees will be driving Hertz rental cars, and the Hertz Equipment Rental division will provide lifts, portable power, and additional lighting equipment to Live Nation venues.

Hertz joins a limited circle of brands, including Coca-Cola and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, that Live Nation has formed strategic partnerships with. Wallach says the ties to blue-chip companies help Live Nation sell more concert tickets and promote its artists and venues. “We’re focused on our strategic partners,” Wallach says. “In 2012 and beyond, you’re really going to continue to see us innovate on social media, mobile and online, and the more we do, the more opportunities there are to bring in new partners, new brands, and new audiences into the Live Nation Entertainment family.”

[Image: Flickr user Wha'ppen]









12/05/11--11:21: Smartling's Jack Welde Ensures Your Website Doesn't Get Lost In Translation (chan 1592482)

Today's top story from France's Le Monde is about Hilary Clinton's possible future in the White House. As translated to English from French by Google Translate, it begins: "The door opens and Hillary seems unexpectedly. Pantsuit finely striped black, blond hair before it seems, and certainly longer. Secretary of State has escaped from the top Europe-United States, which ends at the White House, November 28."

Say what? Obviously, there's much room for improvement in online translation services--and a huge market for it, with 70% of Internet users (or 1.4 billion people) claiming a language other than English as their native tongue. 

Enter Smartling, a translation delivery network that helps companies large and small translate their websites into other languages using a variety of tactics including professional translators, volunteer translators, and computer translation. 

"Smartling has accepted the audacious mission of trying to make the entire Internet truly multilingual," says Smartling CEO Jack Welde. "Language is one of the last true barriers on the web; our view is that five years from now, having an English-only website is going to feel about as dumb as not having a website at all."

The company, which earlier this year raised $10 million in series B funding, counts Scribd, SurveyMonkey, and Foursquare among a roster of clients that's growing by 300% a month. 

Welde's unique background--he grew up traveling the globe in a military family, studied computer engineering at Penn, and then spent nine years as an Air Force pilot--put him in a unique position to create Smartling, bringing together passions that include travel, culture, computer engineering, and language. 

Watch the video below to learn more about what inspires Welde and Smartling to make the web truly work on a global scale. 

[video_twistage 1]

Check out our Who's Next series for more profiles of the big thinkers everyone's talking about. For more leadership coverage, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.









12/05/11--11:30: Amazon may own half of Android tablet market next year (chan 1592482)

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet hasn’t even been available for a full month yet, but analysts and the media already seem comfortable declaring it the Android tablet to beat. Fourth-quarter sales estimates have been as high as 5 million units and even more conservative estimates reach well into the millions. In a note to investors on Monday, Evercore Partners analyst Robert Cihra said he believes Amazon’s line of Kindle Fire tablets will make up 50% of all Android slates sold in 2012, leaving Apple’s iPad as the only tablet essentially unaffected by Amazon’s blockbuster device. Read on for more. “While Amazon’s Kindle Fire has come out of the gates strong, as expected, we see Apple maintaining its competitive lead, if anything accentuated by what now


12/05/11--11:48: Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson Promotes New Headphones By Way Of Sean Parker (chan 1592482)

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is in a mixing room in Lower Manhattan--but instead of hawking headphones like he's scheduled to do, the Jamaica, Queens-bred rapper is hinting about investing in Spotify and all sorts of other Silicon Valley startups. Looks like G-Unit's getting a VC division.



Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson should be hawking headphones. That's why he's sitting in a mixing booth at Engine Room Audio in Lower Manhattan at 9:40 a.m. Instead, though, the Jamaica, Queens-bred rapper is talking about his next Silicon Valley investments--and Sean Parker.

"I think Sean Parker damaged the music business with Napster," Jackson says. "Now he's trying to fix it."

