How Apple’s Closed Ways Could Land It Into Antitrust Trouble

While the antitrust spotlight has long been pointed at Google, the company that really has to watch its step is Apple. Beginning in the 1980s, Apple’s Steve Jobs left behind Apple’s original open design and began to champion a “closed”—or as the firm prefers, an “integrated”—approach to computing and entertainment delivery. This fact is familiar to any Apple user. Apple’s products are designed to work well with humans, other Apple stuff, and, at a distant third, other companies. “Foreign attachments” to the Apple system are sometimes accepted, but never quite loved. Contrary to what devoted “openists” might suggest, there are some advantages to Apple’s approach. Products engineered to work together often work better, if only because the firm’s engineers have more information. An Apple engineer building an application for the iPhone knows much more than someone programming an App for all the phones Android runs on. Moreover, to its credit, Apple isn’t an integration purist, like AT&T in the 1950s. Apple runs standard protocols like WiFi, allows outside Apps on the iPhone, and hasn’t tried to reinvent the World Wide Web. You might say that a clever, nuanced balancing of open and closed is Apple’s real secret.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1nESdsmuwxo/

MyCityWay Dives into Data, Comes Up With Gold

MyCityWay reached 1 million in downloads by combining familiar information like local dining, nightlife, deals and movie showtimes with government data that creates a very sticky resource with users. It's a great example of how companies can mine overlooked data sets and turn them into businesses.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/ZBr1Xs5LI5Q/

Tour Guide: Into Hopi Country

Rachel Dickinson visits a Hopi village with a local guide.

Evelyn Fredericks is a small, energetic woman who walks like a New Yorker on her way to a meeting, only she was nowhere near New York. Fredericks was our tour leader through her Hopi village in northern Arizona, situated in the middle of the huge, sprawling Navajo reservation that covers much the northern portion of the state. About 10,000 Hopi live in 12 villages associated with three mesas, and anyone who drives along highway 264 will pass through the reservation's high desert landscape and notice the small agricultural fields carved out of the sand where the Hopi grow corn, squash, melons, and beans using dry-framing techniques. But if you want to visit the villages, the best way to do so is to hire a Hopi guide.

We followed Fredericks to a remote canyon with fantastically shaped rock formations. As we gawked at the rocks (which reminded most of us of various foods ranging from mushrooms to buttercream frosting), Evelyn told us about the history of the region and gave us a little insight into Hopi culture with its matrilineal landholdings and tight clan structure.


Post originale: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/11/into-hopi-country.html

E-Waste Transforms into a Rugged Four-Wheeler

by Pete Danko

An electronics recycler that says it is "working to keep 100 percent of e-waste out of landfills" has come up with a novel way to meet that goal: It's making all-terrain electric vehicles out of the discarded stuff. This is the intriguing news from RMD Technologies, a San Marcos, Calif.-based company that put out a press release heralding the completion of the UTE, for Utility Terrain Electric. Details about the vehicle are sketchy, but one thing that pops out is the price claim from CEO Patrick Galliher: "With the ability to utilize recycled electronic waste in the manufacture of the Utility Terrain Electric," he says, "we are able to keep the price extremely competitive, with a base price of only $9,995." In its angularity, the UTE bears a slight resemblance to the early-1970s Volkswagen Type 181, aka "Thing" (it's the vehicle Patty and Selma drive in "The Simpsons"). RMD cites a "robust 72 volt ADC Motor, controller and transaxle combination," General Grabber AT2 all-terrain tires, 6061 Aluminum "never-rust" ladder frame, a lightweight fiber-reinforced polymer body and suspension seats from PRP. No word on battery or charging details, but RMD does tell of a "supplemental solar charging option." As for when the UTE might be available to consumers, Galliher said completion of the vehicle will allow RMD "to rapidly thrust from the R&D stage into an aggressive sales phase which will position us to begin filling orders soon." Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

Post originale: http://featured.matternetwork.com/2010/11/once-e-waste-now-rugged.cfm

Microsoft Game Hub Infuses Social Experiences Into Casual Games

Microsoft launched a new gaming hub that connects its three major social gaming portals, blurring the line between casual and social gameplay, called "Microsoft Game Hub," helps fans of casual games like Bejeweled play and interact socially across MSN Games, Bing Games and Windows Live Messenger.

Docs.com Integrated into the Facebook Groups

Facebook recently released a new Groups capability designed to help you share and communicate with unique sets of friends. Docs.com now takes advantage of this new Facebook Groups feature and allows you to directly share your documents with your Groups.

IBM Bakes Analytics Into Lotus Connections 3.0

IBM's obsession with analytics made its way into social networking today with the announcement of Lotus Connections 3.0. New analytics driven features include recommendations of other users to connect with based on shared interests and content recommendations based on past actions. IBM also announced support for Android to compliment its existing iOS and Nokia S60 support.

Sponsor

Lotus Connections is IBM's internal social media suite and features profiles, blogs, wikis, bookmarking, status updates. We covered last year's launch of Lotus Connections 2.5 here. The suite is also available in a more limited hosted SaaS version.

