Cheating on social media is lucrative; ‘Click farms’ sell artificial interest to bolster firms’ appearances

Cheating on social media is lucrative

‘Click farms’ sell artificial interest to bolster firms’ appearances

AP

JAN 6, 2014

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – Celebrities, businesses and even the U.S. State Department have bought bogus Facebook likes, Twitter followers or YouTube viewers from offshore “click farms,” where workers tap, tap, tap the thumbs-up button, view videos or retweet comments to inflate social media numbers. Read more of this post

Confide, a Snapchat for the Corner Office

Confide, a Snapchat for the Corner Office

By Sarah Frier January 08, 2014

Two-year-old Snapchat has achieved a multibillion-dollar valuation by creating a technology for disappearing selfies aimed at teenage users. Now companies are pitching similar apps that they say provide untraceable message delivery, except they’re designed for corporate users that want a higher level of security than Snapchat can offer. The latest is Confide, a text-based iOS app released on Jan. 8 by former AOL (AOL) executive Jon Brod and Howard Lerman, chief executive officer of location-services company Yext. Such startups are betting that corporate audiences will be hungry for a secure mobile messaging app suited to their needs. Read more of this post

Designing the Next Wave of Computer Chips: Scientists are looking for new ways to make computer chips and investigating materials that can self-assemble

Designing the Next Wave of Computer Chips

JAN. 9, 2014

By JOHN MARKOFF

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Not long after Gordon E. Moore proposed in 1965 that the number of transistors that could be etched on a silicon chip would continue to double approximately every 18 months, critics began predicting that the era of “Moore’s Law” would draw to a close. Read more of this post

E-commerce lessons from the 1990s; he founder of 192.com, which was established in 1997, explains what he learned from surviving the 90s dotcom boom

E-commerce lessons from the 1990s

The founder of 192.com, which was established in 1997, explains what he learned from surviving the 90s dotcom boom

Alastair Crawford

Guardian Professional, Wednesday 8 January 2014 11.16 GMT

In the 1990s some of us had pagers, fewer had a mobile, and social media didn’t exist. Online interactions mostly took place between computer science students in cliquey chat rooms. Leo slipped out of Kate’s reach on the Titanic and MC Hammer released U Can’t Touch This. Much seemed out of reach in the 90s, but only just. Read more of this post

Electric Cars Are Getting Engine Sounds to Make Them Safer

Electric Cars Are Getting Engine Sounds to Make Them Safer

By Dorothee Tschampa January 09, 2014

Christoph Meier, a sound engineer at Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler (DAI:GR), spends much of his time trying to reduce the noise emitted by car engines. But for the carmaker’s newer electric models, he’s had to do the opposite: create sound. “People expect some exterior noise from a vehicle, because we all grew up with the ‘vroom vroom’ of combustion engines,” says Meier, head of powertrain acoustics at the automaker. Read more of this post

Few ‘wearables’ make fashion sense

Few ‘wearables’ make fashion sense

BY PETER SVENSSON

JAN 11, 2014

LAS VEGAS – Gadget lovers are slipping on fitness bands that track movement and buckling on smartwatches that let them check phone messages. Some brave souls are even donning Google’s geeky-looking Glass eyewear. Read more of this post

Gmail Plans to Allow Google Plus Users to Send Anyone an Email

JANUARY 9, 2014, 10:25 PM

Gmail Plans to Allow Google Plus Users to Send Anyone an Email

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Google will soon allow people to send anyone an email, even if they do not have the person’s email address, as long as both people have a Gmail and Google Plus account. Read more of this post

How Techies Are Transforming San Francisco; A generation of technology workers is bringing startups, venture capitalists—and high real-estate prices

How Techies Are Transforming San Francisco

A generation of technology workers is bringing startups, venture capitalists—and high real-estate prices

SARAH TILTON

Jan. 9, 2014 7:33 p.m. ET

San Francisco has changed dramatically over the years as young tech workers have migrated to the city, causing a rise in real estate. Photo: Lori Eanes for The Wall Street Journal. Read more of this post

