以下係一篇有關於一個我很喜歡的網頁的成功故事
原來今天已經賣了盤了
共勉之……
Owned and Operated
How one company got outside money -- and still kept control.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB120533633272930493-lMyQjAxMTIxMDE1NTMxMzU2Wj.html
MARCH 17, 2008.
By MANEET AHUJA
The founders of Vault Inc. have made a career out of giving advice. They got their start writing guidebooks for students about colleges and internships, and later branched off into helping job seekers.
But entrepreneurs can also learn a lesson from these partners -- about handling investors.
As their business grew and changed, the Vault team sought out venture capital a number of times. But they made sure they didn't lose control of the company along the way. They were careful to seek out like-minded investors who didn't want them to change their business plan. The founders also structured the venture deals so that they ended up with the majority of board seats. And when they got the chance, they bought back some investors' stakes -- leaving the founders in near-complete control of the company.
These lessons are critical for small companies. Often, up-and-coming firms are so hungry for capital that they sell too much of the farm too fast. And then they discover that the new owners of the company have very different priorities -- and have no qualms about imposing them.
"Some less-reputable VC firms have been known to put pressure on start-ups to grow faster, expand into what they believe to be more marketable business lines and in some cases seek control when things do not work out," says Jason Mendelson, managing director of early-stage venture firm Foundry Group LLC.
Vault got its start in 1996. The founders, Mark Oldman and brothers Samer and Hussam Hamadeh, had written a number of best-selling guidebooks for students, such as "America's Top Internships" and "The Princeton Review Business School Companion." Now they wanted to target a new market. Using employee surveys, they would compile insider profiles of companies that job hunters could use for research.
"There was no real way to get inside scoops on industries and employers unless you knew someone in the field -- we wanted everyone to have that edge going into the interview," says the 39-year-old Mr. Oldman, senior vice president for enterprise licensing. Producing the guides, he adds, was a way to "avoid the rat race by writing about it."
The partners raised $200,000 from friends and family and set up shop in a New York apartment. But less than two years later, they realized they needed to change their plan of attack. The Internet was coming into its own, and they decided they needed to exploit the new medium. So, they started hunting for venture capital to build up their fledgling Web site and hire staff.
The experience wasn't encouraging. Some potential investors simply didn't believe in the idea; others wanted significant changes before they handed over capital. For instance, some wanted Vault to focus on providing company information for the business-to-business market -- a big buzzword at the time -- instead of consumers. Still others thought the partners should sell space for job postings instead of offering insider information.
The partners decided to hold out, using revenue from their existing products to keep them afloat. "Luckily, we were never in a desperate position that required us to accept money at any price and on any terms," says Hussam Hamadeh, 37, senior vice president for e-commerce.
He adds, "As with any start-up, we had many VCs and angels who rejected our business plan. You simply have to keep executing on a model, bringing in clients and revenues and generating growth, and eventually, some financing sources will believe in you."
When those sources eventually showed up, some of them weren't ordinary venture firms: They were divisions of large corporations. These investors typically take a different approach than conventional venture firms, says Mr. Hamadeh. They usually aren't as interested in quickly building up firms and selling them off, and they don't demand onerous amounts of control. Instead, he says, they treat the investments more like partnerships, looking for ways that their different businesses can work together.
For instance, Mr. Hamadeh says one of the venture deals was with Hollinger Capital, an arm of media company Hollinger International Inc. As part of the investment, he says, the company provided Vault with ad space in some of its newspapers and online properties. (Hollinger managers at the time of the deal couldn't be reached for comment. The company's current leadership couldn't confirm Mr. Hamadeh's account and declined to comment.)
"There was more patience, more collaboration, and sharing of ideas both ways," Mr. Hamadeh says. "We were not being as dictated to as [with] a standard financial VC. We were not replaced or threatened with replacement as executives."
Moreover, by not allowing any single investor to own a majority stake, Vault's founders ended up with an unusual amount of control over the company. Through two rounds of financing in 1999 and 2000 -- which brought in a total of $20 million -- the Vault team insisted on deals that gave them the majority of board seats.
"We met many VCs who refused to accept our requirement that we keep control, but we refused to take the next step with those VCs," says Samer Hamadeh, 38, chief operating officer.
This arrangement helped the founders make quick decisions and implement new ideas virtually immediately. When some of their marketing spending wasn't generating returns, for instance, they were able to cut it rapidly -- instead of debating the idea with outside investors.
They were also able to ditch those investors -- and take even firmer control of the company -- when they had the opportunity. Following the tech bust in 2001, one of Vault's shareholders approached the company about buying out his position on the cheap so that he could claim a tax loss for the year. The trio jumped at the offer. They even found other shareholders who were happy to take the tax loss rather than wait for the industry to bounce back.
Finally, last September, the partners decided it was time to give up control. Over the past few years, Vault had started partnering with companies to supply official inside information for the site, and began to offer career services such as message boards and résumé reviews. The company had also broadened the site's focus to include information for students.
But the founders wanted to take the company global, and expand its services even further. So, they sold a majority stake to a media-focused private-equity firm, Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Eric Sorenson, former president of MSNBC, came on board as chief executive officer, and Eric Ober, former president of CBS, headed up a new effort: providing insider recruiting videos about companies and schools across America.
"We needed the next level of capital funding to transition into a global brand, and VSS shared our vision," says Samer Hamadeh. "Together we're creating Vault 2.0."
—Ms. Ahuja is a producer at CNBC. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
2011年5月4日星期三
HSBC chief’s quiet revolution
HSBC chief’s quiet revolution
By James Quinn, Sunday TelegraphApril 30, 2011
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/HSBC+chief+quiet+revolution/4704599/story.html
On the early evening conference call that followed the rushed announcement endorsing Stuart Gulliver as the new chief executive of HSBC last September, the man himself said relatively little.
Having been anointed only hours earlier in the pages of a national newspaper, the then-investment banking chief was keen not to rock the boat after a tumultuous few days for the bank. Weeks of leaks and counter-briefings had exposed divisions among senior management at HSBC and laid bare the arcane way in which the bank operated.
Asked whether his fiefdom would be beefed up as part of his new reign, Gulliver coyly said only that there were “no plans” to change the 30-to-40-per-cent profit contribution of his global banking and markets division and that the focus remained “identical” in terms of shifting profits from the developed world to emerging markets.
“The processes Mike Geoghegan and Stephen Green have started, Douglas Flint and I will continue to execute,” said Gulliver, doffing his cap to his and new chairman Flint’s outgoing predecessors.
But on the morning of May 11, in the confines of an auditorium in the Canary Wharf skyscraper that is the bank’s global headquarters, Gulliver will change all that.
In an almost unprecedented step for HSBC, the 51-year-old will set out his strategy for the future of the bank, ending practices brought in by Geoghegan and Green and attempting to bring a focus to some of the global giant’s sprawling activities.
Bar the strategy day hastily organized in November 2007 in response to dissident shareholder Knight Vinke’s aggressive actions, Gulliver’s full-day event will be the first of its kind, telling investors, analysts and journalists alike how he plans to bring a new focus to the bank’s global operations while delivering profits that match the lofty price/earnings multiple on which its shares trade.
To gain an understanding of his priorities, one only needs to look at some of his comments on the subject, following the release of the bank’s full-year results at the end of February.
He spoke of a “very disciplined approach to allocation of capital” and the fact that the bank’s cost-efficiency ratio was “totally unacceptable.”
In essence, cost control will play a central role in what Gulliver has to say on May 11 and it will be key to the bank’s financial performance. Gulliver will tell investors that he regrets that the bank has not made it a priority earlier.
Instead, attempting to sound a warmer tone with shareholders than Geoghegan – who was known for his gruff monosyllabic responses – he will set out the ways in which the new management team, notably the chief financial officer, Iain MacKay, will evaluate business performance.
One of the key areas for cost-cutting will be in the U.K. and in particular the bank’s retail operations. The Sunday Telegraph understands that an in-depth focus on U.K. retail has led to findings that show a large element of cost could be stripped out, both from the branch network and head office and central operations.
One area under discussion is believed to be separating out U.K. retail’s head office staff from 8 Canada Square, the type of move that other U.K. retail banks did years ago.
Not only would it strip out cost, by moving the staff – believed to total several hundred – to a less expensive part of the country, but it would also make the business more stand-alone were there to be a need to divest it, either as a result of the Independent Commission on Banking or as a result of falling returns.
Certain investors believe that HSBC could sell a tranche of its domestic branches – one went so far as to suggest 500 – which would certainly strip out a significant amount of cost and deliver capital that could be reinvested elsewhere.
Whether Gulliver will be quite so radical remains to be seen. However, it appears clear that the U.K. will be firmly on his radar.
In assessing each of HSBC’s varied global businesses, it is understood that Gulliver will adopt a similar approach to that taken by another new incumbent chief executive, Bob Diamond at Barclays.
Just as Diamond told investors that all Barclays businesses must stand on their own merits in terms of delivering on cost of capital, Gulliver is expected to enforce what is essentially an up-or-out mantra. Each individual business, he will say, must either contribute or risk being shut down or sold.
One former senior company figure said Gulliver will “identify businesses which are not earning the group’s cost of capital and divide them into those which are capable of being reinvigorated to get over this hurdle and those where the prospects are poor, with the latter being sold”.
In part, the move is an obvious response to the regulatory pressure on capital requirements, meaning that such banks as HSBC can no longer carry under-performing businesses. However, this move could be met with cynicism by some, particularly given Gulliver’s 21-year stint at the bank and the fact that he has held a senior management role for much of that period.
One investor spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph said that if Gulliver had never thought of centralizing costs and cutting out under-performing businesses over the 20-odd years he’s been at the firm, “he doesn’t deserve to be there now”.
That comment highlights in one breath the problem Gulliver faces. Unlike his opposite numbers at Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland – Antonio Horta-Osario and Stephen Hester – he has grown up in HSBC’s culture, and has taken part in many of the decisions that find the bank where it is today.
As such, he cannot deliver a strategy review that will produce a total U-turn for the bank, as Horta-Osario may do at Lloyds, but rather has to build on what Geoghegan and Green accomplished.
Part of the strategy day will focus on a set of financial targets, which, although somewhat dry to the outside world, will please the investor community as they will be targets on which the new management team can clearly be measured.
Gulliver has already hinted that he hopes to achieve a dividend payout ratio of 40-to-60 per cent. But in addition, Gareth Hunt at Investec believes there will be the introduction of a return on equity target of between 12-to-15 per cent. Gulliver’s return on cost will be central to achieving this, as will Asia, Hunt argues, because of its importance “as a driver of group return on equity.”