We first reported on IBM's analytics obsession just over a year ago. We took a look at how IBM's business analytics technology differs from other vendors' approaches here. IBM seems to be concentrating its efforts on real-time analytics systems that can return information without being queried. Infoworld has great coverage of this here.

IBM has been steadily increasing its intelligence and analytics holding. To cite just a few, the company purchased Cognos in 2007, SPSS last year, and Coremetrics and Netezza this year.

Effective analytics would certainly be one way to compete in an increasingly crowded enterprise social media marketplace. And considering its Coremetrics acquisition and partnership with KickApps, it appears to be taking social CRM seriously. The obvious next step is to start stitching some of this stuff together.

Discuss

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/hIG5fJSvfKY/lotus-connections-analytics.php

Sequoia And DCM Pour $20 Million Into Chinese Gilt

DCM and Sequoia Capital invested $20 million in Vipshop, a private sales company operating in China, the firms announced this morning.

Vipshop works on the familiar Gilt/Vente-Privee model, but for more mainstream brands. China doesn't have a huge market for high-end designer fashion yet. Instead, Vipshop offers brands like Nike and Adidas to China's massive new middle class. Ultimately, Vipshop hopes to use its own brand to begin introducing Chinese consumers to higher end labels.

More broadly, VCs like DCM and Sequoia are extremely bullish on Chinese ecommerce. The growth of the Chinese middle class has happened extremely quickly, and brick-and-mortar outlets haven't been able to keep up. Outside the centers of the countries biggest cities, there generally aren't physical stores that can offer the products Chinese want.

The $20 million round is actually a series A, but Vipshop is already fairly large, with around 700 employees. The money will go toward scaling up the companies infrastructure and making a big push in marketing and user acquisition.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Hey China, You're Not Going To Be Able To Police A Billion Phones
• Gilt-For-Indian-Fashion Site Exclusively.in Raises Venture Cash
• Mark Zuckerberg's Brutal Prank On Sequoia

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/k7-jWz4PTQY/sequoia-and-dcm-pour-20-million-into-chinese-gilt-2010-11

As Foursquare gets more into the "socializing" loyalty and providing services to merchants does it need a payments solution?

Answer added in topic Mobile Location Applications.

Bertil Hatt, PhD student in Digital Economics & Independent ...

I'm not sure the “more social” and the “payment” part of the strategy are directly connected:



Offering payment, or rather partnering with one could help FourSquare manage coupons, and be more insightful about the ROI of their service — although, I'm not sure besides from a handful of franchises, most shops need that level of understanding to realise FourSquare is relevant.



The social strategy is most likely more implicit: invisible filtering and friends visibility — warnings and alerts could be implemented, but I doubt there is a not-too invasive way to do it, short of offering to share discounts. You might think that payment could be tied to that (history of with whom you used the discount, to filter the alert) but… I wouldn't think so: it makes some sense, but not enough to demand a co-implementation.



One way to tie the two would be to offer a tool to split bills, but I don't see the decisive point of having LBS for that too: associating your memory of last night with guilt over not pintching in might be useful, but I’d rather have a list of debts somewhere, and recommendations to great places elsewhere and not associate the two.



See question on Quora


Post originale: http://www.quora.com/As-Foursquare-gets-more-into-the-socializing-loyalty-and-providing-services-to-merchants-does-it-need-a-payments-solution

Nicaraguan Incursion into Costa Rican Territory Blamed on Google Maps Error

Nicaraguan troops crossed the border into Costa Rica and raised the Nicaraguan flag; the commander apparently cited erroneous maps from Google that showed the territory as belonging to Nicaragua: About.com Geography, Fast Company, Search Engine Land. (The border is shown correctly in Bing Maps.) Google says that they got the erroneous border data from the U.S. State Department, and they’re working on a fix.

This has led to a certain amount of Schadenfreude on Twitter from representatives of competing map providers, which I think is ill-advised. There but for the grace of God, etc. — which is to say that it could have easily been your maps, and probably will be at some point. You don’t see airlines chortling about their competitors’ crashes, do you?

Nicaraguan Incursion into Costa Rican Territory Blamed on Google Maps Error first appeared on The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps on November 6, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Crowe. Distributed under a Creative Commons licence.

Post originale: http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2010/11/nicaraguan_incu.php

Out of Office: Into Africa

Associate Photo Editor Krista Rossow shares her first trip to Africa.

A total safari newbie, I wasn't sure what to expect when I packed my duffel bag to head to the bush in Zambia.  So, I tried to have few expectations. Everyone kept asking me what animals I wanted to see, as if it were a menu. I'll take one of everything, please? I was just looking forward to seeing animals that I'd only seen before in a zoo or circus in their natural element.  And, of course, to be in Africa.

