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Inside Google’s Secret Lab

Inside Google’s Secret Lab

By Brad Stone on May 22, 2013

Illustration by Rami Neimi“Anything which is a huge problem for humanity we’ll sign up for”Illustrations by Rami Neimi“Incremental improvements are not good enough”

Illustration by Rami NeimiAbsurdity is not a barrier to consideration

Last February, Astro Teller, the director of Google’s (GOOG) secretive research lab, Google X, went to seek approval from Chief Executive Officer Larry Page for an unlikely acquisition. Teller was proposing that Google buy Makani Power, a startup that develops wind turbines mounted on unmanned, fixed-wing aircraft tethered to the ground like a kite. The startup, Teller told Page, was seeing promising results, and, he added proudly, its prototypes had survived all recent tests intact.

Page approved Google X’s acquisition of Makani, which was being completed for an undisclosed amount at press time. He also had a demand. “He said we could have the budget and the people to go do this,” Teller says, “but that we had to make sure to crash at least five of the devices in the near future.” Read more of this post

Now this is why I would fork over $1500 and risk looking like a tool to wear a pair of Google Glasses: face recognition.

Google Glass gets face recognition

PUBLISHED: 9 HOURS 19 MINUTES AGO | UPDATE: 0 HOUR 0 MINUTES AGO

JOHN DAVIDSON

Updated: Now this is why I would fork over $1500 and risk looking like a tool to wear a pair of Google Glasses: face recognition.

Lambda Labs, a San Francisco-based augmented reality company, says it has developed facial recognition software for Google’s not-so-soon-to-be-released Glasses, that will tell you the name of who you’re looking at. The software will be made available to Google Glass app developers within the week.

The software spots faces in your field of vision, and then puts names to that face, ranked in order of probability, based on a pool of mug shots that you’ve already uploaded to some servers somewhere. Presumably you can turn it off, so it’s not trying to name every passerby as you walk along the street, and you only turn it on when you arrive at a party or a meeting where you’re worried that you’ll forget a name. Read more of this post

IPhone Urinalysis Draws First FDA Inquiry of Medical Apps

IPhone Urinalysis Draws First FDA Inquiry of Medical Apps

An iPhone application that lets users check levels of blood, protein and other substances in their urine is the first target of U.S. regulators seeking boundaries in a burgeoning industry for medical diagnosis on-the-go.

Biosense Technologies Private Ltd.’s uChek system isn’t cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and the agency said it wants to know why not, in a first-of-its-kind letter to a maker of a mobile-device application. The app relies on users, such as diabetics checking their glucose, to dip test strips in urine and use the smartphone’s camera to allow the system to processes and generate automated results. Read more of this post

Is Supercell the Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?

Is Supercell the Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?

by Karsten Strauss | May 24, 2013

In less than a year, Supercell has launched two of the biggest apps in Apple’s history. It’s now grossing $70 million—a month

Ilkka Paananen says the best way to make money in mobile gaming is to stop thinking about it. Think about fun instead. Fighting a mild case of flu and jet lag from a San Francisco flight back home to Helsinki, Paananen says companies that place revenue above fun (we’re talking to you, Zynga) will ultimately fail. “It really is that simple—just design something great, something that users love,” says the 34-year-old.

Paananen is CEO of Supercell, a startup that has had astonishing growth almost overnight. It has only two titles in Apple’s App Store—a tower defence game called Clash of Clans and a social-farming game called Hay Day—but it grossed $100 million last year and $179 million in the first quarter of 2013. Supercell netted $104 million in the quarter, after expenses and Apple’s 30 percent cut. Read more of this post

Beijing Shuts Down Taobao’s ‘Take a Number’ Service for Hospitals, But Consumers Cry Foul

Beijing Shuts Down Taobao’s ‘Take a Number’ Service for Hospitals, But Consumers Cry Foul

May 24, 2013 by C. Custer

Chinese hospitals are, to put it mildly, a bureaucratic nightmare. Just checking into one generally involves, among other processes, waiting in line to take a number and often also waiting in another line to pay for taking that number. Monster e-commerce siteTaobao was attempting to take some of the sting out of that with a new service launched earlier this week that allowed customers to book numbers and in some cases also pay online. But yesterday, after just three days open, the service was shut down in Beijing by the city’s health department on the grounds that healthcare is an issue of “public interest” and thus ‘take a number’ services should be non-profit. It also suggested that providing health information to a third party caused a potential information security risk.

That would be a compelling argument, except that many of China’s hospitals themselves aren’t even non-profit, and even in non-profit hospitals there is often a fair amount of under-the-table cash expected from patients if they want to receive good service. Perhaps healthcare in China should be non-profit, but since it very clearly isn’t, why target Taobao for making money off of the convenience of online ‘take a number’ services when for-profit hospitals are profiting daily off of their patients? Read more of this post

Google Copies Amazon’s Playbook

May 23, 2013, 4:56 p.m. ET

Google Copies Amazon’s Playbook

By GREG BENSINGER And AMIR EFRATI

SAN FRANCISCO—Google Inc. GOOG -0.75% co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin say they don’t pay much attention to rivals. But the search company increasingly appears to be following Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN -0.44% lead.