In a charcoal gray suit with a wine-red handkerchief, Jackson looks more Gordon Gekko than chart-topping rockstar. Then again, what's a modern rock star if not a branding machine. For 50's part, he's moved on from hit singles to hit investments. Jackson runs his own label under Interscope Records; he's built successful sneaker and clothing lines; he's starred in movies and video games; and he's injected capital in everything from 3-D glasses startups to energy drink companies. In 2007, an early investment in Vitamin Water-maker Glacéau proved prescient when Coca-Cola bought the company for $4.1 billion, an acquisition that earned 50 Cent a reported $100 million. Today, he's technically here to promote his next business venture, SMS Audio, makers of high-end headphones. "The category is huge," he says. "These headphones are definitely going to be the biggest stocking stuffer."

But first, let's talk about Spotify. Jackson has invested mainly in physical products so far--vitamin drinks, fashion, headphones. But he's looking to invest in tech startups. "I have some ideas now," he says. "I don't want to discuss the deal until the papers get signed because everyone else will get excited--and then we get scattered."

When pressed, Jackson flashes a knowing grin. I ask him whether he's investing in a small music-related startup. "Well, they're really well established companies that I'll end up being involved in," he says. Like Spotify? "Those are the kinds of guys I want to hang out with, down there in Silicon Valley," Jackson answers coyly. He says he knows Parker but declines to go into anymore detail. But clearly he's impressed by streaming services like Spotify, which he says, "are the future of music--the experience with Napster gave them the insight--all the information [they needed]."

Jackson ticks off characteristics that he learned from finding new talent and producers in the music industry. It's not so different looking for successful entrepreneurs, he says. It boils down to four traits: quality of material, performance, appearance, and personality. It was those qualities that led him to Brian Nohe, founder of KonoAudio, which SMS Audio acquired in August to support its sound technology. "Ultimately the vision is not just a headphone company," says Nohe, now SMS's president. "I mean, 50 wants to create an audio company. You will see us move into laptops, speakers, and home entertainment."

Jackson and Nohe say you might expect them to partner with device makers like HP, but it's SMS's technology (not to be confused with the alternate name for text messaging) that they feel will help distinguish them from competitors. Jackson is well aware he's entering a saturated market, introducing yet another offering of celebrity endorsed headphones. Ironically it was 50 Cent's bosses, Dr. Dre and Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine, who sparked the craze with their line of Robert Brunner-designed Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, from Monster, which led to similar cross-branding deals with Lady Gaga, Ludacris, P. Diddy, Justin Bieber, Daft Punk, and even Quincy Jones and Miles Davis. But Jackson believes SMS's wireless technology will help it stand out--technology, he adds, that's even impressed Dre and Iovine. "It uses Kleer technology, which is a higher level of technology than what's presented with BlueTooth," he says. For his Sync headphones, for example, up to four headphones can be wirelessly synced to one single source, enabling users to hear CD-quality music as far as 50 feet away, be it from an iPhone or stereo system.

Jackson also looks forward to the challenges of a competitive marketplace, especially with his mentor Dr. Dre in the mix. "[Dre] is so competitive," he says. "They're not offended by me [doing this]. This project allows me to show you from my perspective what the best quality is. [Beats by Dre] are all over the place. It's just time for a new version."

He's excited about the headphones project--not the first time he's been charged up by a new venture. When 50 Cent tweeted to his 3.8 million followers about H&H Imports, a company his G-Unit label owns 30,000,000 shares of, the company's stock nearly quadrupled, earning the rapper an estimated $8.7 million overnight. Trouble is, the self-promtion ran afoul of financial authorities. "I tell you that was a nightmare," Jackson says, laughing. "I had some conversations with the SEC."

Before the meeting draws to a close, 50 and Nohe want me to try out a pair of the new Sync headphones. I slip on a pair, and wait for the music to come on. Moments later, a song begins playing, magically streaming into my ears. It's "Disco Inferno." By 50 Cent.

Clearly he's still capable of some self-promotion.