Other financial parameters to be put in place will be a capital adequacy range, which most analysts appear to believe will fall in the 9.5-10.5 per cent area, and a cost income ratio of 48-52 per cent. There are some who will wish Gulliver to be more radical and focus less on targets and more on actual acquisitions.
Simon Maughan, analyst at MF Global, argues that on a country-by-country basis, Gulliver needs to focus on those areas where HSBC can truly make a difference. “For a long time it’s pressed ahead with Brazil, but it’s maybe too late, and the wrong point in the cycle, for it to push on there.”
He pinpoints Mexico as an area where HSBC could make inroads, as well as Poland and Turkey.
On the sale of the U.S. credit- and store-card business – for which Gulliver is said to have hired JP Morgan – he says it possibly makes sense but argues the money should be reinvested in emerging market acquisitions, not in U.S. corporate lending. “I’d like to see him buy up the minorities in Hang Seng, even though it’s pretty expensive. But the cash flow from that alone would reap dividends,” Maughan said.
Investors are similarly of the view that Gulliver should be bold when it comes to divestments and acquisitions.
One discussed the prospect of a sale of the old Midland Marine business in New York state, which encompasses several hundred branches across the state, from its headquarters in Buffalo.
This could make sense, given the loss-making U.S. retail business is believed to fund the profitable commercial division, and one top 10 investor suggested Gulliver may also signal an end to the bank’s push to attract the Asian immigrants on the east and west coasts, which is thought to have been costly and yielded few returns. As part of this, one person suggested the famous “world’s local bank” tag line may begin to be retired, in favour of a newer, more appropriate slogan that recognizes the fact that HSBC cannot be all things to all people in all countries.
Gulliver’s geographic strategy will very much focus on those countries in which HSBC can seize or maintain a leadership position, and the perception of operating in almost every country may not be the best one to promote.
One issue which will not be high on the agenda, however, will be the bank’s domicile. Sources with knowledge of the situation told The Sunday Telegraph that Gulliver will do all that he can during the investor day to attempt to deflect questions on whether the bank should remain in London for tax purposes, or move back to Hong Kong, which it left 19 years ago. Although it remains a “live” issue, with the bank’s board assessing it this year as part of its stated three-yearly review, investors will want to hear about operational strategy rather than tax strategy.
A company watcher said: “It’s about exploiting the operational performance of the review, and I would be amazed if Gulliver wants this to be a distracting element.” Instead, when asked, as investors are bound to, he will just repeat the company’s stated policy, that it is concerned by U.K. regulation and the fact the country appears to be moving farther down a route of anti-bank regulation than many of HSBC’s possible domiciles.
The key issue will be execution and the desire by Gulliver to actually live up to the promises he makes on May 11.
One person who met Gulliver last month told The Sunday Telegraph: “Stuart’s ambitious and isn’t going to want to fall into the trap of not doing anything. I think he recognizes they’ve fallen behind somewhat.”
Leigh Goodwin, analyst at Citigroup, agrees: “I think there’s an issue around how quickly they’re likely to go, which is part of the frustration with investors. For all the talk about growth, etc., when you look at group level there isn’t any top-line growth, and so Gulliver will want to show he can execute his new strategy.”
However, he warns those looking for Gulliver to be radical to think again. “I don’t think it’s HSBC’s style to be revolutionary. In a funny sort of way, the fact they’ve been perceived to have a good crisis is a problem,” he says, pointing out that as a result Gulliver does not have the mandate for total change that some of his rivals have been given.
That said, whatever Gulliver says on May 11, investors and analysts will be watching him closely, to gain not only the measure of the man who is now running one of the world’s largest banks but to see whether he will sail the good ship HSBC into clearer waters, waters that make it more of a profitable bank in the areas it chooses to operate in from now on.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
By James Quinn, Sunday TelegraphApril 30, 2011
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/HSBC+chief+quiet+revolution/4704599/story.html
On the early evening conference call that followed the rushed announcement endorsing Stuart Gulliver as the new chief executive of HSBC last September, the man himself said relatively little.
Having been anointed only hours earlier in the pages of a national newspaper, the then-investment banking chief was keen not to rock the boat after a tumultuous few days for the bank. Weeks of leaks and counter-briefings had exposed divisions among senior management at HSBC and laid bare the arcane way in which the bank operated.
Asked whether his fiefdom would be beefed up as part of his new reign, Gulliver coyly said only that there were “no plans” to change the 30-to-40-per-cent profit contribution of his global banking and markets division and that the focus remained “identical” in terms of shifting profits from the developed world to emerging markets.
“The processes Mike Geoghegan and Stephen Green have started, Douglas Flint and I will continue to execute,” said Gulliver, doffing his cap to his and new chairman Flint’s outgoing predecessors.
But on the morning of May 11, in the confines of an auditorium in the Canary Wharf skyscraper that is the bank’s global headquarters, Gulliver will change all that.
In an almost unprecedented step for HSBC, the 51-year-old will set out his strategy for the future of the bank, ending practices brought in by Geoghegan and Green and attempting to bring a focus to some of the global giant’s sprawling activities.
Bar the strategy day hastily organized in November 2007 in response to dissident shareholder Knight Vinke’s aggressive actions, Gulliver’s full-day event will be the first of its kind, telling investors, analysts and journalists alike how he plans to bring a new focus to the bank’s global operations while delivering profits that match the lofty price/earnings multiple on which its shares trade.
To gain an understanding of his priorities, one only needs to look at some of his comments on the subject, following the release of the bank’s full-year results at the end of February.
He spoke of a “very disciplined approach to allocation of capital” and the fact that the bank’s cost-efficiency ratio was “totally unacceptable.”
In essence, cost control will play a central role in what Gulliver has to say on May 11 and it will be key to the bank’s financial performance. Gulliver will tell investors that he regrets that the bank has not made it a priority earlier.
Instead, attempting to sound a warmer tone with shareholders than Geoghegan – who was known for his gruff monosyllabic responses – he will set out the ways in which the new management team, notably the chief financial officer, Iain MacKay, will evaluate business performance.
One of the key areas for cost-cutting will be in the U.K. and in particular the bank’s retail operations. The Sunday Telegraph understands that an in-depth focus on U.K. retail has led to findings that show a large element of cost could be stripped out, both from the branch network and head office and central operations.
One area under discussion is believed to be separating out U.K. retail’s head office staff from 8 Canada Square, the type of move that other U.K. retail banks did years ago.
Not only would it strip out cost, by moving the staff – believed to total several hundred – to a less expensive part of the country, but it would also make the business more stand-alone were there to be a need to divest it, either as a result of the Independent Commission on Banking or as a result of falling returns.
Certain investors believe that HSBC could sell a tranche of its domestic branches – one went so far as to suggest 500 – which would certainly strip out a significant amount of cost and deliver capital that could be reinvested elsewhere.
Whether Gulliver will be quite so radical remains to be seen. However, it appears clear that the U.K. will be firmly on his radar.
In assessing each of HSBC’s varied global businesses, it is understood that Gulliver will adopt a similar approach to that taken by another new incumbent chief executive, Bob Diamond at Barclays.
Just as Diamond told investors that all Barclays businesses must stand on their own merits in terms of delivering on cost of capital, Gulliver is expected to enforce what is essentially an up-or-out mantra. Each individual business, he will say, must either contribute or risk being shut down or sold.
One former senior company figure said Gulliver will “identify businesses which are not earning the group’s cost of capital and divide them into those which are capable of being reinvigorated to get over this hurdle and those where the prospects are poor, with the latter being sold”.
In part, the move is an obvious response to the regulatory pressure on capital requirements, meaning that such banks as HSBC can no longer carry under-performing businesses. However, this move could be met with cynicism by some, particularly given Gulliver’s 21-year stint at the bank and the fact that he has held a senior management role for much of that period.
One investor spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph said that if Gulliver had never thought of centralizing costs and cutting out under-performing businesses over the 20-odd years he’s been at the firm, “he doesn’t deserve to be there now”.
That comment highlights in one breath the problem Gulliver faces. Unlike his opposite numbers at Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland – Antonio Horta-Osario and Stephen Hester – he has grown up in HSBC’s culture, and has taken part in many of the decisions that find the bank where it is today.
As such, he cannot deliver a strategy review that will produce a total U-turn for the bank, as Horta-Osario may do at Lloyds, but rather has to build on what Geoghegan and Green accomplished.
Part of the strategy day will focus on a set of financial targets, which, although somewhat dry to the outside world, will please the investor community as they will be targets on which the new management team can clearly be measured.
Gulliver has already hinted that he hopes to achieve a dividend payout ratio of 40-to-60 per cent. But in addition, Gareth Hunt at Investec believes there will be the introduction of a return on equity target of between 12-to-15 per cent. Gulliver’s return on cost will be central to achieving this, as will Asia, Hunt argues, because of its importance “as a driver of group return on equity.”
Other financial parameters to be put in place will be a capital adequacy range, which most analysts appear to believe will fall in the 9.5-10.5 per cent area, and a cost income ratio of 48-52 per cent. There are some who will wish Gulliver to be more radical and focus less on targets and more on actual acquisitions.
Simon Maughan, analyst at MF Global, argues that on a country-by-country basis, Gulliver needs to focus on those areas where HSBC can truly make a difference. “For a long time it’s pressed ahead with Brazil, but it’s maybe too late, and the wrong point in the cycle, for it to push on there.”
He pinpoints Mexico as an area where HSBC could make inroads, as well as Poland and Turkey.
On the sale of the U.S. credit- and store-card business – for which Gulliver is said to have hired JP Morgan – he says it possibly makes sense but argues the money should be reinvested in emerging market acquisitions, not in U.S. corporate lending. “I’d like to see him buy up the minorities in Hang Seng, even though it’s pretty expensive. But the cash flow from that alone would reap dividends,” Maughan said.
Investors are similarly of the view that Gulliver should be bold when it comes to divestments and acquisitions.
One discussed the prospect of a sale of the old Midland Marine business in New York state, which encompasses several hundred branches across the state, from its headquarters in Buffalo.
This could make sense, given the loss-making U.S. retail business is believed to fund the profitable commercial division, and one top 10 investor suggested Gulliver may also signal an end to the bank’s push to attract the Asian immigrants on the east and west coasts, which is thought to have been costly and yielded few returns. As part of this, one person suggested the famous “world’s local bank” tag line may begin to be retired, in favour of a newer, more appropriate slogan that recognizes the fact that HSBC cannot be all things to all people in all countries.
Gulliver’s geographic strategy will very much focus on those countries in which HSBC can seize or maintain a leadership position, and the perception of operating in almost every country may not be the best one to promote.