The latest example involves cable ties, AC-DC adapters, radiation detectors and the like. In April of last year, Amazon rolled out AmazonSupply, an e-commerce site featuring such industrial goods. Google followed suit this January, testing Google Shopping for Suppliers, which also helps shoppers find items tailored for businesses.

Both sites represent a relatively new foray for the technology companies—business-to-business sales—though Google’s doesn’t sell the items directly and its service is limited to suppliers of certain types of electrical equipment. Read more of this post

Amazon Vs. Costco: Which Is Better For Buying In Bulk?

Amazon Vs. Costco: Which Is Better For Buying In Bulk?

Stacey Bumpus, GoBankingRates.com | May 23, 2013, 2:08 PM | 3,685 | 

Saving money is on the minds of most Americans, which is why so many make a special effort to purchase items in bulk and join discount clubs. It’s also the reason so many businesses are creating opportunities for consumers to access those savings. One program to crop up in recent years is Amazon Subscribe and Save, which touts savings of up to 15 percent to members who meet specific criteria. But is this program as amazing as it seems, or is it possible that subscribers are actually losing dollars by committing to make purchases over the long term?

What Is Amazon Subscribe and Save?

If you are not accustomed to purchasing groceries and other household items online, or simply haven’t heard of this program, you may wonder what is Amazon Subscribe and Save? Amazon Subscribe and Save is a program launched in 2007 that offers discounts on items typically sold in bulk. In addition to a reduction in costs, the program offers free shipping. The lower costs are offered in exchange for a subscription agreement that involves having specific items automatically shipped every one, two, three, four, five or six months. But probably the biggest benefit of joining the program is paying no upfront fees to subscribe. Members only need to pay for items when they are shipped. You can probably see the similarities between Amazon Subscribe and Save and memberships to wholesale clubs like Costco with one clear exception: Amazon subscribers don’t have to worry about placing orders as they are placed automatically. With this and other conveniences, one would think there could be no downside to a program like Amazon’s. However, great discount programs are not always as fantastic as they seem.

How Amazon Subscribe and Save Compares to Costco

Individuals trying to decide whether to join Amazon Subscribe and Save or stick with a traditional wholesale membership with a company like Costco have several pros and cons to weigh. But before getting started, here are a few basics to know about Costco. Read more of this post

Twitter pitches to advertisers with system to track TV watchers

May 23, 2013 4:36 pm

Twitter pitches to advertisers with system to track TV watchers

By Emily Steel in New York

Twitter is attempting to secure its position at the nexus between television and digital media, announcing on Thursday a new TV ad-targeting programme along with a flurry of partnerships with media companies including Major League Baseball, Time Inc, Vevo and Vice.

The new ad product taps special technologies to “watch” television and note when a commercial airs. At the same time, it “listens” to Twitter for people posting about the same show. The technology then allows advertisers to target ads on Twitter to people who likely saw their commercials on television.

Twitter also unveiled its Twitter Amplify programme, a series of partnerships with media companies that will introduce into users’ news feeds more video clips as well as real-time sponsorships that link ads on television to promotions on Twitter. Amplify extends Twitter media partnerships beyond television to include magazine publishers, sports leagues and music groups. Read more of this post

CIOs Debate ‘Cockroach Technology’

May 23, 2013, 1:58 PM ET

CIOs Debate ‘Cockroach Technology’

Michael Hickins

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Several CIOs participating in panel discussions at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium here Wednesday said vendors of cloud computing software are making their lives more difficult by selling directly to business users rather than going through traditional IT channels.

CIOs said so-called shadow IT often results in duplicate purchases of similar systems, and makes it difficult for CIOs to use data collected by organizations to best effect. But in a display of disagreement increasingly rare at industry events of this type, one CIO suggested that complexity has always been a way of life for CIOs, and that business users have had to go around IT to purchase cloud computing because IT hasn’t been responsive enough. Read more of this post

Enterprise companies, which sell software and services to businesses rather than individuals, have risen 37 percent, on average, in the two years since their IPOs, compared with 13 percent for consumer companies