12/05/11--12:35: Verizon’s Galaxy Nexus arriving in stores ahead of possible launch this week (chan 1592482)

Samsung Galaxy Nexus units may already be arriving in Verizon Wireless stores ahead of a release later this week. A batch of leaked photos suggesting upcoming availability was first published on the xda-developers forums. Verizon Wireless’s 4G LTE branding is clearly visible in one image, although the box looks very plain compared the carrier’s typical boxes. Droid-Life says the device could be available as soon as December 9th, although Verizon Wireless has yet to make any official announcement detailing the phone’s launch date. We recently reviewed the international model of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the world’s first Android 4.0 smartphone, and said it “easily leapfrogs any other competitor’s device.” Additional photos of the purported Verizon Galaxy Nexus follow after the break. Read


12/05/11--12:38: As Email Wheezes Toward The Grave, We Contemplate A DNR (chan 1592482)

It sounds kind of crazy (or crazy awesome)--a company banning email for all its employees. But this is no item from News of the Weird. Far from it. The company that banned email is Europe's largest IT company, one with 75,000 employees, $13 billion in annual revenue, which operates in 13 countries. The company, Atos, is the official IT shop for the Olympic games. Atos CEO Thierry Breton explained that "email is no longer the appropriate communication tool," and that the "zero email" policy would be phased in over the next 18 months. 

Breton says he hasn't sent an email in the past 3 years, and that Facebook, text, and the phone will replace email for his company, as they prepare for a new wave of usage and behavior. By 2014, the technology research group Gartner predicts social networking services will replace email as the principal method of interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.So, is email dead? Can we do something to change it? And should we?

While connecting via social networks and walled gardens is certainly safer and more contextual, it's also a disturbing trend toward isolationism. It says, "You can't reach me unless you know me, or know someone who knows me who will introduce you."   

How did email get so broken, so noisy, and so damned annoying anyway?Think back to the emergence of the phone. At first it was expensive and costly to use the phone for telemarketing. Imagine if all day long from morning till night your phone rang with an endless back to back stream of offers to "make money while you sleep," update your FedEX Account, or transfer a large amount of cash from a Ethiopian businessman. How long would it be before you ripped the phone wire out of the wall? About ten seconds. But by the time the phone costs had come down, the federal government had begun to give telephone customers the protections to ban unsolicited telemarketers. Simply put, the cost of the phone made it a too expensive for large-scale spammers.But email doesn't cost anything--for the sender, that is. For the receiver the costs are painfully real. Time,  sanity, and attention span are all suffering. Which is why I think it's time for the United States Postal Service to take over the management, operations, and back-end billing for the users of email. How would this work? I'd propose that person to person communication be very low cost, perhaps a few pennies per email. But business communications would pay a premium. And commercial advertising would be expensive, meaningfully so. This would stop a company from sending me advertisements about breast enhancements, since a simple bit of logic would say I'm probably not a customer. And perhaps most punitively, receivers should be able to bounce an unwanted commercial email and charge the sender a punitive fee for a mis-targeted outreach.  So, what's wrong with this plan? Lots, of course. The Postal Service has no legal right to control email. But I have to believe that Congress could find a way to find it in the public interest to both save the Postal Service and take some useful role in creating a reasonable governance system for email. Email was once wonderful. A magical, efficient, direct way to connect with people and share ideas and information. It's not gone yet, but it's facing near-term extinction. Email needs a traffic cop, with the power to manage the electronic commons and keep things running smoothly and fairly.  I say save email. And I think my friend Pete the Postman is just the man for the job.What's your solution?









12/05/11--12:42: Easing Your Company Into Workplace Flexibility (chan 1592482)



The "Flex and the C-Suite" series periodically showcases leaders who have made flexibility at work a key strategy for achieving smarter and better business results. In other words, they get it.

Allison O’Kelly is the founder and CEO of Mom Corps ™, a full-service staffing services company that helps employers tap into the market of talent (men and women) that has opted out of the traditional workplace and wants flexibility. O’Kelly, a Harvard MBA, founded the company in 2005; it's since grown to 15 franchise locations across the country.

