stuff
the whole story, regardless of where you jump in
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/30/follow-the-saga-engadget/
Over the years, stories have become more than just single bursts of information. These days, there’s as much drama in the consumer technology world as there is sports, politics or your average episode of Days of our Lives. Take SOPA, for example. We’d be remiss of our duties here if we simply reported on what it was, without ever following up on protests, delays, judgments and other vitally important developments. In fact, it’s tough to think of too many stories covered today that don’t correspond with some sort of saga — even the departure of RIM’s co-CEOs represents just a single slice of a far larger tale. For those that follow this stuff 24/7, jumping in at any point in the story is no issue; piecing together the past with the present is second nature. But if you’re actually working during the day, hopping aimlessly into an ongoing saga mid-stream can be downright disorienting. Painful, even. We’ve been working hard to come up with an unobtrusive solution, and we think we’ve found it.
We’ve actually had our Follow The Saga functionality since January of last year — we quietly debuted it with the launch of Verizon’s iPhone 4 — but today’s iteration is far more interactive. We’ve been testing these out over the past few weeks, and today we’re happy to officially introduce them. If you see the badge shown after the break in any post that pops up here at Engadget, just give it a click to be taken to the full saga, and scroll up and down to see related stories before and after the one you happen to ! be looki ng at. We’re hoping it’ll be particularly helpful to those who happen to stumble upon a saga somewhere in the middle, but want to get caught up on what happened prior and where we stand now. As with everything we do, we’ll be continually tweaking and evolving the tool in the months ahead. Enjoy!
Psst… want to see it in action? Have a look under the body of this SOPA post to see how we got to where we are today.
Continue reading Introducing ‘Follow The Saga’: the whole story, regardless of where you jump in
Introducing ‘Follow The Saga’: the whole story, regardless of where you jump in originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google Gets Serious About Youtube Royalties with Rightsflow Purchase [Google]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5867476/google-gets-serious-about-youtube-royalties-with-rightsflow-purchase
Google announced on Friday that it has purchased the music licensing company RightsFlow for its detailed information about who should get paid when any of over 30 million songs get played.
Neither Google nor Rightsflow would comment on the deal beyond their official statements, but we have pieced together some of the reasons Google would purchase a music licensing company like RightsFlow, which deals with “mechanical” royalties owed to songwriters, publishers, and other copyright holders. They whenever a non-human thing – like a compact disc, website, or music app –plays music.
RightsFlow, pictured here, now belongs to Google, which will use it to simplify royalty accounting on YouTube and possibly other music services.
The big reason Google would do this is that YouTube continues to be such a massive free music destination. It simply made more sense to buy RightsFlow outright to help keep its administrative and legal costs down, than to continue to rely on its services alongside other RightsFlow clients such as Rhapsody.
To be clear, this doesn’t give Google any rights to this music; it just makes those rights easier to deal with.
The acquisition, announced on Friday (when companies typically announce stuff they don’t want people paying attention to) is more evidence that Google is serious about YouTube as a free music destination. It should now be able to add even more music without worrying as much about lawsuits or expensive accounting.
Once Google has identified songs uploaded to YouTube using its Content ID fingerprinting technology, it should be able to figure out more easily which publishers and songwriters to pay. This could also help Google deal with its Google music store or other Google stuff in the future, although for now, Google’s focus for this deal is squarely on YouTube.
RightsFlow, recently named the #8 most desirable place to work in New York by Crain’s New York Business, owns information that is mostly publicly available. What makes it valuable is its ability to search all that data, making it easier to license lots of songs at once.
So, basically, Google just acquired a search engine, sort of like Google itself – except now, it could just have just one (admittedly very busy) user.
Evolver.fm observes, tracks and analyzes the music apps scene, with the belief that it’s crucial to how humans experience music, and how that experience is evolving.—
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The End Of Google Search Is In The Palm Of Your Hand (GOOG, AAPL)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-end-of-google-search-is-in-the-palm-of-your-hand-2011-12
The funny thing about anti-trust cases against technology businesses is that technology businesses may sometimes monopolize a platform – but the platforms they monopolize are always on fire.
In the 1990s, Microsoft came under attack because Windows dominated the PC.
But then the Internet made the operating system you use to access it from your PC irrelevant.
Now Google is getting scrutiny in Washington and in Europe because it owns so much of the search market.
