How does Facebook label you? https://t.co/PEBU0tn022
— Stefan Molyneux (@StefanMolyneux) August 24, 2016
#Facebookdown causes people to call 911; L.A. County sheriff's sergeant says, "don't call us" http://t.co/L2uNl4rZhs pic.twitter.com/8xjQIeHbVI
— Ron Lin, LA Times (@ronlin) August 2, 2014Google says the information it gains about people through Google Plus helps it create better products — like sending traffic updates to cellphones or knowing whether a search for “Hillary” refers to a family member or to the former secretary of state — as well as better ads.
“It’s about you showing up at Google and having a consistent experience across products so they feel like one product, and that makes your experiences with every Google product better,” Mr. [Vice President Bradley] Horowitz said.
Thanks to Plus, Google knows about people’s friendships on Gmail, the places they go on maps and how they spend their time on the more than two million websites in Google’s ad network. And it is gathering this information even though relatively few people use Plus as their social network. Plus has 29 million unique monthly users on its website and 41 million on smartphones, with some users overlapping, compared with Facebook’s 128 million users on its website and 108 million on phones, according to Nielsen.
The company has also pushed brands to join Plus, offering a powerful incentive in exchange — prime placement on the right-hand side of search results, with photos and promotional posts...
Though the FCC said it might appeal, the ruling for now means Internet-service providers are free to experiment with new types of pricing arrangements, such as charging content companies like Google Inc. or Netflix higher fees to deliver Internet traffic faster. Or, they could choose to degrade the quality of certain online content unless its creators were willing to pay up.And a must read piece at Gigaom, "What you need to know about the court decision that just struck down net neutrality."
The keg is becoming the new water cooler.Nope. Definitely not in my experience, but continue reading.
At least, that's the case at such firms as the Boston advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, where workers cluster around a beer-vending machine—nicknamed Arnie—after the day's client meetings are done. As they sip bottles of home-brewed beer, employees exchange ideas and chitchat, often sticking around the office instead of heading to a nearby bar.
Plenty of offices provide free food to their workers, but as the workday in many tech and media companies stretches past the cocktail hour, more companies are stocking full bars and beer fridges, installing on-site taverns and digitized kegs and even deploying engineering talent to design futuristic drink dispensers.
The perk, firms say, helps lure talent, connects employees across different divisions and keeps people from leaving the office as the lines between work and social lives blur.
But employment lawyers worry that encouraging drinking in the workplace can lead to driving while intoxicated, assault, sexual harassment or rape. Plus, it may make some employees uncomfortable while excluding others, such as those who don't drink for health or religious reasons.
Drinking on the job has long been part of work life in the U.S. and abroad, whether it's a beer with colleagues in the United Kingdom or Japanese salarymen entertaining clients at sake bars. But holding happy hour in the office is different, experts say, because it brings after-hours activity into the professional space.
WASHINGTON — When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency.Continue reading.
Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.
The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.
The disclosure of the spy agency’s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data.
Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.
Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly.
“We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.”
“ ‘Work-life balance’ is one of these terms that tends to get overused,” says Rob Lanoue, a partner with Deloitte’s consulting group in Toronto. “It’s ‘balanced/unbalanced,’ ” chips in colleague Andrew Hamer, a senior consultant.Continue reading.
Lanoue, 43, in an open-collar shirt and sporting a wall clock-size dive watch, exudes a relaxed jock vibe, while Hamer, 29, is more hunky corporate hipster, with a beard, jeans, and checked blazer. They, along with Jonathan Magder, 35, a slender, mellow-voiced manager in Deloitte’s corporate strategy group, are eating breakfast across the street from their office, spearing eggs and discussing how they juggle their careers and families. In its contours, the conversation happens countless times a day among groups of women. This male version also touches on the challenges of getting home for bath time, showing up at recitals, and how all that must be reconciled with driving ambition. The only thing missing is the guilt and self-flagellation, which, if they were women, would be accumulating on the floor in puddles around their feet. You might call them “Alpha Dads,” guys who are as serious about their parenting as they are about making partner. What they illustrate is that men might actually be better at handling women’s issues than women. They don’t believe in “balance.” They believe in getting what they want, even if it’s time to yell at their 5-year-olds from the sidelines of a soccer game on a Wednesday afternoon.
