TV content is king, but growth is tricky; Broadcasters are betting that, by owning the rights to quality content, they will be able to hold on to viewers and revenues, despite competition from online platforms such as Netflix and Y

June 4, 2014 8:34 am

TV content is king, but growth is tricky

By Henry Mance

It was July 2007 when Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset group and others sealed the acquisition of Big Brother producer Endemol.

Even by pre-crisis standards, that deal – which valued the production company at €3.4bn, or about 15 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation – seems foolhardy. Read more of this post

Amazon’s Power Play: The company is using bullying tactics to get a good pricing deal on electronic books while squeezing publishers and hurting author

Amazon’s Power Play

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDJUNE 3, 2014

Amazon, the online retailer, has often described itself as obsessed with making customers happy. But lately the company has been making some of its users extremely unhappy by making it hard or impossible for them to buy books published by the Hachette Book Group in the United States and delaying the deliveries of titles from the Bonnier Media Group in Germany. Read more of this post

The Anxieties of Big Data; The current mythology of big data is that with more data comes greater accuracy and truth

The Anxieties of Big Data

By KATE CRAWFORD

What does the lived reality of big data feel like?

2014 is the year we learned about Squeaky Dolphin. That’s the Pynchon-worthy code name for a secret program created by British intelligence agency GCHQ to monitor millions of YouTube views and Facebook likes in real time. Of course, this was just one of many en masse data-collection programs exposed in Edward Snowden’s smuggled haul. But the Squeaky Dolphin PowerPoint deck reveals something more specific. It outlines an expansionist program to bring big data together with the more traditional approaches of the social and humanistic sciences: the worlds of small data. GCHQ calls it the Human Science Operations Cell, and it is all about supplementing data analysis with broader sociocultural tools from anthropology, sociology, political science, biology, history, psychology, and economics. Read more of this post

Spinoff takes Time Inc. back to the future

Spinoff takes Time Inc. back to the future

Wednesday, June 4, 2014 – 12:22

AFP

WASHINGTON – Storied magazine publisher Time Inc. gets a fresh start with its upcoming spinoff as an independent company in a challenging and fast-changing media landscape. Read more of this post

Step by step, Apple locks users further into its ecosystem

Step by step, Apple locks users further into its ecosystem

June 3, 2014 – 3:43PM

Ben Grubb

For some observers, Apple chief executive Tim Cook was playing catch up with the incremental software announcements made on Tuesday.

Read more of this post

What big data means to the Fortune 500

What big data means to the Fortune 500

Stephanie Mehta , Michal Lev-Ram , Shawn Tully

@FortuneMagazine

JUNE 2, 2014, 9:01 AM EDT

This year everyone from Barack Obama to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini is talking about big data. We asked five Fortune 500 executives what it means to them. Read more of this post

Blogs that make the most money – and how to set up your own

Blogs that make the most money – and how to set up your own

As research shows fashion bloggers typically earn £1,116 a year, we look at blogging success stories – and explain how you could make it pay

By Charlotte Beugge

2:47PM BST 02 Jun 2014

Could your hobbies be the start of a new career? Every day, thousands of Britons share their ideas and tips on food, fashion, money-saving hints and other lifestyle interests through their blogs. And some make good money – even undreamed-of riches. Read more of this post

Time for Apple to ‘Think Different’ About Corporate IT?

June 3, 2014, 5:04 PM ET

Time for Apple to ‘Think Different’ About Corporate IT?

MICHAEL HICKINS

Apple Inc.AAPL +1.41% made clear Monday at its annual developer conference that it was opening its famously closed operating system environment in the hopes of attracting more innovative apps to its ecosystem. But these changes could make Apple devices less secure, and would seem to require an adjustment by Apple to how it relates to corporate IT departments, according to Stephen Gillett, chief operating officer at Symantec Corp.SYMC -1.05%, and former CIO of Starbucks Corp.SBUX +0.45% Read more of this post

Pizza Hut, KFC Embrace Web Over Apps for Hungry, Global Customers

June 3, 2014, 5:59 PM ET

Pizza Hut, KFC Embrace Web Over Apps for Hungry, Global Customers

CLINT BOULTON

Yum! Brands International is upgrading its Pizza Hut and KFC websites to allow consumers to order from any device with a Web browser, says Baron Concors, Pizza Hut’s chief digital officer. The websites will be built with HTML5 which better supports site performance across different devices and different size screens. Read more of this post

Review: Cone Speaker Tries to Predict What You Want to Hear

Review: Cone Speaker Tries to Predict What You Want to Hear

Aether’s New Speaker Listens to You, But Can It Get in Your Head?

GEOFFREY A. FOWLER

June 3, 2014 8:17 p.m. ET

You can tell the Aether Cone what artist you want to listen to, thanks to voice commands. Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

I’m in a relationship with a speaker.

Ordinary sound systems just play music. This speaker listens to me. It chooses what to play based on what it thinks might fit my taste or mood, streaming NPR at 7 a.m. or dentist-office soft rock on a Tuesday afternoon. Read more of this post

Cisco Sails Into the Wave of the Future

Cisco Sails Into the Wave of the Future

DAN GALLAGHER

June 3, 2014 1:04 p.m. ET

Getty Images

Cisco Systems CSCO -0.42% has persuaded shareholders to stop jumping ship. Now it just has to keep them aboard for what could be a long and somewhat rough voyage.