One issue which will not be high on the agenda, however, will be the bank’s domicile. Sources with knowledge of the situation told The Sunday Telegraph that Gulliver will do all that he can during the investor day to attempt to deflect questions on whether the bank should remain in London for tax purposes, or move back to Hong Kong, which it left 19 years ago. Although it remains a “live” issue, with the bank’s board assessing it this year as part of its stated three-yearly review, investors will want to hear about operational strategy rather than tax strategy.
A company watcher said: “It’s about exploiting the operational performance of the review, and I would be amazed if Gulliver wants this to be a distracting element.” Instead, when asked, as investors are bound to, he will just repeat the company’s stated policy, that it is concerned by U.K. regulation and the fact the country appears to be moving farther down a route of anti-bank regulation than many of HSBC’s possible domiciles.
The key issue will be execution and the desire by Gulliver to actually live up to the promises he makes on May 11.
One person who met Gulliver last month told The Sunday Telegraph: “Stuart’s ambitious and isn’t going to want to fall into the trap of not doing anything. I think he recognizes they’ve fallen behind somewhat.”
Leigh Goodwin, analyst at Citigroup, agrees: “I think there’s an issue around how quickly they’re likely to go, which is part of the frustration with investors. For all the talk about growth, etc., when you look at group level there isn’t any top-line growth, and so Gulliver will want to show he can execute his new strategy.”
However, he warns those looking for Gulliver to be radical to think again. “I don’t think it’s HSBC’s style to be revolutionary. In a funny sort of way, the fact they’ve been perceived to have a good crisis is a problem,” he says, pointing out that as a result Gulliver does not have the mandate for total change that some of his rivals have been given.
That said, whatever Gulliver says on May 11, investors and analysts will be watching him closely, to gain not only the measure of the man who is now running one of the world’s largest banks but to see whether he will sail the good ship HSBC into clearer waters, waters that make it more of a profitable bank in the areas it chooses to operate in from now on.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
2011年2月7日星期一
Facebook, Twitter Fans To Decide Fate of Barbie and Ken
Take a look at the website if you want to have your say...
Facebook, Twitter Fans To Decide Fate of Barbie and Ken
We know you were all crushed when Barbie and Ken, yes, the dolls, split up on Valentine's Day in 2004. Fortunately for you, the cupids at Mattel are giving this plasticine couple another shot.
Toymaker Mattel has launched a massive social media campaign asking Internet users to help Ken, now in his 50th year, win back his old flame. After all, if dolls can't make it in the age of social media, who can?
At the core of the campaign is the website www.barbieandken.com, where users can vote on whether Barbie should take Ken back after apparently ditching her in 2004 (inspiring a Bachelor-like reality dating show). Voters can also help Barbie sort out her feelings by voting on her "Love-o-Meter," featuring a familiar option, "It's Complicated."
The campaign also uses Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, FourSquare, and Hulu to spread the message. Fans of either doll's accounts will note the two "flirting" online. For instance, after checking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art on FourSquare, Ken left the tip: "Barbie could spend hours looking at the timeless art, and I could spend hours looking at Barbie."
Not sweet enough? Mattell has also partnered up with Magnolia Bakery in Los Angeles and New York City to create a special cupcake that will only be sold on Valentine's Day. In a mock press release covering a Ken sighting, Mattel wrote, "On a mission to prove he's the ultimate boyfriend, America's most fashionable "first man" was overheard saying that designing a dessert for his beloved at her favorite bakery would really take the cake. With Valentine's Day around the corner, that's the kind of sweet-talking a girl can really go for.
But despite the grand "gestures," Barbie seems torn. Her @BarbieStyles handle recently tweeted, "At a loss with what to do about @OfficialKen. A walk on the beach is exactly what this Malibu girl needs" – referring to one of her classic incarnations, Malibu Barbie.
Facebook, Twitter Fans To Decide Fate of Barbie and Ken
We know you were all crushed when Barbie and Ken, yes, the dolls, split up on Valentine's Day in 2004. Fortunately for you, the cupids at Mattel are giving this plasticine couple another shot.
Toymaker Mattel has launched a massive social media campaign asking Internet users to help Ken, now in his 50th year, win back his old flame. After all, if dolls can't make it in the age of social media, who can?
At the core of the campaign is the website www.barbieandken.com, where users can vote on whether Barbie should take Ken back after apparently ditching her in 2004 (inspiring a Bachelor-like reality dating show). Voters can also help Barbie sort out her feelings by voting on her "Love-o-Meter," featuring a familiar option, "It's Complicated."
The campaign also uses Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, FourSquare, and Hulu to spread the message. Fans of either doll's accounts will note the two "flirting" online. For instance, after checking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art on FourSquare, Ken left the tip: "Barbie could spend hours looking at the timeless art, and I could spend hours looking at Barbie."
Not sweet enough? Mattell has also partnered up with Magnolia Bakery in Los Angeles and New York City to create a special cupcake that will only be sold on Valentine's Day. In a mock press release covering a Ken sighting, Mattel wrote, "On a mission to prove he's the ultimate boyfriend, America's most fashionable "first man" was overheard saying that designing a dessert for his beloved at her favorite bakery would really take the cake. With Valentine's Day around the corner, that's the kind of sweet-talking a girl can really go for.
But despite the grand "gestures," Barbie seems torn. Her @BarbieStyles handle recently tweeted, "At a loss with what to do about @OfficialKen. A walk on the beach is exactly what this Malibu girl needs" – referring to one of her classic incarnations, Malibu Barbie.
Using Special Crystals, Researchers Make a Paper Clip Invisible The first invisibility cloak that works on visible objects
Guess we don't have to wait too long...
Using Special Crystals, Researchers Make a Paper Clip Invisible The first invisibility cloak that works on visible objects
By Clay Dillow
Posted 02.01.2011 at 5:49 pm
Metamaterials have long been thought the key to creating the working, visible spectrum “invisibility cloak” promised us by sci-fi, but it might be time for metamaterials to move over. Two independent labs—one at the University of Birmingham in the UK, the other at MIT—have used naturally forming calcite crystals to render visible objects (as in large enough to see with the naked eye) invisible, something metamaterials haven’t come close to doing.
Metamaterials have achieved a measure of invisibility, but not in any practical sense; they can bend certain wavelengths of light to conceal an object at the microscopic level, but so far they have not been able to work well at the macro scale or in the visible spectrum. It turns out researchers may not have needed such an exotic medium.
Calcite, an abundant crystalline form of calcium carbonate that forms naturally (it’s the primary stuff of sea shells), has long been known to have peculiar light-bending properties, and if the Birmingham and MIT findings are any indication it might have a future in cloaking devices.
In both experiments, researchers had to finely tune their crystals—they’re technically composite crystals, as the researchers basically glue together two crystals with opposite crystal orientations—then placed them over small but entirely visible objects (MIT used a small metal wedge the size of a peppercorn; Birmingham went bigger, concealing a paperclip). In both experiments, the calcite crystals essentially reflected and refracted the light coming through in such a way as to conceal the objects on the other side, making it appear as though there weren’t there.
For now, the technology is nascent and somewhat two-dimensional, though the MIT team says it has some ideas regarding how they could make the cloaking three-dimensional. And, at least theoretically speaking, the calcite cloaking technology is limited only by the size of calcite crystals, which can grow well more than a dozen feet long—large enough to conceal a person or an average New York City apartment.
To think: all that work with metamaterials when all it really takes to make oneself invisible are some special crystals. Perhaps science fiction had invisibility right all along.
Using Special Crystals, Researchers Make a Paper Clip Invisible The first invisibility cloak that works on visible objects
By Clay Dillow
Posted 02.01.2011 at 5:49 pm
Metamaterials have long been thought the key to creating the working, visible spectrum “invisibility cloak” promised us by sci-fi, but it might be time for metamaterials to move over. Two independent labs—one at the University of Birmingham in the UK, the other at MIT—have used naturally forming calcite crystals to render visible objects (as in large enough to see with the naked eye) invisible, something metamaterials haven’t come close to doing.
Metamaterials have achieved a measure of invisibility, but not in any practical sense; they can bend certain wavelengths of light to conceal an object at the microscopic level, but so far they have not been able to work well at the macro scale or in the visible spectrum. It turns out researchers may not have needed such an exotic medium.
Calcite, an abundant crystalline form of calcium carbonate that forms naturally (it’s the primary stuff of sea shells), has long been known to have peculiar light-bending properties, and if the Birmingham and MIT findings are any indication it might have a future in cloaking devices.
In both experiments, researchers had to finely tune their crystals—they’re technically composite crystals, as the researchers basically glue together two crystals with opposite crystal orientations—then placed them over small but entirely visible objects (MIT used a small metal wedge the size of a peppercorn; Birmingham went bigger, concealing a paperclip). In both experiments, the calcite crystals essentially reflected and refracted the light coming through in such a way as to conceal the objects on the other side, making it appear as though there weren’t there.
For now, the technology is nascent and somewhat two-dimensional, though the MIT team says it has some ideas regarding how they could make the cloaking three-dimensional. And, at least theoretically speaking, the calcite cloaking technology is limited only by the size of calcite crystals, which can grow well more than a dozen feet long—large enough to conceal a person or an average New York City apartment.
To think: all that work with metamaterials when all it really takes to make oneself invisible are some special crystals. Perhaps science fiction had invisibility right all along.
2011年2月1日星期二
An Open Letter to Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt
埃及網上資訊封鎖已經成為tech news其中一個最熱門的主題……
這倒是一個有趣的現象
如果網路言論自由真的是帶來革命的動力
那麼你也不能不同意中共真的具備不凡的前瞻性
而且亦不是每一個政權都能頂得住國際的壓力的
有時，除了佩服外也不能做些什麼了……
An Open Letter to Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt
Andrew McLaughlinFormer
White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer
Posted: January 29, 2011 04:47 PM
Dear Tarek:
The news anchors are reporting that Egypt's Cabinet has just submitted its resignation, and a new Prime Minister has been appointed. As Egypt's Minister of Communications and Information Technology since 2004, you are now most likely heading back to private life.
As a friend, I write to urge you to take one final action before you walk out the door of your Ministry: Give the order to reconnect Egypt to the global Internet, and to drop all remaining blocks on wireless networks.
Unless you act now, in your final hours as Minister, to reverse the Internet cutoff, your name will forever be associated with an unprecedented human rights violation on a national scale, and an economic catastrophe triggered by a shortsighted regime's drive for self-preservation. That would be a tragedy for many reasons, but most of all because I am certain that you don't, in your heart, believe this decision to be right.