IBM Struggles to Turn Watson Computer Into Big Business

IBM Struggles to Turn Watson Computer Into Big Business

Revenue Is Far From Company’s Ambitious Targets

SPENCER E. ANTE

Updated Jan. 7, 2014 9:16 p.m. ET

Three years after International Business Machines Corp. IBM +1.99% began trying to turn its “Jeopardy”-winning computer into a big business, revenue from Watson is far from the company’s ambitious targets. Read more of this post

IBM: The technology giant asks Watson to get it growing again

IBM: The technology giant asks Watson to get it growing again

Jan 11th 2014 | NEW YORK | From the print edition

“IT’S a silly project to work on, it’s too gimmicky, it’s not a real computer-science test, and we probably can’t do it anyway.” These were reportedly the first reactions of the team of IBM researchers challenged to build a computer system capable of winning “Jeopardy!”, a television quiz show. Yet within five years they had created Watson (named after Thomas Watson, who built up the company), which used natural-language programming to understand questions the way a human would, and massive processing power to find the likeliest answer from vast amounts of data. In February 2011 it beat two human “Jeopardy!” champions in a public showdown. Now, less than three years later, Watson is being touted as a business opportunity potentially so lucrative it can get Big Blue out of what has started to look like a serious growth problem. Read more of this post

Intel’s Vision: Wearables Everywhere In A Post-Windows World

Intel’s Vision: Wearables Everywhere In A Post-Windows World

Posted Jan 7, 2014 by Alex Wilhelm (@alex)

At its CES-opening keynote, Intel laid bare its vision for computing in the future. If Microsoft is remembered for the once quixotic goal of ‘a computer on every desk,’ Intel has taken up the mantle of ‘a computer in every thing.’ Read more of this post

Internet of Things: Utopia? Horror Show? Both?

Internet of Things: Utopia? Horror Show? Both?

At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an annual carnival of corporate hype and techno-hoopla, John Chambers, the head honcho at Cisco Systems Inc., described an emerging phenomenon in terms that were sensationalist even by Vegas standards. Read more of this post

Is Uber’s Surge-Pricing an Example of High-Tech Gouging? Technological efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean lower fares

Is Uber’s Surge-Pricing an Example of High-Tech Gouging?

By ANNIE LOWREYJAN. 10, 2014

At 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I hailed a taxi outside my apartment in Adams Morgan and directed it to a friend’s apartment in Shaw, a nearby neighborhood, also in Northwest Washington. It took a mere minute to find an open car, and the traffic-clogged two-mile trip cost $13, including tip. Read more of this post

John McAfee: glad Intel dropping name from security software

John McAfee: glad Intel dropping name from security software

Tue, Jan 7 2014

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) – John McAfee, the flamboyant millionaire who founded a pioneering anti-virus software company that Intel Corp bought for $7.7 billion, says he is glad that the chipmaker plans to drop his name from its products. Read more of this post

Little Aereo vs. Big TV: Aereo’s business model may be a gimmick, but its legal case could change the media landscape

Little Aereo vs. Big TV

Aereo’s business model may be a gimmick, but its legal case could change the media landscape.

HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

Jan. 10, 2014 6:36 p.m. ET

Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to consider the case of Barry Diller‘s Aereo, there’s one question the court probably won’t ask but someone should. Does Aereo really, truly assign a teensy TV aerial to each individual customer so he or she can watch a broadcast TV signal plucked from the air and retransmitted over the Web? Read more of this post

Longform is trendy, but publishers are still chasing fast clicks

Longform is trendy, but publishers are still chasing fast clicks

BY ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON JANUARY 7, 2014

In 2013, the media world became obsessed with longform.