A strong quarterly report on May 14, along with a positive reception to its Cisco Live conference the following week, has provided some spark to networking giant’s shares, which had been relatively flat for the prior 12 months. Cisco’s stock has risen about 7% over the past three weeks. Read more of this post

Resource revolution: Gathering force; Explores how technological advances are revolutionizing resource productivity, the future of lean, why leaders of organizational change must examine their own behavior, how to manage shareholder acti

McKinsey Quarterly

Resource revolution: Gathering force

Explores how technological advances are revolutionizing resource productivity, the future of lean, why leaders of organizational change must examine their own behavior, how to manage shareholder activists, and the rising risk of cyberattacks. Read more of this post

How to Win With a Multisided Platform Business Model; What does it take to build a platform where many constituencies can do business?

How to Win With a Multisided Platform Business Model

Blog May 20, 2014  Reading Time: 2 min

Leslie Brokaw

What does it take to build a platform where many constituencies can do business?

The multisided platform business model connects customers to sellers directly. One big global success is Airbnb, which calls itself a “community marketplace.” It links travelers to rental properties, including many private homes. Read more of this post

Scalability from datacenter to IoT: Q&A with Intel

Scalability from datacenter to IoT: Q&A with Intel

Ricky Morris, DIGITIMES, Taipei [Tuesday 3 June 2014]

Intel was one of the main driving forces behind the consumer PC era of desktops and notebooks, but the trend in recent years towards low-power devices such as tablets, wearables and IoT applications has forced the company to re-evaluate its development process to become more open and agile.

Digitimes recently sat down with Jason Chen, Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group and Country Manager, Intel Taiwan, to discuss the company’s plans for Computex 2014, the changing roles of Taiwan and China in the IT industry supply chain, how Intel is evolving to address the needs of the smart-device revolution. Read more of this post

From Patent Thickets to Patent Networks: The Legal Infrastructure of the Digital Economy

From Patent Thickets to Patent Networks: The Legal Infrastructure of the Digital Economy

Jonathan Barnett 

USC Gould School of Law
May 1, 2014
Jurimetrics, 2014
USC CLASS Research Paper No. CLASS14-22
USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 14-23

Abstract: 
Scholarly and popular commentary often assert that markets characterized by intensive patent issuance and enforcement suffer from “patent thickets” that suppress innovation. This assertion is difficult to reconcile with continuous robust levels of R&D investment, coupled with declining prices, in technology markets that have operated under intensive patent issuance and enforcement for several decades. Using network visualization software, I show that information and communication technology markets rely on patent pools and other cross-licensing structures to mitigate or avoid patent thickets and associated inefficiencies. Based on the composition, structure, terms and pricing of selected leading patent pools in the ICT market, I argue that those pools are best understood as mechanisms by which vertically integrated firms mitigate transactional frictions and reduce the cost of accessing technology inputs. Appropriately structured patent pools can yield cost savings for intermediate users, which may translate into reduced prices for end-users, but at the risk of undercompensating R&D suppliers.

SEC not to recommend action against IBM on cloud revenue

SEC not to recommend action against IBM on cloud revenue

Mon, Jun 2 2014

(Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has completed its probe on how International Business Machines Corp reports revenue from its cloud computing business and does not intend to recommend any enforcement action, the company said.

The company did not provide details or reasons for the investigation.

The company said last July that it was facing an investigation from the Division of Enforcement of the SEC as to how it reported its cloud computing business revenue.

IBM reported $4.4 billion in revenue from its cloud computing business in 2013.

IBM shares closed at $185.69 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

What sets these self-driving vehicles really apart is the lack of controls that have been part of every car produced since the dawn of the horseless carriage

Self-driving cars

Handless carriage

Jun 2nd 2014, 11:28 by P.E. | DETROIT

IT HAS long been the stuff of science fiction, but autonomous driving is about to steer a lot closer to reality when Google begins testing a fleet of self-driving cars later this year. The move positions Google as one of the leaders in the field, but virtually every big car maker is now working on similar technology. Last year, for instance, Nissan announced it wants to put its first fully autonomous vehicle into production by 2020. Yet most of the incumbents take a more incremental approach than Google. Read more of this post

Apple’s iOS updates were mostly evolutionary-tuck-in improvements and features “borrowed” from other companies, such as Snapchat-like self-destructing messages

Apple’s biggest news today is in the plumbing

By Dan Frommer @fromedome 10 hours ago

Apple didn’t announce any new, must-buy gadgets today at its Worldwide Developers Conference. And from a user’s perspective, the iOS updates it revealed were mostly evolutionary—tuck-in improvements and features “borrowed” from other companies, such as Snapchat-like self-destructing messages.

But Apple did show off several new, important behind-the-scenes technologies today—let’s call it app plumbing. These include:

Extensibility, so apps can talk to each other and borrow each others’ features. Read more of this post