Mom Corps is an interesting example of an entity that doesn’t just offer flexibility internally, but has built a business model that helps other organizations leverage and execute their strategy using flexible talent. Here’s how O’Kelly describes Mom Corps' commitment to "practice what we preach":

What are the top challenges/opportunities you see for business over the next year or two?

From a challenges perspective, the issue is continued uncertainty. Many of the leading companies that we work with want to hire. They want to kick off projects that have been on hold. They want to capitalize on opportunities to position themselves for growth when the tide turns. But the duration of the recession is becoming increasingly unsettling. A sizeable misstep could set the company back further on the road to recovery.

On the positive side, a recession is an opportune time to grow a business. Organizations can best position themselves by taking a deep look inward and identifying what value they bring to the market, where their marketplace is headed, key strategies for growth, and the kind of team it will take to execute.

In your opinion, how does flexibility help an organization address those challenges or seize those opportunities?

Organizations that employ a healthy and robust work/life flexibility environment--not one just on paper--will win the talent war. And moving forward, all of our challenges and opportunities hinge at least at some level on the ability to attract and retain the best talent. In terms of company profitability and employee satisfaction, there really is a silver bullet, and that is alternative staffing.

Workplace flexibility is particularly attractive to mid- to executive-level professionals, a group increasingly in demand as Boomers retire and a much smaller Gen X demographic comes in to replace them. At Mom Corps, for example, we help companies tap into a candidate pool that is not accessible through traditional employment and staffing channels. These are well-vetted professionals with years of experience in their field of focus and a desire to work in a flexible work environment, based on necessity, preference, or both. 

Here is the dilemma for organizations not offering at least some element of alternative work options--there are enough companies and other options available to employees today that finding another job matching their lifestyle is not the hurdle it once was. While still not prolific, workplace flexibility is a growing preference and getting lots of attention.

What three factors have been most critical to the successful implementation of flexibility at Mom Corps?

One of our core values is "Responsible Flexibility." We practice what we preach by living lives with work-life synthesis. We encourage our internal staff, franchisees, and consultants to live well, we work hard, and we never take advantage of the gift of flexibility. Understanding that flexibility is different to each person, each company, and each hiring manager. It's a function of finding the match that works for all parties. Technology that has allowed us to work in a web-based environment from any location.

What would you say to a C-Suite leader who still thinks work/life flexibility is a nice-to-have perk, not a strategic imperative?

That he or she is already working at a disadvantage. Workplace flexibility is good for profits. It is also good for employees and the environment, both of which also positively influences profitability. It is also the preference of Millennials--our largest generation ever and the near future of our workforce.

Company leaders who aren’t at least considering how to implement flexible work options into their culture are generally uninformed and don’t realize the current, and more importantly, the future impact it will have on how they attract and retain their most valuable business asset--employees.

They also might not understand that the concept of work option flexibility can take on many forms and it doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing scenario. Here are some ways we counsel clients on employing a flexible work culture:

Ask employees their opinion--you will likely find they aren’t asking for much. Define regular office hours for both in the office and off-site. This can alleviate some anxiety around flextime for managers who know they can plan around those times to physically see their team. Review company compensation models and policies to reflect flexible work options and ensure that employees who participate are not unfairly and inadvertently penalized. Don’t just offer the program to employees, encourage it. When you’re talking about a culture or mindset shift, it has to be championed from the top. Promote flexible work programs externally as well as internally. It is a recruitment strategy. A word of advice: Be completely transparent with your workforce. If you are launching a test of flexibility, be clear that it is a test to avoid disastrous morale issues down the line should you decide to shift course. Also, know that if you broach the subject of flex options, there may be no turning back, so make sure you are committed at least in some way.

If you are either an employer or an individual interested in learning more about Mom Corps, go to momcorps.com. 