There was the Epic, the longform project of Medium, and Beacon, the investigative project by Former Facebook managing editor Daniel Fletcher. Vox Media’s properties spit out interesting, well-packaged longform stories by the ton. Politico has launched a magazine to ramp up its longform writing. ProPublica also launched a digital investigative magazine. Even properties known for their click-baiting headlines and aggregation, like Buzzfeed, Business Insider, Mashable and Gawker, began publishing long, investigative stories presented in rich formats. In August, Hamish McKenzie called longform “the new necessity.” Read more of this post

Manufacturers to do battle in new era of smart TV software

Manufacturers to do battle in new era of smart TV software
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
By Anick Jesdanun, AP

NEW YORK–More choice — and confusion — is coming to the next generation of TVs.

At least three new software systems were announced Monday for Internet-connected television sets, which let viewers watch Internet video and interact with friends online on the big screen. The new smart TV operating systems will compete with software already available from Google and individual TV manufacturers. Read more of this post

Marc Benioff: This Is ‘The Biggest Mistake’ Oracle’s Mark Hurd ‘Ever Made’

Marc Benioff: This Is ‘The Biggest Mistake’ Oracle’s Mark Hurd ‘Ever Made’

JULIE BORT 

JAN. 9, 2014, 1:53 PM 7,685 

Even though Salesforce.com signed a huge contract last summer to keep using Oracle’s products, and there was a public kiss-and-make-up session between Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and his mentor, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the two companies are still big rivals. Read more of this post

Microsoft succession speculation focuses on internal candidates

Microsoft succession speculation focuses on internal candidates

5:51am EST

By Bill Rigby and Christian Plumb

SEATTLE/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Speculation over Microsoft Corp’s succession plans refocused on internal choices on Wednesday, a day after the leading outside candidate, Ford Motor Co CEO Alan Mulally, took himself off the list of potential CEOs at the world’s largest software maker. Read more of this post

More lending companies are mining Facebook and Twitter to help determine a borrower’s creditworthiness or identity, a trend that is raising concerns among consumer groups and regulators

Borrowers Hit Social-Media Hurdles

Regulators Have Concerns About Lenders’ Use of Facebook, Other Sites

STEPHANIE ARMOUR

Jan. 8, 2014 6:51 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—More lending companies are mining Facebook, FB +0.54% TwitterTWTR -0.49% and other social-media data to help determine a borrower’s creditworthiness or identity, a trend that is raising concerns among consumer groups and regulators. Read more of this post

Pandora’s brutal early days and the core belief that carried the founders through

Pandora’s brutal early days and the core belief that carried the founders through

BY MICHAEL CARNEY 
ON JANUARY 7, 2014

Despite its status today as arguably the world’s most successful digital music service, Pandora was anything but an overnight success. In its early days, when its name was still Savage Beast Technologies, the company wasn’t even an internet radio service. The founders spent more than four years toiling away building a music genome and recommendation service with the goal of licensing it out to third party platforms. It was a complete failure, according to the company’s co-founder and CSO Tim Westergren and CTO Tom Conrad, who told the formation story at tonight’s Last Vegas PandoMonthly fireside chat. Read more of this post

Smartphones Throw Samsung a Curve; The Electronics Giant Needs to Shift its Focus to Software From Hardware

Smartphones Throw Samsung a Curve

The Electronics Giant Needs to Shift its Focus to Software From Hardware

AARON BACK

Updated Jan. 8, 2014 1:29 a.m. ET

Heard on the Street columnists discuss Samsung Electronics profit warning and what the company needs to do as its smartphone glory days wane. Samsung Electronics 005930.SE -1.00% ‘ turn in the smartphone sun is coming to an end. To keep prospering, it needs a compelling software platform that sets it apart from rivals, not more hardware gimmicks like curved screens. Read more of this post

Software – the new battleground for carmakers

Software – the new battleground for carmakers

12:07pm EST

By Edward Taylor and Ilona Wissenbach

STUTTGART (Reuters) – The new Mercedes-Benz C-Class has cameras that can read road signs and sensors to judge distance to the car in front, but is not yet able to make full use of the hardware. Read more of this post