Together, Lanoue, Hamer, and Magder run a group called Deloitte Dads, which aims to help working fathers. “New dads can be their own worst enemies,” Magder says. “The biggest thing for sure is time management.” One of his friends at another company tried to take a longer-than-average paternity leave after his first child was born, only to be told by his bosses that they were surprised he wanted to do it—surely his wife would be home, no? His friend wimped out on taking extra time off. For that reason, these guys believe, it’s important for them to live what they preach as much as possible. Magder’s wife doesn’t work, which may afford him a little more breathing room, but both Lanoue and Hamer are married to full-time professionals. None of them have illusions of achieving perfect harmony.
Lanoue, who became partner in 2010, has two children in school full time, a 5-year-old and a 9-year-old, and he estimates that he works one day a week out of his basement office at home, partly to spend more time with them. He manages this, he says, by “being proactive with my calendar, weeks out,” planning his schedule meticulously, moving in-person meetings to conference calls when he needs to and being blunt and in-your-face about it. Even when he’s in the office, he sometimes has to leave at 3:30 p.m. to drive his son to his hockey games, a fact he broadcasts to help dispel the stink that can trail people when they sneak out early. “Everyone knows my routine when I’m not there,” he says. “Between 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., I’m available by e-mail. If there’s anything I have to review, it’s well into the evening.” In other words: It’ll get done, but on his time.
Hamer has a 2-year-old who goes to day care and a 12-week-old who’s currently not sleeping—he sports the dark eye-circles to prove it—and at the moment his assignment takes him out of town three nights most weeks to work at a client’s office. “For me,” he says, “flexibility is more about being able to take part in morning routines and not having to worry about the commute.” Magder has three children, ages 6, 4, and 2. He tries to be home at least two or three times a week for dinner and bedtime. Sometimes it’s tough, he says, recalling one period when he was working 80 or 90 hours every week and was desperately short on sleep. But, “most people understand that if I leave for the day, I’m just changing my [work] location.” Magder and his colleagues sound in many ways like typical MBA guys, only they’re applying the principles of efficient management to the task of parenting...
Sitemeter must have rolling server repair issues, as my counter was out yesterday and — knock on Formica — appears to be back, but now others are experiencing issues today. Also, as with their mammoth outage last year, their technical support seems to have fallen into a black hole; while the product still works (most of the time), Sitemeter reps never respond, beyond an automated ticket, to outage issues. Needless to say, this is not good customer support.Well, as I mentioned at the main post above, I use other stat-counters in addition to Site Meter, although when it's working, I go to Site Meter first. It's got a great layout and attractive display of information, and the information is delivered in real time. Enjoy.
Apple Inc. plans to begin production of a refreshed iPhone similar in size and shape to its current one in the second quarter of the year, according to people familiar with the device's production, teeing up a possible summer launch for the next version of its flagship device.I'm really impressed with my iPhone. It'll be interesting to see how the product improves.
At the same time, Apple continues to work with its manufacturing partners in Asia on a less expensive iPhone that could be launched as soon as the second half of this year, these people said. The four-inch device likely will use a different casing from the higher-end iPhone. Apple has been working on different color shells for the phone but its plans remain unclear.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the company was working on a less expensive iPhone that could go on sale as soon as this year. Analysts have said they expect Apple to launch its next iPhone around the summer.
The two devices reflect new pressures on Apple. The Cupertino, Calif., company has long commanded unique premiums for the iPhone, but consumer demand for cheaper products is spiking. A flood of smartphone entrants and the rise of Samsung Electronics Co. have commoditized the market, squeezing margins and dividing profits among an array of devices.
"There isn't really any major differentiator between the players at this phase," said Neil Mawston, an analyst at research firm Strategy Analytics. He said to cope, Apple needs to take a page from Samsung and launch more products faster.
"The panacea is to transform the industry with a revolutionary design," Mr. Mawston said. Until then "you have to do the traditional business school implementations like manage costs and move quicker than rivals."
I’m 22, and I took typing lessons in fourth grade, had computer classes on how to do Google searches and make Powerpoints in middle school, and joined Facebook when it launched in my early days of high school. Until I left for college, my family’s desktop computer was set to open to the New York Times homepage. (At the time, it was free for everyone.) My peers and I learned how to write research papers in high school by citing sources online and by not copying things from Wikipedia, and most of us read Hamlet with the assistance of Sparknotes.com. We discovered music on YouTube, and a few lucky kids got smartphones in high school, which were ubiquitous by the time we hit college.She's a good writer. And her experience is true of her generation, for the most part. She reads more widely than most students I teach, but other than that, pretty interesting.