Visit author Cali Williams Yost's Work+Life Fit blog or follow her on Twitter @caliyost.

[Top image: Flickr user the loushe]









12/05/11--13:30: LG borrows from MacBook Air design with new Xnote Z330 ultrabook (chan 1592482)

LG on Monday unveiled a familiar looking laptop that falls into Intel’s much-touted new ultrabook category, the Xnote Z330. With the shape of a MacBook Air and the color scheme of a MacBook Pro, the LG Xnote Z330 is a 13.3-inch notebook that boots Windows 7 in less than 10 seconds thanks to “Rapid Start Technology.” The Z330 is even thinner that Apple’s MacBook Air at its thinnest point, and it weighs in at just 2.7 pounds. Spec highlights include a 1.6GHz Core i5 or a 1.7GHz Core i7 processor, a 120GB or 256GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, HD graphics, WiDi wireless display technology and an HDMI-out port. Battery life is rated at more than six hours, and the base model


12/05/11--13:39: SoLoMo And The Future Of Mobile Technology (chan 1592482)



Every industry is, and will increasingly be affected by mobile devices and location-sensing technology. What we're seeing today in the arenas of local commerce, deals, and productivity is only the beginning. With Internet and location-enabled phones in the hands of billions all around the world, the future of mobile location is rapidly becoming our future as an advanced civilization.

"We won't talk about mobile as a separate category because every Internet-driven company by definition will be mobile-oriented, socially oriented, and locally oriented," said Michael Parekh, Managing Partner, StikCo Labs.

[video_twistage 1]

SoLoMo (social, location, and mobile) is a trend larger than any single app or company, and it will encompass every industry on the planet. The future of mobile location will see the integration of location-enabled features and insights into every product you touch and every process you engage in during the course of your life, providing great efficiencies and incredibly valuable insights.

"You're surprised to learn that you're a creature of habit, and (with location technology) we can surmise all kinds of interesting insights into who you are and what you like to do based on how you move in space and time," said Eghosa Omoigui, Managing Partner, EchoVC.

Products like FitBit, Tripit, and RunKeeper are already leveraging location-aware smartphones to provide users with reports about their health, travel, or exercise habits. You can expect nearly every product you touch to eventually provide this type of personal data to you.

The emergence of mobile location over the last few years has laid the foundation for anywhere computing, and the future of that is exactly what the name says: anywhere computing. I expect the next generation of devices such as your home appliances, your car, and your television to engage with you, and to know where you are and what you're doing.

What truly excites me as an entrepreneur, an investor, and a consumer, is that everything I have mentioned is already at work in our lives and the speed of its integration is remarkable. As it relates to mobile location, the future truly is now.

Featured in this video:

James D. Robinson IV, Co-founder & Managing Partner, RRE Ventures Tony Conrad, CEO & Co-Founder of About.me & Partner, True Ventures Jon Callaghan, Founder & Managing Partner, True Ventures Michael Parekh, Managing Partner, StikCo Labs Jeff Clavier, Founder & Managing Partner, SoftTechVC Eghosa Omoigui, Founder & Managing Partner, EchoVC

[Image: Flickr user simona_]









12/05/11--13:52: Party's Spunky Advertisement Is The Ultimate Creative Donation (chan 1592482)

For Japan's Space Shower TV, agency Party create a very personal interactive dance experiment starring their own semen.



After reading the graphic self-love segments in "Portnoy’s Complaint," Jacqueline Susann famously quipped that “Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn’t want to shake his hand.” Considering the content of its latest project, Susann would undoubtedly feel similarly about Japanese creative collective, Party, whose work is making quite an, um, splash online today.

The New York and Japan-based hybrid lab has created a unique experience for Space Shower TV, an MTV-like J-pop channel, and it’s guaranteed to leave a lasting impression. In order to promote the channel’s post-tsunami message of "music saves tomorrow," the team took a very, very close look at the population who will be around for tomorrow’s saving, and decided to focus on the (unfertilized) unborn. The shop created a series of promo videos in which sperm cells appear to dance to user-selected music.