Sony and Samsung a study in contrasts

January 8, 2014 6:34 pm

Sony and Samsung a study in contrasts

By Richard Waters

Groups reveal diverging paths at CES show in Las Vegas

Watching Sony and Samsung strut their stuff at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week has been a stark study in contrasts. They amounted to two very different responses to a pressing set of problems: how to make money when older product categories are shrinking, profit margins are under more pressure than ever and the smartphone revolution is moving into a new, lower growth phase. Read more of this post

The wireless ID badge that also helps keep workers safe; A device hidden in an ID badge has given security to lone workers and boosted one SME’s revenues by 43pc

The wireless ID badge that also helps keep workers safe

A device hidden in an ID badge has given security to lone workers and boosted one SME’s revenues by 43pc

Craig Swallow, wearing his company’s ‘lone worker’ alarm Photo: Guzelian

By Anna White

3:30PM GMT 11 Jan 2014

Supplying the public sector can be “daunting and complex” for small businesses, according to Craig Swallow, a pioneer in the “lone worker” alarm market. But despite an era of public cuts, his technology company, Connexion2, now provides protection for NHS and local government staff visiting clients’ homes across Britain. Read more of this post

Wearable Tech in a Race for the Killer App

Wearable Tech in a Race for the Killer App

Reports from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas indicate that the gadget industry has decided to make 2014 the year of wearable technology. In other words, there’s going to be a chaotic proliferation of smart watches and magical bands until someone comes up with the “killer app.” Read more of this post

Vimeo’s a Star for IAC, Thanks to Filmmakers

Vimeo’s a Star for IAC, Thanks to Filmmakers

By Alex Barinka January 09, 2014

Among big consumer Web businesses, there may be no tougher battlefield than video sharing. With Amazon.com (AMZN), Hulu,Netflix (NFLX), and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube among the companies fighting for viewers’ time, it can be difficult for even a well-financed competitor to attract attention. For video connoisseurs, though, the mainstream services leave a big gap: None combine the reliable, ad-free HD video of Netflix with the kind of marketplace democracy that birthed YouTube’s endless stream of cat videos. It’s a gap that Vimeo, the video-sharing site loved by artsy filmmakers and long ignored by the market, is starting to fill. Read more of this post

Wearable gadgets, like watches to check text messages, not ready for prime time

Updated: Friday January 10, 2014 MYT 11:42:09 AM

Wearable gadgets, like watches to check text messages, not ready for prime time

LAS VEGAS/SINGAPORE: Despite the hoopla, wearable gadgets like wristwatches for checking your text messages or eyeglasses that capture video are unlikely to make a splash with consumers anytime soon, given the clumsy designs, high prices and technological constraints of many of the current offerings. Read more of this post

Why the Nate Silvers of the World Don’t Know Everything; Smart organizations cannot live by data alone

Why the Nate Silvers of the World Don’t Know Everything

BY FELIX SALMON

01.07.14

By now, nearly everyone from the president of the United States on down has admit­ted that the National Security Agency went too far. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the rogue NSA contractor who has since gained asylum in Rus­sia, paint a picture of an organization with access to seemingly every word typed or spoken on any electronic device, anywhere in the world. And when news of the NSA’s reach became public—as it was surely bound to do at some point—the entire US intelli­gence apparatus was thrust into what The New York Times recently called a “crisis of purpose and legitimacy.” Read more of this post

Why We Binge-Watch Television

Why We Binge-Watch Television

As a society, we’re more distracted than ever. So how is it that streaming hours of complicated TV dramas at a time is becoming our preferred method of watching television?

We correspond with each other in 140-character bursts. We consume news in sound bites and blog posts. We’re, by all accounts, an increasingly distracted society, with the attention span of a house fly sipping on Red Bull in a room lit by a strobe light while dubstep plays. Knowing that, it makes absolutely no sense that we are also a society that enjoys binge-watching TV. Read more of this post