ChannelAdvisor soars in debut

2:30pm EDT

By Alistair Barr and Tanya Agrawal

(Reuters) – ChannelAdvisor Corp shares soared more than 40 percent in their market debut on Thursday as investors bet the e-commerce software company will benefit from the rapid global spread of online buying and selling. The company’s shares opened up 25 percent, after its initial public offering of 5.8 million shares was priced at $14 per share, the high end of its pricing range. ChannelAdvisor shares were trading up 40 percent at $19.54 on the New York Stock Exchange. They touched an intraday high of $19.73, valuing the company at about $400 million. Other IPOs on Thursday did not perform as well. Global Brass and Copper and Ply Gem Holdings rose less than 20 percent and Constellium declined 5.5 percent. ChannelAdvisor, founded in 2001, helps companies sell via online marketplaces and websites such as Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc and eBay Inc. Customers include Ann Taylor, eBags.com, J&R Electronics and Jos. A. Bank Clothiers. E-commerce is growing at about 15 percent a year and Forrester Research estimates that global online consumer spending will top $1 trillion by 2016. ChannelAdvisor gets fees when its customers generate an agreed-upon volume of sales using its software. When sales exceed those levels, customers pay a little more in what the company calls a “shared-success model.” “We have about 2,000 customers and handled over $3.5 billion in gross merchandise volume last year,” said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor. “That’s really the tip of the iceberg. We have a lot of wood to chop, as these bankers like to say.” ChannelAdvisor generated a net loss of $4.9 million last year, compared with a loss of $3.9 million in 2011 and $4.7 million in 2010. Revenue rose to $54 million in 2012, up from $44 million in 2011 and $37 million in 2010, according to the company’s SEC filings. Read more of this post

Ten IT-enabled business trends for the decade ahead

Ten IT-enabled business trends for the decade ahead

As technological change accelerates and adoption rates soar, ten pivotal trends loom large on the top-management agenda.

May 2013 | byJacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika

Three years ago, we described ten information technology-enabled business trends that were profoundly altering the business landscape.¹ The pace of technology change, innovation, and business adoption since then has been stunning. Consider that the world’s stock of data is now doubling every 20 months; the number of Internet-connected devices has reached 12 billion; and payments by mobile phone are hurtling toward the $1 trillion mark.

This progress both reflects the trends we described three years ago and is influencing their shape. The article that follows updates our 2010 list. (For a more detailed treatment, download the related white paper [PDF–1MB] from the McKinsey Global Institute.) In addition to describing how several trends have grown in importance, we have added a few that are rapidly gathering momentum, while removing those that have entered the mainstream. Read more of this post

VMware Public Cloud Software Challenges Amazon, Microsoft

VMware Public Cloud Software Challenges Amazon, Microsoft

VMware Inc. (VMW) is debuting a service that lets customers use the Web to access information and programs stored in its data centers, an effort to challenge Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in cloud computing.

Early testers of the vCloud Hybrid Service include News Corp. (NWSA)’s Fox Broadcasting and the state of Michigan, VMware Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger in an interview. The product will be more widely available in the third quarter, he said.

VMware, the biggest provider of software that lets computers run multiple operating systems, is expanding in cloud-computing to bolster sales as U.S. customers trim technology spending. With the new product, VMware is entering the fastest-growing part of the cloud market, according to Gartner Inc., which estimates that sales of so-called infrastructure-as-a-service will surge by an average 38 percent annually to $30.6 billion by 2017 from $6.17 billion last year. Read more of this post

5 Mobile Payments Data Points That Will Blow Your Mind

5 Mobile Payments Data Points That Will Blow Your Mind

Josh Luger | May 22, 2013, 12:56 PM | 1,376 | 1

Consumers gravitate to convenience. That’s as true with payment technologies as it is with anything else. A prime example is the decades-old trend away from cash or checks and toward credit cards. Now, the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets has set the stage for a new move — away from fixed-point, card-based transactions and toward those completed on mobile. The old dream of the “digital wallet” is coming true in a very particular mobile-led fashion. In a recent report from BI Intelligence,  we explain the main types of mobile payments, analyze the state of the mobile payments race, examine the matchup between card readers and near-field communications (NFC), look at how traditional banks, credit card companies, and card processors are responding to the mobile payments threat, and detail who is furthest along in developing the all-in-one solution for merchants and consumers.

Here are 5 data points that help underscore the explosion:

$640 million: eMarketer has estimated mobile payments as adding up to $640 million in transaction volume in the U.S., up from $170 million in 2011. However, this figure does not include swipes on mobile credit card readers like Square and PayPal Here, only consumer-side mobile payments in-store.

$10 billion: Card readers are building real scale. Square’s mobile payments volume rose to $10 billion in 2012, up from $2 billion in 2011. Starbucks is switching its credit and debit card processing to Square, and as of January 2013 accepts the “Square Wallet” app at 7,000 locations. 

$14 billion: Though much of that volume was from PayPal-enabled mobile commerce, and not in-store payments, that’s still evidence of mobile catching on as a transactional platform.

7.9 million: As of year-end 2012, only 7.9 million U.S. consumers (less than 90 percent of the total) had adopted a consumer-facing NFC-compatible system like “Google Wallet,” or apps that use QR codes or other methods to generate a payment. Card readers seem to be way ahead in the game.

$3.95 trillion: With more than $3.95 trillion of non-cash transaction volume recorded in the U.S. alone in 2011, the stakes are high in this space.