“The word ‘tomorrow’ lead me to think about children,” says Party creative director Masashi Kawamura. “But then, using children as a visual seemed too easy as a solution. So I went one step further and thought about using sperms, which is a preliminary phase of children.”

[vimeo 33005288]

Here’s a twist, though, the sperm used in the videos actually, er, comes from the Party partners. “We filmed all the staff member's sperms at a lab, and took its texture and motion data to create the animations,” Kawamura says. The team then made made 15, 30, and 60 second commercials from the resulting material, as well as an interactive content where the sperms will dance to any music you can search on Vimeo.

In the commercials, the sperm dance and take on various shapes, such as a musical note or a group of auroboros-like concurrent circles resembling choreographed swimmers. The searchable feature shows the same sperm moving differently to music of the viewer’s choice. Look for Skrillex on the Vimeo interface and watch the sperm zoom past as if rocketing on a ketamine-kick; choose Feist instead, and watch them amble by languidly, as though unconcerned with egg-fertilization.

The dance routines also have further permutations based on whose sperm your viewing, For instance, partner Daito Manabe’s sperm seem to follow the pattern of a sine wave, whereas Kawamura’s guys blast off anarchically into different direction with the subtle precision of a shotgun blast or Dustin Hoffman’s famous toothpick box-drop in Rain Man. Explore for yourself below in the making of video (don't worry, it doesn't depict the pre-production process).

[vimeo 33005190]









12/05/11--14:35: Samsung puts $200 million aside for patent spats with Apple (chan 1592482)

Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung on Monday said that his company is ramping up its defense against Apple in 2012. Speaking to The Korea Times, Samsung’s chief executive confirmed the creation of a $200 million war chest that the South Korea-based vendor will use to fight Apple’s patent-related advances moving forward. Apple has of course launched attacks against Samsung in a number of regions across the world, alleging that Samsung tablets and smartphones copy its designs and infringe on various Apple-owned patents. Samsung recently scored a small victory in the United States when a federal judge refused to ban sales of Samsung’s Galaxy devices. ”If we win in Paris as well, that’s truly a big blow to Apple,” an anonymous Samsung executive told


12/05/11--14:59: The Ingenious Business Model Behind Coursekit, A Tumblr For Higher Education (chan 1592482)



At universities, educational software largely means enterprise-scale, expensive, feature-stuffed "learning management systems." Blackboard has the majority of the market, but professors and students are about as enthusiastic about its various updates, crashes, and bugs as people are with the latest version of Windows (Blackboard scores a whopping 93% "hated" rating on website Amplicate).

Last week, a new alternative was launched--built by students--that looks and works a lot more like the social platforms people actually choose to use in their spare time. The core of the site is a constantly updated social Stream where instructors and students can conduct discussions or easily post rich media. Picture a cleaner-looking Facebook news feed, centered on a single academic theme, or a group Tumblr blog where each picture, question, or video can accumulate its own discussion in the attached comment thread.

"We wanted to create a simple, elegant LMS that covers 95% of instructors' needs, like grading, file management, calendaring, submitting assignments, and emailing with the class," says Joseph Cohen, 19, who left Wharton after his sophomore year when he scored $1 million in seed funding this past June to start Coursekit. "Blackboard covers 100%-- that’s why it’s such a cluttered platform."

Since its launch this fall, Coursekit has drawn an unusual amount of buzz in edtech circles not only for the sleekness of its design but the ingenuity of its business model. Blackboard, and other LMS, are like the BlackBerry--they rely on wholesale adoption by large organizations, much as the PDA was once approved by corporations and issued en masse to their employees for free or at a discount. Coursekit is more like the iPhone: designed to appeal directly to the end consumer. In this case, Coursekit is betting that individual professors will find it more streamlined and easier to use than the reviled Blackboard. They piloted with profs at 30 campuses this fall, including Stanford, and currently have students serving as evangelists at 82 campuses.