We have known each other since we jointly organized one of the first ICANN conferences on global Internet coordination, in Cairo in March, 2000. I know you to be a man of intelligence, integrity, and character. Your record is one of ambitious endeavors, large-scale accomplishments, and thoughtful innovation. Through your early work to bring network links to Egypt and your later service as a Trustee of the Internet Society, you demonstrated your understanding of, and commitment to, the Internet as a powerful tool for free expression and human development. And indeed, until last week, Egypt's Internet, under your administrative guidance, was notable in the Arab world for being free and open -- almost entirely uncensored. (Outside your domain of control, Egypt's security forces used other, brutally effective means of controlling dissent, like relentless surveillance and arbitrary arrests and detentions.) You helped design and build a truly impressive communications infrastructure, achieving impressive levels of Internet access and use, highly competitive mobile and ISP markets, and low consumer broadband prices. Unlike most of your regional neighbors, you allowed Internet voice services without restriction. Egypt is now one of the major crossing points for the underwater fiber optic cables that interconnect the regions of the planet. You led an aggressive initiative to get personal computers and Internet connections into every home in Egypt. At an early date, you used farsighted regulatory moves to enable free dial-up Internet services. Under your leadership, Egypt was among the first countries to launch an Arabic-language Internet top-level domain, making Internet addresses vastly easier for the majority of Egyptians to use.
All of these achievements, however, are now eclipsed by your participation in the Egyptian government's unprecedented decision to sever Egypt from the global Internet, and to shut down mobile phone services.
Even now, two days later, as cellular networks are starting to function again, nearly all Egyptians remain cut off from the Internet. A worried mother who has not heard from her son or daughter cannot send an email or check Facebook for a status update. A witness to violence or abuse cannot seek help, document responsibility, or warn others via Twitter or blog. Life-saving information is inaccessible. Healthy, civil debate about the future of Egypt is squelched. And in the absence of trustworthy news, first-hand reports, and real-time pictures, rumor and fear flourish. In those ways, the total Internet cut-off undermines the government's own interest in restoring calm and order.
Moreover, innovative Egyptians are finding ways to overcome the block. They are relaying information by voice, exploiting gaps in your digital Iron Curtain, and dusting off old modems to tap foreign dial-up services. To seek to lock Egyptians behind an airtight seal is triply wrongheaded: it harms Egyptians, increases tensions, and, ultimately, can't be sustained.
Finally, and not least, your use of the Internet kill switch is about to start inflicting serious harm to Egypt's economy, its markets, its workers, and its soundness in the eyes of trading partners and investors. Already, Egypt's reputation as a reliable hub for Internet services and infrastructure -- a reputation you have labored tirelessly for more than a decade to fashion -- has suffered incalculable damage. (Yes, your sophisticated cutoff techniques cleverly made your networks unreachable without interfering with other countries' traffic transiting Egyptian territory and seaways, but the perception that Egypt can't be trusted with critical communications is now widespread, growing, and grounded in reality.)
It is not too late for you to act. Even as your formal mandate is ending, your moral authority is still weighty with the Ministry team you built. A directive from you to restore the Egyptian people's communications at this critical junction in Egypt's history would not only encourage peace and help restore order, but will prevent you from falling, tragically but indisputably, on the wrong side of history. You can, and must, move now to restore your reputation and reverse what will otherwise be a harsh and condemnatory worldwide judgment of your role in silencing Egyptians and infringing their fundamental human rights to speak, write, read, watch, and communicate.
My friend, Dr. Tarek Kamel, for the sake of your legacy and the future of your country: Re-connect your people.
Very truly yours,
Andrew McLaughlin
這倒是一個有趣的現象
如果網路言論自由真的是帶來革命的動力
那麼你也不能不同意中共真的具備不凡的前瞻性
而且亦不是每一個政權都能頂得住國際的壓力的
有時，除了佩服外也不能做些什麼了……
An Open Letter to Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt
Andrew McLaughlinFormer
White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer
Posted: January 29, 2011 04:47 PM
Dear Tarek:
The news anchors are reporting that Egypt's Cabinet has just submitted its resignation, and a new Prime Minister has been appointed. As Egypt's Minister of Communications and Information Technology since 2004, you are now most likely heading back to private life.
As a friend, I write to urge you to take one final action before you walk out the door of your Ministry: Give the order to reconnect Egypt to the global Internet, and to drop all remaining blocks on wireless networks.
Unless you act now, in your final hours as Minister, to reverse the Internet cutoff, your name will forever be associated with an unprecedented human rights violation on a national scale, and an economic catastrophe triggered by a shortsighted regime's drive for self-preservation. That would be a tragedy for many reasons, but most of all because I am certain that you don't, in your heart, believe this decision to be right.
We have known each other since we jointly organized one of the first ICANN conferences on global Internet coordination, in Cairo in March, 2000. I know you to be a man of intelligence, integrity, and character. Your record is one of ambitious endeavors, large-scale accomplishments, and thoughtful innovation. Through your early work to bring network links to Egypt and your later service as a Trustee of the Internet Society, you demonstrated your understanding of, and commitment to, the Internet as a powerful tool for free expression and human development. And indeed, until last week, Egypt's Internet, under your administrative guidance, was notable in the Arab world for being free and open -- almost entirely uncensored. (Outside your domain of control, Egypt's security forces used other, brutally effective means of controlling dissent, like relentless surveillance and arbitrary arrests and detentions.) You helped design and build a truly impressive communications infrastructure, achieving impressive levels of Internet access and use, highly competitive mobile and ISP markets, and low consumer broadband prices. Unlike most of your regional neighbors, you allowed Internet voice services without restriction. Egypt is now one of the major crossing points for the underwater fiber optic cables that interconnect the regions of the planet. You led an aggressive initiative to get personal computers and Internet connections into every home in Egypt. At an early date, you used farsighted regulatory moves to enable free dial-up Internet services. Under your leadership, Egypt was among the first countries to launch an Arabic-language Internet top-level domain, making Internet addresses vastly easier for the majority of Egyptians to use.
All of these achievements, however, are now eclipsed by your participation in the Egyptian government's unprecedented decision to sever Egypt from the global Internet, and to shut down mobile phone services.
Even now, two days later, as cellular networks are starting to function again, nearly all Egyptians remain cut off from the Internet. A worried mother who has not heard from her son or daughter cannot send an email or check Facebook for a status update. A witness to violence or abuse cannot seek help, document responsibility, or warn others via Twitter or blog. Life-saving information is inaccessible. Healthy, civil debate about the future of Egypt is squelched. And in the absence of trustworthy news, first-hand reports, and real-time pictures, rumor and fear flourish. In those ways, the total Internet cut-off undermines the government's own interest in restoring calm and order.
Moreover, innovative Egyptians are finding ways to overcome the block. They are relaying information by voice, exploiting gaps in your digital Iron Curtain, and dusting off old modems to tap foreign dial-up services. To seek to lock Egyptians behind an airtight seal is triply wrongheaded: it harms Egyptians, increases tensions, and, ultimately, can't be sustained.
Finally, and not least, your use of the Internet kill switch is about to start inflicting serious harm to Egypt's economy, its markets, its workers, and its soundness in the eyes of trading partners and investors. Already, Egypt's reputation as a reliable hub for Internet services and infrastructure -- a reputation you have labored tirelessly for more than a decade to fashion -- has suffered incalculable damage. (Yes, your sophisticated cutoff techniques cleverly made your networks unreachable without interfering with other countries' traffic transiting Egyptian territory and seaways, but the perception that Egypt can't be trusted with critical communications is now widespread, growing, and grounded in reality.)
It is not too late for you to act. Even as your formal mandate is ending, your moral authority is still weighty with the Ministry team you built. A directive from you to restore the Egyptian people's communications at this critical junction in Egypt's history would not only encourage peace and help restore order, but will prevent you from falling, tragically but indisputably, on the wrong side of history. You can, and must, move now to restore your reputation and reverse what will otherwise be a harsh and condemnatory worldwide judgment of your role in silencing Egyptians and infringing their fundamental human rights to speak, write, read, watch, and communicate.
My friend, Dr. Tarek Kamel, for the sake of your legacy and the future of your country: Re-connect your people.
Very truly yours,
Andrew McLaughlin
2011年1月31日星期一
White iPhone camera problems confirmed, Steve Wozniak loves Android
終於解開迷底了……
出得嚟
買得幾個月就又可以phase out
真係好好數口呢……呢啲咪叫做marketing囉！
White iPhone camera problems confirmed, Steve Wozniak loves Android
Apple had announced at its launch that the iPhone 4 would come in black and white models, then kept delaying the release of the white iPhone 4, a rare misfire in its recent history of smooth product rollouts.
By Devindra Hardawar, Venture Beat / January 31, 2011
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak confirmed today that early white iPhone 4 parts caused issues with its camera, which led to multiple delays and its near-mythical status among gadget hounds. He also praised Google’s Android smartphone operating system.
Both observations are interesting in that they show rare cracks in Apple’s seamless public façade. The gadget company had announced at its launch that the iPhone 4 would come in black and white models, then kept delaying the release of the white iPhone 4, a rare misfire in its recent history of smooth product rollouts. And Wozniak, who regularly notes that he’s still on the Apple payroll, has issued praise for Android before.
In a conversation with Joshua Topolsky, editor of the AOL-owned tech blog Engadget, on the site’s eponymous online-video show today, Wozniak said that he ordered the white iPhone parts from a teenager online who somehow received them from Foxconn, who manufacturers the iPhone. When he tried to take a picture with the device’s flash, he said the photo looked as if it was taken through cellophane, confirming earlier rumors that the white case caused light leakage when the flash was used.
Additionally, Wozniak said that his white iPhone 4 parts caused issues with its proximity sensor (although I think he’s actually referring to its ambient light sensor, which could see similar light leakage issues to the camera). He then confirmed that Apple has resolved the problems with the white iPhone 4, and that we’ll be seeing them soon. We recently reported that the fabled device has started appearing on AT&T and Best Buy computers.
Woz also spent quite a bit of time praising Android, something that put him in hot water months ago when he called Android the winner in the current smartphone race (he later said he was misquoted). He said that Android contained many great features that the iPhone is lacking. In particular, Wozniak emphasized how much he loved Android’s ability to accept voice commands, as well as the Swype software keyboard available on Android, Symbian and other platforms. He definitely preferred both of those methods to hunting and pecking letters on a touch screen — which is the only method of text input on the iPhone so far.
Wozniak also revealed that he’ll be picking up two Verizon iPhones — in black and white — to accompany his current trio of AT&T iPhones.
出得嚟
買得幾個月就又可以phase out
真係好好數口呢……呢啲咪叫做marketing囉！
White iPhone camera problems confirmed, Steve Wozniak loves Android
Apple had announced at its launch that the iPhone 4 would come in black and white models, then kept delaying the release of the white iPhone 4, a rare misfire in its recent history of smooth product rollouts.