On the first truck ride from the airport to camp, I realized why the Abercrombie & Kent tour schedule listed the two-hour ride as a "transfer/game drive."  We had just left the town of Mfuwe and were entering South Luangwa National Park on the way to our camp within the park, Sanctuary Puku Ridge. Just after the sun faded beyond the horizon, our truck rounded a bend and came upon a giraffe in the middle of the road. Our patient guide allowed all of us safari first-timers to have a proper burst of excitement before proceeding forward into the darkening bush. By the time we arrived at our camp, we had spotted even more game....two hippos scampering off in the darkness and the shadowy bulk of a few elephants. Not that I was counting, but I'd already crossed two animals off my Big 5 list. I was already being spoiled by Zambia!

Read more about Krista's first safari after the jump.

Post originale: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/11/out-of-office-into-africa.html

Gowalla Expands into Yelp’s Turf with City Pages and Verified Businesses (Mashable)

Gowalla is expanding into Yelp’s territory with the release of three new features that help users discover more about their city while giving businesses more control over presence on the location-based social network. The first of these three new features…

Source : Mashable

Explore : Social Network, Technology, Web 2, Yelp

Post originale: http://wik.io/info/US/224321305

Microsoft Moves Into Leaders Category on Forrester’s 2010 Enterprise BI Platforms Wave Q4 ’10

Microsoft has moved from the Strong Performer Category into the Leaders Category on Forrester's 2010 Enterprise BI Platforms Wave.

How To Plug Google Apps for Education Into Schools

Last week, Google Apps for Education hits 10 million active users mark; to celebrate this achivement, Google at EDUCAUSE conference booth, shared how school IT leaders and teachers have helped deploy and connect Apps with many widely-used learning management systems in higher ed. If you weren't able to make it to these sessions, here's a recap of how schools can integrate Apps with the technology platforms commonly used by colleges and universities today:

Comment on EU Wants Google Street View Curbed by EU Could Turn Google, Facebook Into Privacy Felons: Tech News «

[...] hard-nosed on privacy as it applies to services like Facebook and Google’s Street View, which has been criticized for a number of reasons, and faced potential restrictions from European states even before the company admitted that its [...]

Post originale: http://gigaom.com/2010/02/26/eu-google-street-view/#comment-302093

Comment on Facebook Apps Leaking User Info to Third Parties by EU Could Turn Google, Facebook Into Privacy Felons: Tech News «

[...] Facebook — which is facing a potential government inquiry in the U.S. related to the transmission of personal details via some of the apps that run on the network — has also faced scrutiny from a number of EU states, including [...]

Post originale: http://gigaom.com/2010/10/17/facebook-apps-leaking-user-info-to-third-parties/#comment-302095

Comment on Google in Catch-22 Over Wi-Fi Data and Privacy by EU Could Turn Google, Facebook Into Privacy Felons: Tech News «

[...] The recommendations were made in a paper presented by the European Union’s executive body, which is responsible for proposing legislation and enacting standards for the EU and consists of a cabinet with 27 commissioners, one from every member state. The European community has been fairly hard-nosed on privacy as it applies to services like Facebook and Google’s Street View, which has been criticized for a number of reasons, and faced potential restrictions from European states even before the company admitted that its Street View cars were inadvertently capturing personal data. [...]

Post originale: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/27/google-in-catch-22-over-wi-fi-data-and-privacy/#comment-302094

Making Steel into Solar with Spray-on Photovoltaics

by Mridul Chadha

A group of organizations including Tata Steel-led Corus and Swansea University (Wales, UK) are developing a new technology that would convert stell sheets into power generating solar cells. The technology involves coating steel sheets with photo-sensitive dyes. The technology has significant applications since it is highly efficient even in diffused sunlight. Therefore, countries at higher latitudes or those with limited solar energy resource can generate significant amounts of solar-powered electricity with going for large-scale power plants. If extended, the technology can find its way to the automobile industry where photo-sensitive dyes can be applied to cars to generate electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells. Tata recently invested in an American company, Sun Catalytix, which integrates low-cost catalyst with solar-powered fuel cells to generate power. The United Kingdom has an estimated four billion square meters of roofs and facades which, if covered with these steel sheets, will meet as much as a third of the country's renewable energy demand by 2020. The technology gains significance because the process of 'printing' these dyes on the steel sheets has already been mastered by Tata's European subsidiary Corus which is working on a new plant for the production of these steel sheets. Integrating low-cost solar energy products with the existing buildings is economically sound as there is minimal investment on infrastructure. The costs of land acquisition, procurement of thousands of solar panels and connecting them to the main grid is avoided. Homeowners can make use of this technology without worrying about acquiring any additional power generating equipment. The homeowners can use a part of the power generated themselves and can supply the surplus to the grid. Tata has been making significant investments in the renewable energy sector, both in India and abroad. An Indian subsidiary, Tata BP Solar is one of the leading manufacturers of solar panels in India. Tata Power has plans of testing a 2 kw micro wind turbine which can be used in rural homes for power generation. Its power distribution arm, North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL), is working on a feed-in scheme for the residents of Delhi. A $32 million research center has been established at the Swansea University for the project. The Imperial College of London and universities of Bath, Strathclyde, Glyndr, Bangor and Cardiff are also participating in the project. Reprinted with permission from Earth & Industry

Post originale: http://featured.matternetwork.com/2010/10/making-steel-into-solar-spray.cfm