The second ingenious part of their pitch may also turn out to be a pitfall. "We want to build this social network that spans multiple academic communities," says Cohen. "We want academic publishers to distribute through Coursekit, and software developers to use our API." The vision here is one that many in the edtech world have raised: a platform that can stay constant for students throughout their academic life, from grade school to grad school and beyond. Keep up with former classmates and professors and showcase the development of your learning on an accumulated profile of your participation in various courses that goes far beyond the flatness of a transcript.

When you look at Coursekit as a potential Facebook or LinkedIn for education, it's not just a piece of the $500 million LMS market they're gunning for; it's a chunk of the $500 billion higher education market. Online institutions could operate entirely through the site; brick and mortars could use it to enhance recruitment, retention, and student services.

That said, social networks must also monetize their users, usually through advertising. Educators will be especially sensitive to the commercialization and privacy concerns that come with that. Right now the platform is free for professors to adopt, and it will remain ad-free for at least a year, but after that anything could be fair game. 

[image flickr user garybirnie]









12/05/11--15:32: Spotify, Android, Apple TV, And The New Appathy (chan 1592482)

[youtube pjIK5BOADVI]

Apps are coming at us from all directions, and they're getting both more sophisticated and simpler--the app economy is booming. But as everyone and their dog makes something they deem fit to call an "app," the supply will arrive like a flood. Then what will we do as a consumer society--wallow, sink, or swim? And if everyone's building an app, do we ever need to buy one?

Last week Spotify added a powerful gateway into its system by enabling third-party apps to work inside its streaming music system. It's a response, Spotify says, to many customer requests for it to add this or that additional facility...and instead of doing this piecemeal, the company has decided to let third-party developers build them. That'll certainly satisfy many requests, and it'll also enable many surprising app additions that we may never have previously thought of.

The thing is, writing an app for Spotify isn't necessarily a very tricky thing. The chap behind an existing fun web app called MusicMaze, Paul Lamere, has already had a go, and reported that it's surprisingly easy: "Since the Spotify App version runs inside Spotify, my app doesn’t have to worry about displaying album art, showing the currently playing song, album and artist name, managing a play queue, support searching for an artist. Spotify will do all that for me." The entire environment, he notes, is familiar to anyone who's made a modern web app. Of course, Lamere's task was made simpler because his app was already music-centric, and thus Spotify itself could shoulder some of the tasks. But with many Spotify apps likely to involve mere clever management of playlists--the shared versions of which are one of Spotify's biggest charms--then it's plausible many passionate people would be tempted to compile and submit an "app," even if they'd never tried to before.

Add to this the increasing number of apps within Facebook, and the ever-increasing number of systems that say that they'll let you write an app for, say, the iPhone, even without you even having to know any code, and you've got an interesting situation: More and more apps, that may be relatively simple, if useful or fun, will be hitting the public soon. Systems like Facebook or Spotify may become app-writer farms, as coders cut their teeth on a simple in-app app, then move on to bigger and better things.

The definition of an app itself may be expanding, too, as apps arrive on more platforms. Assuming Apple launches a connected TV in 2012, then it's almost beyond belief that it wouldn't have a specific app store just for its TV offering--the capabilities are just too tempting, from in-show Twitter discussions to show-related advertising, to the ability to actually buy products demonstrated on your favorite gardening/sci-fi/reality TV show (something eBay is recently getting into). If that works out, then Apple will be selling you apps through its iTunes App Store for your iPod, iPad, and iPhone, and perhaps the TV App Store for the iTV--plus apps from the Mac App Store for your Mac ... things that until recently you may have named simply "software."

Then there's the Android app marketplace--with apps showing up for every flavor of Android device. It's just been suggested that we're about to break through the one million app count for major platforms, like iOS and Android--just for existing devices. Remember too the small but surprising new category of smart watches. And when in the coming years our cars are more connected-up, we'll be buying apps for them too.