By Devindra Hardawar, Venture Beat / January 31, 2011
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak confirmed today that early white iPhone 4 parts caused issues with its camera, which led to multiple delays and its near-mythical status among gadget hounds. He also praised Google’s Android smartphone operating system.
Both observations are interesting in that they show rare cracks in Apple’s seamless public façade. The gadget company had announced at its launch that the iPhone 4 would come in black and white models, then kept delaying the release of the white iPhone 4, a rare misfire in its recent history of smooth product rollouts. And Wozniak, who regularly notes that he’s still on the Apple payroll, has issued praise for Android before.
In a conversation with Joshua Topolsky, editor of the AOL-owned tech blog Engadget, on the site’s eponymous online-video show today, Wozniak said that he ordered the white iPhone parts from a teenager online who somehow received them from Foxconn, who manufacturers the iPhone. When he tried to take a picture with the device’s flash, he said the photo looked as if it was taken through cellophane, confirming earlier rumors that the white case caused light leakage when the flash was used.
Additionally, Wozniak said that his white iPhone 4 parts caused issues with its proximity sensor (although I think he’s actually referring to its ambient light sensor, which could see similar light leakage issues to the camera). He then confirmed that Apple has resolved the problems with the white iPhone 4, and that we’ll be seeing them soon. We recently reported that the fabled device has started appearing on AT&T and Best Buy computers.
Woz also spent quite a bit of time praising Android, something that put him in hot water months ago when he called Android the winner in the current smartphone race (he later said he was misquoted). He said that Android contained many great features that the iPhone is lacking. In particular, Wozniak emphasized how much he loved Android’s ability to accept voice commands, as well as the Swype software keyboard available on Android, Symbian and other platforms. He definitely preferred both of those methods to hunting and pecking letters on a touch screen — which is the only method of text input on the iPhone so far.
Wozniak also revealed that he’ll be picking up two Verizon iPhones — in black and white — to accompany his current trio of AT&T iPhones.
2011年1月30日星期日
The Future of Search: Who Will Win The Spam Wars?
The Future of Search: Who Will Win The Spam Wars?
Vivek Wadhwa
Sometimes, all it takes is a little spark to set off a major forest fire. That is what seems to have happened with my New Year’s Day post on Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google. Over the last two months, there has been an avalanche of articles echoing my post (and a few before it from notable people like Jeff Atwood), including New York Magazine, Business Insider, GigaOm, TechCrunch, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.
I had a feeling that this would get Google’s attention. And I had the same concern as when I challenged the Russian government, once, in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about Skolkovo (a new tech park). I feared that Google would either blacklist me or do its equivalent of putting me in a Gulag—deliver even more spam when I search websites.
But I was delighted to get an e-mail from Amit Singhal, the head of Google’s SEO team. His message was exemplary for those wanting to learn how to handle a PR crisis. Here is part of what he wrote:
I read your post on TechCrunch yesterday and was quite disappointed by the fact that Google search failed your students at their task. My team and I treat every such failure as an inspiration to improve Google. Would it at all be possible for me to get a few queries from your students for which our algorithm failed? We will debug every aspect of our system for those queries.
He went on to invite me to visit Google to show me how they run the search system and listen to any other criticism I had to offer.
I took Amit up on this and spent hours with him; with Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s webspam team; and with their lead developers. They were incredibly open and honest. They acknowledged the deficiencies of Google search, shared ideas on how they plan to fix them, and asked for feedback.
I raised concerns that “content farms” are turning the web into a massive garbage dump, that many sites are simply replicating the content of others like TechCrunch, and that Google has no incentive to stop this because it gains advertising revenue from the spammers.
The Google developers assured me that there is a very high Chinese Wall between them and the business side of the company; that they have been instructed by Google’s executives to do only what is in the interest of users—to keep improving quality of search results and the user experience. They said they understood the issues and had many solutions to the technical problems. I questioned whether the spam problems could even be solved algorithmically; whether the only solution was a curated web-search model like that of Blekko and DuckDuckGo. They convinced me that they could, and would, win the battle.
Matt said he would post a blog, which he did, on Jan 21. In it, he explained that Google had already made improvements to make it harder for “spammy on-page content to rank highly”; had radically improved its ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010; and was about to implement a change that would directly address the issue of sites copying others’ content. Most importantly, he acknowledged that something had to be done about the “content farms,” and said that Google would.
Not surprisingly, Matt’s blog led to another avalanche of media coverage. As it turns out, the biggest content farm of them all, Demand Media, was set for an IPO this week (on Jan 26). Savvy bloggers and journalists began to question whether it could sustain its profits without Google’s support. The Wall Street Journal asked Did Google Just Make Demand Media Less in Demand?, and GigaOm wondered Did Google Just Declare War on Demand Media?
Nonetheless, Demand Media had a spectacular IPO. Its investors reaped huge bounties, with the company achieving a market cap of $1.7 billion—valuing it higher than the New York Times. So the public markets rewarded junk over quality. And they called Google’s bluff.
Where does that put us? Do we have to watch the web become one big toxic waste dump—as the spammers rake in billions of dollars? Or will Google indeed save the day?
There is an event on Tuesday, Feb 1, called Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box, to discuss these questions. It will be live-streamed on TechCrunch (watch for a post by Jon Orlin on that day) and is being organized by BigThink, a public online forum for intellectuals (people like Gary Kasparov, Jimmy Carter, Malcolm Gladwell, Salman Rushdie, Nouriel Roubini, and Paul Krugman). BigThink has thousands of videos on its site, which 1.5 million people watch every month.
I am emceeing the BigThink event and moderating a panel with three big players: Matt Cutts from Google; Harry Shum, Microsoft Corporate Vice President who heads Bing development, and Rich Skrenta, founder and CEO of Blekko.
Here are some questions that I plan to ask the panelists. Please share your comments below and suggest additional questions. I can’t promise I’ll cover all the topics you raise, but I will bring up as many as I can.
1. How will they save the web? Is it possible for search engines to separate the wheat from the chaff—tell the difference between content produced by regular people and large-scale junk produced by the spammers?
2. How are the engines really different? Most people can’t tell the difference between Google and Bing. Where is the magic?
3. What lies ahead? What is the future of search?
I have no doubt that this will be a very lively and informative event. There are also other great presentations such as:
- Jaron Lanier, named by Time Magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, speaking about the need for a new sustainable revenue model for search.
- Esther Dyson, in an address entitled “The Future of Search is a Verb,” speaking about how we want search to help us do something—a set of many verbs.
- Demos from Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Architect of BING maps at Microsoft; and Luc Barthelet, Executive Director of Wolfram|Alpha.
- Demos from Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Architect of BING maps at Microsoft; and Luc Barthelet, Executive Director of Wolfram|Alpha. I hope you’ll tune in.
Editor’s note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School , Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at The Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.
Vivek Wadhwa
Sometimes, all it takes is a little spark to set off a major forest fire. That is what seems to have happened with my New Year’s Day post on Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google. Over the last two months, there has been an avalanche of articles echoing my post (and a few before it from notable people like Jeff Atwood), including New York Magazine, Business Insider, GigaOm, TechCrunch, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.
I had a feeling that this would get Google’s attention. And I had the same concern as when I challenged the Russian government, once, in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about Skolkovo (a new tech park). I feared that Google would either blacklist me or do its equivalent of putting me in a Gulag—deliver even more spam when I search websites.
But I was delighted to get an e-mail from Amit Singhal, the head of Google’s SEO team. His message was exemplary for those wanting to learn how to handle a PR crisis. Here is part of what he wrote:
I read your post on TechCrunch yesterday and was quite disappointed by the fact that Google search failed your students at their task. My team and I treat every such failure as an inspiration to improve Google. Would it at all be possible for me to get a few queries from your students for which our algorithm failed? We will debug every aspect of our system for those queries.
He went on to invite me to visit Google to show me how they run the search system and listen to any other criticism I had to offer.
I took Amit up on this and spent hours with him; with Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s webspam team; and with their lead developers. They were incredibly open and honest. They acknowledged the deficiencies of Google search, shared ideas on how they plan to fix them, and asked for feedback.
I raised concerns that “content farms” are turning the web into a massive garbage dump, that many sites are simply replicating the content of others like TechCrunch, and that Google has no incentive to stop this because it gains advertising revenue from the spammers.
The Google developers assured me that there is a very high Chinese Wall between them and the business side of the company; that they have been instructed by Google’s executives to do only what is in the interest of users—to keep improving quality of search results and the user experience. They said they understood the issues and had many solutions to the technical problems. I questioned whether the spam problems could even be solved algorithmically; whether the only solution was a curated web-search model like that of Blekko and DuckDuckGo. They convinced me that they could, and would, win the battle.
Matt said he would post a blog, which he did, on Jan 21. In it, he explained that Google had already made improvements to make it harder for “spammy on-page content to rank highly”; had radically improved its ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010; and was about to implement a change that would directly address the issue of sites copying others’ content. Most importantly, he acknowledged that something had to be done about the “content farms,” and said that Google would.
Not surprisingly, Matt’s blog led to another avalanche of media coverage. As it turns out, the biggest content farm of them all, Demand Media, was set for an IPO this week (on Jan 26). Savvy bloggers and journalists began to question whether it could sustain its profits without Google’s support. The Wall Street Journal asked Did Google Just Make Demand Media Less in Demand?, and GigaOm wondered Did Google Just Declare War on Demand Media?
Nonetheless, Demand Media had a spectacular IPO. Its investors reaped huge bounties, with the company achieving a market cap of $1.7 billion—valuing it higher than the New York Times. So the public markets rewarded junk over quality. And they called Google’s bluff.
Where does that put us? Do we have to watch the web become one big toxic waste dump—as the spammers rake in billions of dollars? Or will Google indeed save the day?
There is an event on Tuesday, Feb 1, called Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box, to discuss these questions. It will be live-streamed on TechCrunch (watch for a post by Jon Orlin on that day) and is being organized by BigThink, a public online forum for intellectuals (people like Gary Kasparov, Jimmy Carter, Malcolm Gladwell, Salman Rushdie, Nouriel Roubini, and Paul Krugman). BigThink has thousands of videos on its site, which 1.5 million people watch every month.
I am emceeing the BigThink event and moderating a panel with three big players: Matt Cutts from Google; Harry Shum, Microsoft Corporate Vice President who heads Bing development, and Rich Skrenta, founder and CEO of Blekko.
Here are some questions that I plan to ask the panelists. Please share your comments below and suggest additional questions. I can’t promise I’ll cover all the topics you raise, but I will bring up as many as I can.
1. How will they save the web? Is it possible for search engines to separate the wheat from the chaff—tell the difference between content produced by regular people and large-scale junk produced by the spammers?
2. How are the engines really different? Most people can’t tell the difference between Google and Bing. Where is the magic?