But did you know that you hold the end of Google search is already in the palm of your hand?
Google makes money because people search the Web for stuff they want to buy (or for information about stuff they want to buy). Google brings them back a list of Web pages and ads. The ads are often as relevant to these commercial Web searches and the links, and so users click on them, ringing Google’s cash register.
But here’s the thing. I buy lots of stuff on the Internet, almost. I buy groceries. I buy movie tickets. I buy plane tickets. I book golf tee times. I order pizza. I buy Christmas presents from Amazon.
Google doesn’t take part in any of the transactions at all.
That’s because I do all this commerce not through the Web or through Google search; I do it through apps on my phone.
Check it out:
]
Now, at some point, I do search for these apps, just like I would search for Web pages. But I don’t use Google search to find them. I use Apple’s Apple Store.
My search results look like this.
Right now, Apple isn’t showing any ads in them, but that’ll change. When it does, it will mean less money for Google ads.
The good news for Google is that its mobile operating system, Android, owns a healthy slice of the smartphone market. It will be able to put ads in its own app store.
The bad news is that share is much smaller than its market share in search, where it also faces much weaker competition.
SplatF’s Dan Frommer made an awesome chart illustrating this:
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See Also:
- THE APPLE INVESTOR: Is Apple Seriously Going After Microsoft’s Kinect?
- If Google Really Wanted To Screw With Apple, It Would Do This
- Eric Schmidt Distances Google From Smartphone Spy Software Carrier IQ
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Huge Company Bans Internal Email, Switches Totally To Facebook-Type-Stuff And Instant Messaging
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/company-bans-email-2011-12
In case big email providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo hadn’t already been scared stiff by recent online communication trends, this news should wake them up.
A huge French company has just banned the use of email within the company. Instead, having concluded that the vast majority of email is just time-wasting noise, it is switching all employees to a Facebook-like interface and instant messaging.
The company is Atos. Susanna Kim of ABC reports:
CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.
When asked how employees have responded to the policy, Crouch told ABC News the overall response “has been positive with strong take up of alternative tools.”
Breton, Atos’s CEO, says he hasn’t sent an email in three years. (And he’s obviously managed to keep his job.)
This trend at the corporate level mirrors email trends among young people–the future workforce. As the chart below shows, the use of web-based email by the younger crowd is plummeting, as these folks communicate via Facebook, IM, and texting instead.
Email is still an extremely convenient way to communicate, so it’s not likely to go anywhere. But there’s no question that email is losing share of digital communications, including in the workplace. And that’s not good for companies that depend on it for their livelihoods.
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See Also:
- Steve Jobs Was Right: Google IS Turning Into Microsoft
- And Has Google Now Killed Off Firefox Completely By Pulling The Plug On Its Toolbar Deal?
- Google Is Getting Ready To Take On Amazon…In Shipping?
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Nissan sells more than 20,000 Leafs in first year; Fiat, Not So Much
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/nissan-sells-more-than-20-000-leafs-in-first-year-high-fives-co/
Excerpt: Only a few months after announcing that it sold 10,000 all-electric Leaf cars in international markets, Nissan stated at the Tokyo Motor Show today that the company has sold over 20,000 Leafs since the car went on sale in December of 2010. The company also added that it expects to sell more than 10,000 Leafs in the U.S. by the end of 2011.
SOURCE: http://adage.com/article/news/francois-fights-fiat-fiasco/230033/ This contrasts with Fiat, which went to great expense to make branding commercials with JLo which stirred more “huh’s?” from audiences than sales. One former auto-marketing exec Peter DeLorenzo called “quite possibly the worst automotive spot of the last decade, hands down.” No official sales numbers were mentioned, probably because it was too embarrassingly low to mention.
Who are they advertising here… the car or JLo? 
SOURCE: http://blog.web.blogads.com/2011/11/22/j-los-shameless-strange-and-sad-fiat-fiasco/ Widely denounced, shameless and strange product placement and promo during JLo’s performance at the American Music Awards.
Watch the whole bizarre performance here (The Fiat stuff starts around 1:15):
Get.com Is an Ask-and-Answer Site for Finding the Right Products [Shopping]
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5842849/getcom-is-an-ask+and+answer-site-for-finding-the-right-products
Get.com is a Q&A site for getting product recommendations from other people. You can ask things like “what’s the best laptop under $1,000” or “what has your experience been with the Honda Civic?”