This is confusing. And that is actually one big risk--we'll all get fed up of the label "app" being slapped on every bit of additional code for all our gadgets from every variant of an "app store." Will we then tire of paying $0.79 for every tweak and flashy extra? That's a potential outcome in a dynamic market-driven system like this. Marketers could then go into overdrive to get their particular apps noticed among the flood.

There's also the risk that oversupply of "apps," of the simpler sort, will leave us reluctant to pay for any of them at all--leaving developers stumped on how to generate money, apart from serving up adverts with everything (with Amazon's ad-supported Kindles as an early example of how this trend might go). 

The team at Thunder::tech Marketing, which has recently been involved in promoting apps on iOS, Android, and connected TV platforms, spoke to Fast Company, and they had this to say about this potential oversupply of apps: "The issue of having an abundance or oversupply of apps will hopefully be mitigated by companies that recognize their content must work on multiple screen sizes. While you can serve up the same content to a mobile user, a tablet user, and a IETV user, you have to take advantage of the screen size." The companies' experiences lead it to believe "successful apps and ones that rise to the top add appropriate visual appeal and interaction (bigger screens can mean more people using your app at the same time) to keep your audience coming back. We’ve also seen certain app publishers gaining a fan base. If you get the reputation of developing clean, easy-to-use apps, folks will seek you out on every platform they can--so when they buy a new TV or new phone, or even a new car, they’re going to search for your app or your company all over again." 

Already as app numbers swell, Thunder::tech's clients' needs demand different marketing solutions: "We’ve resorted to traditional and non-traditional forms to get the word out--blogging and social media, mentions in print advertising, and tradeshow promotion," notes Jason Therrien, president. "We’ve also participated in various advertising networks that get our apps in front of our target audience." This marketing problem is only going to get trickier for marketers, and also for consumers as the number of apps on different platforms swells.

Of course, U.K. retailers, for one example, are counting on their dedicated apps to help achieve extra sales in the Christmas holiday shopping season. And apps on devices like TV will lead to all sorts of emergent behaviors that'll bring about many changes--perhaps whole new industries. 

In short, you're about to see the word "app" more and more every day, covering an ever-broader definition of what an "app" is as app stores move from being billion-dollar marketplaces into trillion-dollar ones. And will you then tire of it, and yearn for simpler times? Someone's surely developing a little program right now, that, when installed on your mobile device, will help answer that question. 

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.









12/05/11--15:50: Facebook acquires Gowalla, service to begin ‘winding down’ in January (chan 1592482)

Gowalla on Monday confirmed it was recently acquired by Facebook. “About two months ago, my co-founder Scott and I attended F8,” Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams wrote on the company blog Monday. “We were blown away by Facebook’s new developments. A few weeks later Facebook called, and it became clear that the way for our team to have the biggest impact was to work together. So we’re excited to announce that we’ll be making the journey to California to join Facebook.” Gowalla will begin to “wind down” its services in January but will allow users to export their passport and pin data, stamp collections and photos. Williams said Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data. Neither Facebook nor Gowalla discussed the


12/05/11--17:05: Comcast to sell Verizon Wireless products in 4 markets in early 2012 (chan 1592482)

Comcast president Neil Smit confirmed during a UBS investor conference on Monday that his company will begin to bundle Verizon Wireless products with its services in early 2012. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks announced late last week that Verizon Wireless had agreed to purchase spectrum from SpectrumCo, joint venture created by the three firms, for $3.6 billion. Verizon Wireless will use the spectrum to build out its 4G LTE wireless network and agreed to allow each company to sell its products and services through wholesale channels. Smit told Reuters that Comcast will still compete head-to-head with Verizon Wireless’s parent company, Verizon Communications, which owns the 55% of the carrier in a joint venture with Vodafone. Time Warner Cable