3. What lies ahead? What is the future of search?
I have no doubt that this will be a very lively and informative event. There are also other great presentations such as:
- Jaron Lanier, named by Time Magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, speaking about the need for a new sustainable revenue model for search.
- Esther Dyson, in an address entitled “The Future of Search is a Verb,” speaking about how we want search to help us do something—a set of many verbs.
- Demos from Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Architect of BING maps at Microsoft; and Luc Barthelet, Executive Director of Wolfram|Alpha.
- Demos from Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Architect of BING maps at Microsoft; and Luc Barthelet, Executive Director of Wolfram|Alpha. I hope you’ll tune in.
Editor’s note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School , Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at The Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.
Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google
Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google
Vivek Wadhwa
Jan 1, 2011
This semester, my students at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley researched the VC system from the perspective of company founders. We prepared a detailed survey; randomly selected 500 companies from a venture database; and set out to contact the founders. Thanks to Reid Hoffman, we were able to get premium access to LinkedIn—which was very helpful and provided a wealth of information. But some of the founders didn’t have LinkedIn accounts, and others didn’t respond to our LinkedIn “inmails”. So I instructed my students to use Google searches to research each founder’s work history, by year, and to track him or her down in that way.
But it turns out that you can’t easily do such searches in Google any more. Google has become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers. Almost every search takes you to websites that want you to click on links that make them money, or to sponsored sites that make Google money. There’s no way to do a meaningful chronological search.
We ended up using instead a web-search tool called Blekko. It’s a new technology and is far from perfect; but it is innovative and fills the vacuum of competition with Google (and Bing).
Blekko was founded in 2007 by Rich Skrenta, Tom Annau, Mike Markson, and a bunch of former Google and Yahoo engineers. Previously, Skrenta had built Topix and what has become Netscape’s Open Directory Project. For Blekko, his team has created a new distributed computing platform to crawl the web and create search indices. Blekko is backed by notable angels, including Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Clavier, and Mike Maples. It has received a total of $24 million in venture funding, including $14M from U.S. Venture Partners and CMEA capital.
In addition to providing regular search capabilities like Google’s, Blekko allows you to define what it calls “slashtags” and filter the information you retrieve according to your own criteria. Slashtags are mostly human-curated sets of websites built around a specific topic, such as health, finance, sports, tech, and colleges. So if you are looking for information about swine flu, you can add “/health” to your query and search only the top 70 or so relevant health sites rather than tens of thousands spam sites. Blekko crowdsources the editorial judgment for what should and should not be in a slashtag, as Wikipedia does. One Blekko user created a slashtag for 2100 college websites. So anyone can do a targeted search for all the schools offering courses in molecular biology, for example. Most searches are like this—they can be restricted to a few thousand relevant sites. The results become much more relevant and trustworthy when you can filter out all the garbage.
The feature that I’ve found most useful is the ability to order search results. If you are doing searches by date, as my students were, Blekko allows you to add the slashtag “/date” to the end of your query and retrieve information in a chronological fashion. Google does provide an option to search within a date range, but these are the dates when website was indexed rather than created; which means the results are practically useless. Blekko makes an effort to index the page by the date on which it was actually created (by analyzing other information embedded in its HTML). So if I want to search for articles that mention my name, I can do a regular search; sort the results chronologically; limit them to tech blog sites or to any blog sites for a particular year; and perhaps find any references related to the subject of economics. Try doing any of this in Google or Bing
The problem is that content on the internet is growing exponentially and the vast majority of this content is spam. This is created by unscrupulous companies that know how to manipulate Google’s page-ranking systems to get their websites listed at the top of your search results. When you visit these sites, they take you to the websites of other companies that want to sell you their goods. (The spammers get paid for every click.) This is exactly what blogger Paul Kedrosky found when trying to buy a dishwasher. He wrote about how he began Googleing for information…and Googleing…and Googleing. He couldn’t make head or tail of the results. Paul concluded that the “the entire web is spam when it comes to major appliance reviews”.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just appliance reviews that are the problem. Almost any popular search term will take you into seedy neighborhoods.
Content creation is big business, and there are big players involved. For example, Associated Content, which produces 10,000 new articles per month, was purchased by Yahoo! for $100 million, in 2010. Demand Media has 8,000 writers who produce 180,000 new articles each month. It generated more than $200 million in revenue in 2009 and planning an initial public offering valued at about $1.5 billion. This content is what ends up as the landfill in the garbage websites that you find all over the web. And these are the first links that show up in your Google search results.
The bottom line is that we’re fighting a losing battle for the web and need alternative ways of finding the information that we need. I hope that Blekko and a new breed of startups fill this void: that they do to Google what Google did to the web in the late 90’s—clean up the spam and clutter.
Editor’s note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.
Vivek Wadhwa
Jan 1, 2011
This semester, my students at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley researched the VC system from the perspective of company founders. We prepared a detailed survey; randomly selected 500 companies from a venture database; and set out to contact the founders. Thanks to Reid Hoffman, we were able to get premium access to LinkedIn—which was very helpful and provided a wealth of information. But some of the founders didn’t have LinkedIn accounts, and others didn’t respond to our LinkedIn “inmails”. So I instructed my students to use Google searches to research each founder’s work history, by year, and to track him or her down in that way.
But it turns out that you can’t easily do such searches in Google any more. Google has become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers. Almost every search takes you to websites that want you to click on links that make them money, or to sponsored sites that make Google money. There’s no way to do a meaningful chronological search.
We ended up using instead a web-search tool called Blekko. It’s a new technology and is far from perfect; but it is innovative and fills the vacuum of competition with Google (and Bing).
Blekko was founded in 2007 by Rich Skrenta, Tom Annau, Mike Markson, and a bunch of former Google and Yahoo engineers. Previously, Skrenta had built Topix and what has become Netscape’s Open Directory Project. For Blekko, his team has created a new distributed computing platform to crawl the web and create search indices. Blekko is backed by notable angels, including Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Clavier, and Mike Maples. It has received a total of $24 million in venture funding, including $14M from U.S. Venture Partners and CMEA capital.
In addition to providing regular search capabilities like Google’s, Blekko allows you to define what it calls “slashtags” and filter the information you retrieve according to your own criteria. Slashtags are mostly human-curated sets of websites built around a specific topic, such as health, finance, sports, tech, and colleges. So if you are looking for information about swine flu, you can add “/health” to your query and search only the top 70 or so relevant health sites rather than tens of thousands spam sites. Blekko crowdsources the editorial judgment for what should and should not be in a slashtag, as Wikipedia does. One Blekko user created a slashtag for 2100 college websites. So anyone can do a targeted search for all the schools offering courses in molecular biology, for example. Most searches are like this—they can be restricted to a few thousand relevant sites. The results become much more relevant and trustworthy when you can filter out all the garbage.
The feature that I’ve found most useful is the ability to order search results. If you are doing searches by date, as my students were, Blekko allows you to add the slashtag “/date” to the end of your query and retrieve information in a chronological fashion. Google does provide an option to search within a date range, but these are the dates when website was indexed rather than created; which means the results are practically useless. Blekko makes an effort to index the page by the date on which it was actually created (by analyzing other information embedded in its HTML). So if I want to search for articles that mention my name, I can do a regular search; sort the results chronologically; limit them to tech blog sites or to any blog sites for a particular year; and perhaps find any references related to the subject of economics. Try doing any of this in Google or Bing
The problem is that content on the internet is growing exponentially and the vast majority of this content is spam. This is created by unscrupulous companies that know how to manipulate Google’s page-ranking systems to get their websites listed at the top of your search results. When you visit these sites, they take you to the websites of other companies that want to sell you their goods. (The spammers get paid for every click.) This is exactly what blogger Paul Kedrosky found when trying to buy a dishwasher. He wrote about how he began Googleing for information…and Googleing…and Googleing. He couldn’t make head or tail of the results. Paul concluded that the “the entire web is spam when it comes to major appliance reviews”.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just appliance reviews that are the problem. Almost any popular search term will take you into seedy neighborhoods.
Content creation is big business, and there are big players involved. For example, Associated Content, which produces 10,000 new articles per month, was purchased by Yahoo! for $100 million, in 2010. Demand Media has 8,000 writers who produce 180,000 new articles each month. It generated more than $200 million in revenue in 2009 and planning an initial public offering valued at about $1.5 billion. This content is what ends up as the landfill in the garbage websites that you find all over the web. And these are the first links that show up in your Google search results.
The bottom line is that we’re fighting a losing battle for the web and need alternative ways of finding the information that we need. I hope that Blekko and a new breed of startups fill this void: that they do to Google what Google did to the web in the late 90’s—clean up the spam and clutter.
Editor’s note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.
Astronomers find what may be the oldest galaxy ever seen
Astronomers find what may be the oldest galaxy ever seenIt's known as UDFj-39546284, and it could help scientists understand the early period after the Big Bang.
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times
January 29, 2011
Astronomers said this week that they found a distant galaxy that could be the oldest object ever observed in the universe.
The discovery could help them better understand the early days after the Big Bang — more than 13 billion years ago when the first stars were born.
But some scientists were more intrigued by the vast emptiness that apparently surrounds the ancient galaxy.
"The most interesting thing is the galaxies they didn't detect," said Mark Dickinson, an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, who wasn't involved in the discovery.
The galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, was spotted in a patch of sky called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Based on their understanding of how the universe evolved, the scientists who scoured that region had expected to find about five galaxies that were roughly the same age. But they saw only the one.
"That told us very dramatic things are happening with galaxy generation" at that time, said UC Santa Cruz professor Garth Illingworth, a member of the research team that published its findings Thursday in the journal Nature.
"We're getting close to the era of galaxy birth."
The galaxy in question is quite small, with a mass less than 1% that of our Milky Way. It is also gassy and composed of "fuzzy bright blue blobs of tens of millions of stars," Illingworth said.
If the team's estimates of its age are correct, the galaxy's redshift — a measure of how fast the galaxy and the Earth are moving away from each other because of the expansion of the universe — is around 10. That means it existed a mere 480 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than 4% of its current age.
The earliest galaxies previously identified have redshifts of around 8.5. They emitted their light about 100 million to 150 million years later than UDFj-39546284.
To find the galaxy, Illingworth, lead author Rychard Bouwens of Leiden University in the Netherlands and colleagues collected images of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 2009 and again in 2010. They scrutinized the data looking for objects that were extremely faint and very red.
After numerous tests, Illingworth said, they were left with just one "tantalizing" object.
Experts caution that they can't be certain UDFj-39546284 is as old as the team suspects until the light it emits can be analyzed more precisely with a spectrograph.
"There's no proof that it's at this great distance other than its color," said Caltech astronomer Richard Ellis, who was not involved in the research.