My generation has grown up connected to the internet, and we’ve never been at a loss for finding news and information on the web — for free.
I support traditional marriage. #sorrynotsorry. RT if you do too! #values #tcot twitter.com/Gabby_Hoffman/…
— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) March 27, 2013
When one door closes, another one opens, and that statement proves very true for Feedly. After Google’s shocking announcement that it’s going to shut down its Google Reader service, Feedly’s user base has increased phenomenally. The service has already gained over 500,000 new users in just 48 hours. Feedly has done a great job in enticing Google Reader users to convert to its service, and it has launched new servers and increased its bandwidth by 10 times in order to keep up with demand.RTWT.
While Apple (AAPL) names its computer operating systems after cats, Microsoft 's (MSFT) latest, Windows 8, is looking like a dog.Continue reading.
The percentage of PCs in use worldwide running Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system inched up to 2.7% in February, from 2.3% in January, according to Net Applications. Microsoft launched Windows 8 with a massive advertising campaign on Oct. 26.
Now four months after its launch, Windows 8 barely beats Apple's Mac OS X 10.8 operating system, called Mountain Lion, which had 2.6% usage market share in February.
By comparison, its predecessor, Windows 7, had 9.1% global market share four months after its release, says Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of marketing and strategic alliances for Net Applications.
Even Microsoft's much maligned Windows Vista operating system still has greater market penetration than Windows 8. Last month, 5.2% of PCs worldwide were running Vista. Vista was released in January 2007 and replaced by Windows 7 in October 2009.
Microsoft's Windows 8 has failed to boost sagging PC sales. In the fourth quarter, worldwide PC shipments declined 4.9% from a year earlier, as more consumers shifted their focus to tablets and smartphones and away from PCs. Rival research firm IDC said global PC shipments fell 6.4% in Q4.
That's been bad news for PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which has reported six straight quarters of declining year-over-year sales.
Windows 7 is the top PC operating system in use, with 44.6% market share in February, followed by Microsoft's ancient Windows XP, which was released more than 11 years ago. Win XP had 39% usage market share last month.
Microsoft controlled 91.6% of PC market share usage with its Windows family in February. Apple's Mac was second with 7.2% share.
But Apple dominates in the mobile operating system market. Its iOS software ran 54.9% of smartphones and tablets in February, Net Applications says...
One week ago, Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross announced that he’d leave the company in a goodbye letter he posted on his profile page. Ross wrote:Well, my 17-year-old son likes Tumblr, although I hope he's not tumblogging those women posting their vagina pictures on the Internet. That is totally gross.
"I’m leaving because a Forbes writer asked his son’s best friend Todd if Facebook was still cool and the friend said no, and plus none of HIS friends think so either, even Leila who used to love it, and this journalism made me reconsider the long-term viability of the company."
A few sentences later, Ross wrote, "In all seriousness, even after switching to part-time at Facebook, it’s just time for me to try new things," but the damage was done. Ross has since removed the letter, perhaps because he’d accidentally posted it publicly, or because his jesting intro wasn’t taken as lightly as he’d hoped. The "journalism" Ross mentioned is hardly Pew Research, but it means something. Facebook admitted in its annual 10-K report that it might be losing "younger users" to "other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook." Teens are often an accurate barometer for what’s cool and what’s next, and recent rumblings seem to indicate teens are moving on. Telling your colleagues that teens are no longer into your product is far from an Irish goodbye.
Not exactly shocking news for those exposed to them for years, but the respected Pew Research Center has determined that political liberals are far less tolerant of opposing views than regular Americans.Continue reading.
In a new study, the Pew Center for the Internet and American Life Project confirmed what most intelligent Americans had long sensed. That is, whenever they are challenged or confronted on the hollow falsity of their orthodoxy -- such as, say, uniting diverse Americans -- liberals tend to respond defensively with anger, even trying to shut off or silence critics. (i.e. photo above of President Obama reacting to Boston hecklers.)
The new research found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That's double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.
The proportion jumps even higher when someone on a social site disagrees with a liberal's post.