It’s a bit like Quora and other question and answer communities or tools, but dedicated to finding stuff to buy or use with categories ranging from electronics to parenting. Get is also similar to sites like Bestcovery and FindTheBest, but feels like it could be more community-oriented.
(By the way, although you’re prompted to sign up and connect with Twitter and Facebook, it’s not necessary.)
Another plus for the service: Get.com is pretty easy to remember.
Get.com | via TechCrunch
You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.
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Pew’s 2010 Mobile Access survey shows more people are doing more things on their phones
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/08/pews-2010-mobile-access-survey-shows-more-people-are-doing-more/
As smartphones continue to extend their pocket-swelling domination of the mobile market, it should come as no surprise that people are less worried about talking and more concerned with doing other stuff on their handsets than ever before. But, still, if you want some hard numbers to make you feel better about making such conclusions, the Pew Research Center‘s 2010 Mobile Access survey has ’em. Compared to April of last year, 76% of people take pictures with their phones, up from 66%, and over a third play games, up from about a quarter. A third of people now play music on their phones, compared to 21% in 2009, but the biggest jump is in recording video: 34% vs. 19% before. Given the number of new movie-capturing phones released over the past year, it’s easy to see why. So, no shocking numbers here, but sadly there’s no indication of the one usage statistic we think might actually be falling: making calls.
Pew’s 2010 Mobile Access survey shows more people are doing more things on their phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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More Kin Dirt Surfaces
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5581704/more-kin-dirt-surfaces
If people had talked this much about Kin while it was still alive, it might have stood a chance. Oh well! The battle continues to rage over who gets the write the final chapter in Kin’s history.
Mini-Microsoft has been a prime staging ground for these kinds of comments, with accusations aplenty being flung back and forth by current and former Microsoft employees. A sampling from today’s batch shows that Andy Lees is again a popular target:
All I can say as a former Windows Mobile employee who is now working for a competitor in the phone space is that this is good news for the rest of us. […] Personally I quit because of the frustrating management and autocratic decision style of Terry Myerson and Andrew Lees. The only exec in the team myself and other folks respcted was Tom Gibbons who is now sidelined. Lees and Myerson don’t know consumer products or phones. Gibbons at least knows consumer product development. We often talk about how Andrew Lees still has a job but Microsoft’s loss is a gain for the rest of us.
And that the folks at Danger, acquired by Microsoft to help bring Kin to life, were confounded by the sudden perceived incompetence around them:
You are correct, the remaining Danger team was not professional nor did we show off the amazing stuff we had that made Danger such a great place. But the reason for that was our collective disbelief that we were working in such a screwed up place. Yes, we took long lunches and we sat in conference rooms and went on coffee breaks and the conversations always went something like this…”Can you believe that want us to do this?” Or “Did you hear that IM was cut, YouTube was cut? The App store was cut?” “Can you believe how mismanaged this place is?” “Why is this place to dysfunctional??”
Please understand that we went from being a high functioning, extremely passionate and driven organization to a dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by politics rather than logic.
So: we get it. All is not right with Microsoft’s corporate culture, which may spell trouble for Windows Phone 7. But in the meantime, can’t we just let sleeping Kins lie? [Mini Microsoft]
What do I see? Utter, Unfathomable Inefficiency – that is retail as we know it
Have a look at the 2 pictures below taken at a mall-attached large chain retailer. Not a SINGLE customer in the store. Practically every rack had a red and white sale sign on it. Look at the multiple sizes of each item that have to be made available.
Now consider this.
What is the probability of someone walking through the store to this location, finding an article of clothing that is subjectively pleasing and desirable enough for the person to pick it up and consider the price. Consider if this is a nice to have or need to have item. Further consider the price and whether it is higher or lower than the clearing price — the price at which the user (in that particular user’s mind) thinks it is a good deal and decides to buy it. What is known is the quantity of work needed to inventory, merchandise, display all the products. What is not known very well is the probability of a sale for any or all of the items in the store.
Further consider the redundant inventory of similar (or the same) generic products — redundant because multiple stores attached to the same mall carry pretty much the same generic stuff. Even brand names provide little differentiation or value add. And celebrity designers and endorsers such as Kimora, Cindy, Kathy, or even Jaclyn Smith don’t help. The entire Kimora section was just as deserted as the second photo in this bunch.
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Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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