Pinning down the ages of extremely old objects in space is tricky because the light they emit is so dim.
Last year, the Bouwens team released a draft paper describing three candidate galaxies with redshifts of about 10. The paper was not published because new data in 2010 showed that the objects were "spurious".
Illingworth said the Nature paper is based on stronger data. He estimated that the chance that UDFj-39546284 would turn out to be something other than a galaxy is about 10%.
The ancient galaxy — along with its apparent lack of neighbors — will help astronomers understand what happened to the vast clouds of hydrogen gas that shrouded the early universe. Many believe light from early galaxies and stars ionized the hydrogen and made the universe more transparent. But the Bouwens paper suggests that there may not have been enough of those galaxies and stars around to do so, said Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
"They've done the best job of quantifying what we can see — and it turns out to be not very much," he said. "It seems to be nowhere near enough to be responsible for ionization."
Ellis was more skeptical. "It's a stretch to base a discussion on only one object," the Caltech astronomer said. "If you met one person, could you estimate the population of a town?"
No one will know until more data appear, the experts said, and that could take time.
Illingworth said questions like these make the case for completion of the James Webb Space Telescope, a planned successor to the Hubble telescope that may be powerful enough to deliver the data the astronomers need, but which has become bogged down in budget troubles.
"This is as far as we'll go with Hubble," Illingworth said. "It's pushing the limits of what we can do."
eryn.brown@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times
January 29, 2011
Astronomers said this week that they found a distant galaxy that could be the oldest object ever observed in the universe.
The discovery could help them better understand the early days after the Big Bang — more than 13 billion years ago when the first stars were born.
But some scientists were more intrigued by the vast emptiness that apparently surrounds the ancient galaxy.
"The most interesting thing is the galaxies they didn't detect," said Mark Dickinson, an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, who wasn't involved in the discovery.
The galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, was spotted in a patch of sky called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Based on their understanding of how the universe evolved, the scientists who scoured that region had expected to find about five galaxies that were roughly the same age. But they saw only the one.
"That told us very dramatic things are happening with galaxy generation" at that time, said UC Santa Cruz professor Garth Illingworth, a member of the research team that published its findings Thursday in the journal Nature.
"We're getting close to the era of galaxy birth."
The galaxy in question is quite small, with a mass less than 1% that of our Milky Way. It is also gassy and composed of "fuzzy bright blue blobs of tens of millions of stars," Illingworth said.
If the team's estimates of its age are correct, the galaxy's redshift — a measure of how fast the galaxy and the Earth are moving away from each other because of the expansion of the universe — is around 10. That means it existed a mere 480 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than 4% of its current age.
The earliest galaxies previously identified have redshifts of around 8.5. They emitted their light about 100 million to 150 million years later than UDFj-39546284.
To find the galaxy, Illingworth, lead author Rychard Bouwens of Leiden University in the Netherlands and colleagues collected images of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 2009 and again in 2010. They scrutinized the data looking for objects that were extremely faint and very red.
After numerous tests, Illingworth said, they were left with just one "tantalizing" object.
Experts caution that they can't be certain UDFj-39546284 is as old as the team suspects until the light it emits can be analyzed more precisely with a spectrograph.
"There's no proof that it's at this great distance other than its color," said Caltech astronomer Richard Ellis, who was not involved in the research.
Pinning down the ages of extremely old objects in space is tricky because the light they emit is so dim.
Last year, the Bouwens team released a draft paper describing three candidate galaxies with redshifts of about 10. The paper was not published because new data in 2010 showed that the objects were "spurious".
Illingworth said the Nature paper is based on stronger data. He estimated that the chance that UDFj-39546284 would turn out to be something other than a galaxy is about 10%.
The ancient galaxy — along with its apparent lack of neighbors — will help astronomers understand what happened to the vast clouds of hydrogen gas that shrouded the early universe. Many believe light from early galaxies and stars ionized the hydrogen and made the universe more transparent. But the Bouwens paper suggests that there may not have been enough of those galaxies and stars around to do so, said Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
"They've done the best job of quantifying what we can see — and it turns out to be not very much," he said. "It seems to be nowhere near enough to be responsible for ionization."
Ellis was more skeptical. "It's a stretch to base a discussion on only one object," the Caltech astronomer said. "If you met one person, could you estimate the population of a town?"
No one will know until more data appear, the experts said, and that could take time.
Illingworth said questions like these make the case for completion of the James Webb Space Telescope, a planned successor to the Hubble telescope that may be powerful enough to deliver the data the astronomers need, but which has become bogged down in budget troubles.
"This is as far as we'll go with Hubble," Illingworth said. "It's pushing the limits of what we can do."
eryn.brown@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
How Apple and Google will kill the password
How Apple and Google will kill the password Prediction: Your phone is about to become a universal biometric ID and debit card
By Mike Elgan
January 29, 2011 07:55 AM
Computerworld - Imagine sitting down at a public PC, surfing the Web, visiting Facebook, checking your online bank account and buying something on Amazon.com -- all without entering passwords or credit card information.
It gets better. You get up and leave without even logging out. Some shady criminal type sits down at the same PC and finds his attempts at cracking your password foiled at every turn. Your accounts can't be accessed because your phone is no longer on the desk.
It gets better still. Hop in your car and press the "Start" button -- no key necessary. The car knows it's you after you wave your phone over the dashboard, and it adjusts the driver's seat and steering wheel just for you.
On your way to work, you swing by Starbucks to grab a Trenta Iced Cafe Mocha with whip. To pay, you wave your phone over a terminal on the counter, grab your drink and head for work.
Arriving at the office, you sail past security with doors unlocking automatically as you approach them. When you walk into your office, the lights and PC come on auto-magically.
But what's this? While you were out, IT replaced your old-and-busted PC with the latest and greatest. The PC is a blank slate, and it's unaware of your data or settings. No worries. Just drop your phone on the desk, and the system instantly implements your settings and begins downloading your work documents from the cloud.
While all this is happening, a co-worker walks in talking smack about the game yesterday -- and the ill-advised bet you lost. You owe him $10, so you both pull out your phones. You launch an app, type in the number 10, and tap the phones together to transfer the money.
All this has taken place without a single password or credit card.
The magic happens when you can combine a biometric ID system (which uses some kind of scan from a smartphone to verify that you're actually in possession of the device) with a secure short-distance wireless communication technology that other devices (cash registers, PCs etc.) can read.
What's wrong with passwords?
Why do we need a new ID system? Because most users don't create secure passwords, and they can't always remember the ones they create.
On any public system -- like, say, Facebook -- if a hacker tries the 20 most common passwords on enough accounts, he'll eventually break in. Any two-bit suburban script-kiddie can download free software to crack the majority of passwords on a public system within hours.
Many people use a single password for all accounts. Once a hacker gains access to the password, he can wreak havoc, steal your identity, destroy your credit, ruin your relationships and expose your secrets.
Password protection -- or lack thereof -- is the IT industry's dirty little secret. Passwords are a broken and obsolete model, yet everyone relies on them and pretends they do what they're supposed to do.
The obvious password replacement is biometric identification -- the use of a system capable of recognizing unique physical attributes, such as fingerprints, iris patterns or voices.
Far too many people don't trust biometrics because it feels like Big Brother technology. But I believe that if the biometric system resides on the user's cell phone, and is under the user's control, such technology would be far more acceptable to the public.
How Apple will kill passwords
Apple doesn't discuss future product plans, but it appears likely that the company is aggressively pursuing the development of technologies that replace IDs, passwords and credit cards.
Two years ago, Apple was in the news for patenting a range of biometric ID tools for the iPhone, such as a voice recognition system, a retinal scanner that uses the phone's camera or, most likely, a system that uses the screen to scan fingerprints.
Last year, Apple hired an expert in Near Field Communication, or NFC, to head up the company's Mobile Commerce department. NFC is technology that enables the transfer of data over distances of just a few inches -- a model that's far more secure and reliable than, say, Bluetooth. Other inside sources have been quoted as saying that Apple plans to build NFC into the iPhone 5.
Apple has also recently advertised three job openings related to payment platforms and short-range wireless data transfers.
And Apple has been granted NFC-related patents.
Apple is in a unique position to add biometric ID and the short-range communication technology that would make it effective.
Because Apple makes both handheld devices and PCs, it could easily build support into both. And because Apple already maintains one of the largest e-commerce systems in the world -- the various iTunes stores -- it already has most of the infrastructure for payments in place -- and the credit card numbers of millions of customers.
Most important, however, Apple has proved to be the best company in the industry at taking research concepts that have been going nowhere for years and mainstreaming them overnight. It did that with multitouch user interfaces, cell phone videoconferencing and touch tablets. And it could do it with biometrically secured NFC ID and commerce systems.
In other words, all Apple needs to do in order to turn the iPhone into a universal debit card is to add a tiny, inexpensive chip to the device. And all Apple needs to do in order to make the iPhone a universal secure ID is to add a fingerprint scanner to the phone and put another chip in its various desktop systems.
Of course, it could be a while before you can use an iPhone as a universal debit card. It could take Apple some time to establish the partnerships and programs necessary to get every gas station and grocery store to support iTunes. But the password-killing ID card functionality could exist on Apple systems as early as this year, or most likely next year.
How Google will kill passwords
Google, meanwhile, does discuss (some) future plans. CEO Eric Schmidt announced late last year that Android Gingerbread 2.3 and later versions will support NFC at the software level. It's up to Google's hardware partners to build that functionality into Android devices.
Google is already using cell phones to improve security. The company has a universal password log-in that grants admission to most of its many online services, from Gmail to Google Latitude. Google encourages users to associate that single sign-on password with their cell phone number. If someone hacks your Google password, you can get a new password sent to your phone.
The Android platform has also been at the forefront of workable biometric solutions for cell phones. In fact, you can already download Android apps that do face recognition and iris scanning.
What doesn't exist yet is a Google-approved or Google-designed system that ties it all together -- NFC, payment and biometric ID. But with Apple apparently taking the lead when it comes to using a cell phone as a debit card and a universal ID, you can be sure Google will step up and do whatever is necessary to compete.
I believe that it will soon be possible to live without passwords or credit cards. If Apple builds in these capabilities, you can be sure Google will. And if Apple and Google do it, so will all of their competitors.
It won't be easy -- we can look forward to messy standards and privacy battles. But once they ship cell phones that can replace both passwords and credit cards, I think life will be more convenient -- and more secure.
Mike Elgan writes about technology and tech culture. Contact and learn more about Mike at Elgan.com, or subscribe to his free e-mail newsletter, Mike's List.
By Mike Elgan
January 29, 2011 07:55 AM
Computerworld - Imagine sitting down at a public PC, surfing the Web, visiting Facebook, checking your online bank account and buying something on Amazon.com -- all without entering passwords or credit card information.
It gets better. You get up and leave without even logging out. Some shady criminal type sits down at the same PC and finds his attempts at cracking your password foiled at every turn. Your accounts can't be accessed because your phone is no longer on the desk.
It gets better still. Hop in your car and press the "Start" button -- no key necessary. The car knows it's you after you wave your phone over the dashboard, and it adjusts the driver's seat and steering wheel just for you.
On your way to work, you swing by Starbucks to grab a Trenta Iced Cafe Mocha with whip. To pay, you wave your phone over a terminal on the counter, grab your drink and head for work.
Arriving at the office, you sail past security with doors unlocking automatically as you approach them. When you walk into your office, the lights and PC come on auto-magically.
But what's this? While you were out, IT replaced your old-and-busted PC with the latest and greatest. The PC is a blank slate, and it's unaware of your data or settings. No worries. Just drop your phone on the desk, and the system instantly implements your settings and begins downloading your work documents from the cloud.
While all this is happening, a co-worker walks in talking smack about the game yesterday -- and the ill-advised bet you lost. You owe him $10, so you both pull out your phones. You launch an app, type in the number 10, and tap the phones together to transfer the money.
All this has taken place without a single password or credit card.
The magic happens when you can combine a biometric ID system (which uses some kind of scan from a smartphone to verify that you're actually in possession of the device) with a secure short-distance wireless communication technology that other devices (cash registers, PCs etc.) can read.
What's wrong with passwords?
Why do we need a new ID system? Because most users don't create secure passwords, and they can't always remember the ones they create.
On any public system -- like, say, Facebook -- if a hacker tries the 20 most common passwords on enough accounts, he'll eventually break in. Any two-bit suburban script-kiddie can download free software to crack the majority of passwords on a public system within hours.
Many people use a single password for all accounts. Once a hacker gains access to the password, he can wreak havoc, steal your identity, destroy your credit, ruin your relationships and expose your secrets.
Password protection -- or lack thereof -- is the IT industry's dirty little secret. Passwords are a broken and obsolete model, yet everyone relies on them and pretends they do what they're supposed to do.
The obvious password replacement is biometric identification -- the use of a system capable of recognizing unique physical attributes, such as fingerprints, iris patterns or voices.
Far too many people don't trust biometrics because it feels like Big Brother technology. But I believe that if the biometric system resides on the user's cell phone, and is under the user's control, such technology would be far more acceptable to the public.
How Apple will kill passwords
Apple doesn't discuss future product plans, but it appears likely that the company is aggressively pursuing the development of technologies that replace IDs, passwords and credit cards.
Two years ago, Apple was in the news for patenting a range of biometric ID tools for the iPhone, such as a voice recognition system, a retinal scanner that uses the phone's camera or, most likely, a system that uses the screen to scan fingerprints.
Last year, Apple hired an expert in Near Field Communication, or NFC, to head up the company's Mobile Commerce department. NFC is technology that enables the transfer of data over distances of just a few inches -- a model that's far more secure and reliable than, say, Bluetooth. Other inside sources have been quoted as saying that Apple plans to build NFC into the iPhone 5.
Apple has also recently advertised three job openings related to payment platforms and short-range wireless data transfers.
And Apple has been granted NFC-related patents.
Apple is in a unique position to add biometric ID and the short-range communication technology that would make it effective.
Because Apple makes both handheld devices and PCs, it could easily build support into both. And because Apple already maintains one of the largest e-commerce systems in the world -- the various iTunes stores -- it already has most of the infrastructure for payments in place -- and the credit card numbers of millions of customers.
Most important, however, Apple has proved to be the best company in the industry at taking research concepts that have been going nowhere for years and mainstreaming them overnight. It did that with multitouch user interfaces, cell phone videoconferencing and touch tablets. And it could do it with biometrically secured NFC ID and commerce systems.
In other words, all Apple needs to do in order to turn the iPhone into a universal debit card is to add a tiny, inexpensive chip to the device. And all Apple needs to do in order to make the iPhone a universal secure ID is to add a fingerprint scanner to the phone and put another chip in its various desktop systems.
Of course, it could be a while before you can use an iPhone as a universal debit card. It could take Apple some time to establish the partnerships and programs necessary to get every gas station and grocery store to support iTunes. But the password-killing ID card functionality could exist on Apple systems as early as this year, or most likely next year.
How Google will kill passwords
Google, meanwhile, does discuss (some) future plans. CEO Eric Schmidt announced late last year that Android Gingerbread 2.3 and later versions will support NFC at the software level. It's up to Google's hardware partners to build that functionality into Android devices.
Google is already using cell phones to improve security. The company has a universal password log-in that grants admission to most of its many online services, from Gmail to Google Latitude. Google encourages users to associate that single sign-on password with their cell phone number. If someone hacks your Google password, you can get a new password sent to your phone.
The Android platform has also been at the forefront of workable biometric solutions for cell phones. In fact, you can already download Android apps that do face recognition and iris scanning.
What doesn't exist yet is a Google-approved or Google-designed system that ties it all together -- NFC, payment and biometric ID. But with Apple apparently taking the lead when it comes to using a cell phone as a debit card and a universal ID, you can be sure Google will step up and do whatever is necessary to compete.
I believe that it will soon be possible to live without passwords or credit cards. If Apple builds in these capabilities, you can be sure Google will. And if Apple and Google do it, so will all of their competitors.
It won't be easy -- we can look forward to messy standards and privacy battles. But once they ship cell phones that can replace both passwords and credit cards, I think life will be more convenient -- and more secure.
Mike Elgan writes about technology and tech culture. Contact and learn more about Mike at Elgan.com, or subscribe to his free e-mail newsletter, Mike's List.
2011年1月28日星期五
The risks of speedy turnarounds
The risks of speedy turnarounds
Getting a plane off the gate quickly and on-time is a point of pride for airlines. But how fast is too fast?
AP/Airbus
Dipping back into my story from the Thai islands ... about that Air Asia flight:
Air Asia is a young, low-cost carrier (LCC) headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In less than 20 years the company has grown to become one of the biggest and most successful airlines in the region -- an equatorial Southwest of sorts.
Air Asia is unusual in that it's something of a multinational, with hubs in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. These divisions are operated semi-autonomously (not unlike those of LAN, the highly regarded Latin American airline with bases on Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador). It is also one of the few LCCs to venture into the long-haul, intercontinental realm, with a network now stretching to Europe and Iran. The track record for long-haul LCCs isn't good -- one thinks of People Express, Tower Air and Laker, all three of which failed. That was a long time ago, though, and the Asian market of 2011 is a lot different from the transatlantic market of the 1980s. Smart money says Air Asia will continue to grow and succeed.
People certainly seem to like Air Asia -- it won Skytrax World's Best LCC award for 2009 -- but my own experience, a round-trip between Bangkok and the tourist ghetto of Phuket, wasn't without its kinks.
Both flights were late, for starters, including a 60-minute delay on the outbound leg. No reasons or apologies were provided. And I was less than impressed with the Air Asia website, which at steps along the way attempts to trick the customer into purchasing add-ons he or she probably doesn't want: priority seating, insurance, etc. And when we tried to make an online reservation in Bangkok, the site would not accept any of our credit cards issued by U.S. banks, ultimately requiring a phone call to book the old-fashioned way. To encourage online booking, Air Asia adds a "dot-com" to its name pretty much everywhere -- in print, on the Web and in bright red paint on the flanks of its aircraft. It ought to have a friendlier interface.
As for the onboard experience, well, it was what it was: a no-frills, get-what-you-pay-for ride. The plane, an Airbus A320, was spotlessly clean, but there is something downmarket, even ugly, about the carrier's red and black interiors -- not to mention the advertisements splashed over the tray tables and overhead bins. Seat pitch is minimal, and there's a charge even for water or soft drinks. It's hard to complain when our tickets ran less than a hundred bucks each way, but 50 Thai baht for a can of Coke Zero seems a little unnecessary.
Flying out of Phuket we were delayed about 15 minutes due to our plane's tardy arrival. But it could have been worse save for a remarkably fast turnaround time. The inbound Airbus was relieved of its passengers and luggage, refueled and reboarded (with almost every seat taken), and ready to push in what couldn't have been more than 20 minutes!
Rapid turnarounds are a point of pride at Air Asia, just as they are at Southwest and other LCCs, where super-high aircraft utilization rates are part of the game, but something about a 20-minute turn makes me uneasy. The logistics of a turn are perhaps more involved than people realize. From the minute a plane docks to the point where the brakes are released for push-back, a long series of tasks has to be accomplished.
For the ground staff, those tasks include the following:
- arriving passengers need to disembark with all of their carry-ons
- departing passengers and their carry-ons need to be boarded
- incoming luggage, mail and freight need to be offloaded
- outgoing luggage, mail and freight need to loaded
- the cabin needs to be cleaned and, if necessary, re-catered
- the aircraft needs to be fueled in accordance with outbound flight plan
The cockpit crew, meanwhile, has its own list of chores:
- complete the parking and shutdown checklists
- perform an exterior walk-around inspection
- receive and review updated weather for origin and destination
- load the outbound flight plan into the flight management system (FMS )
- receive and review the flight's air traffic control clearance (sometimes this happens after push, during taxi)
- review the departure profile and set up various instruments correspondingly -- review the expected taxi route
- receive weight-and-balance report and load the necessary data into the FMS
- perform the pre-flight and before start checklists (covering dozens of items, typically)
- take a whiz
That's a lot of moving parts. There is paperwork to deal with as well, plus communicating and coordinating with company handlers, cabin crew and ATC, as needed. Actual tasks, and the order in which they're performed, will vary, but it's never anything less than what you see above. Usually it's more. And the list above presumes there is no crew change. For pilots, a crew swap means having to stow our bags, then set up and organize our gear (charts, maps, headset and so on). This alone can take several minutes.
For perspective, I begin my preparations for a long-haul flight a good 90 minutes prior to departure. Sure, an hour-long domestic hop is different, but it's not that different, and the basic responsibilities are the same. Trying to get everything done in 20 minutes is pushing it under conditions. I am not accusing Air Asia, or anybody else, of being reckless, but as anybody knows it's easy to make mistakes when you're in a hurry. One of the basic tenets of air safety is to keep things slow, methodical and unrushed.
Airlines tend to hyperventilate when it comes to getting a plane off the gate as quickly as possible. I've never understood this. Scheduled flight times are usually padded, for one, and on-time performance is measured by arrival time not departure time.
Not that it didn't feel good getting the hell out of Phuket.
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Do you have questions for Salon's aviation expert? Contact Patrick Smith through his website and look for answers in a future column.
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