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UK police discover 3-D gun printing factory
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:28 AM PDT
| UK police discover 3-D gun printing factory Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:21 AM PDT Police officers in Manchester conducted a raid recently on what they call the first 3-D printed gun factory. During the raid, officers discovered a 3-D printer they believe criminals were using to try and make a 3-D printed gun. The raid was conducted Thursday and the officers seized the printer and other components they believe […] | | Wikipedia sets off on new path Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:05 AM PDT If you use the Internet, at one time or another, you’ve probably used Wikipedia even if you didn’t realize it. For instance, if you ask Siri on your iPhone a question it often it pulls little tidbits of information from Wikipedia and other software platforms do the same thing. The problem with Wikipedia is that […] | | Misfit Shine activity monitor lands at BestBuy Posted: 25 Oct 2013 02:42 AM PDT The market for wearable activity monitors has boomed in recent months with a number of wearable activity monitors. One of the smallest activity monitors around is the Misfit Shine, which was on Indiegogo last November looking to raise the money to come to market. The little activity monitor raised plenty of money and launched not […] | | Wii Party U tries to make the Nintendo Wii U GamePad fun Posted: 25 Oct 2013 02:29 AM PDT Nintendo has announced its latest video game for its ailing Wii U game console. The game is called Wii Party U and the game is attempting to focus on what makes the Nintendo Wii U unique and fun. The game leans heavily on the Nintendo Wii U GamePad featuring its own little LCD screen. Nintendo […] | | EA signs Ken Block as racing advisor for Need for Speed franchise Posted: 25 Oct 2013 02:14 AM PDT EA has announced that it signed a multiyear partnership with racer and Hoonigan Ken Block. The multiyear agreement will see Block become the racing advisor for the Need for Speed franchise. EA also announced that the Need for Speed franchise will be sponsoring Block and his Ford Fiesta ST 2013 racecar. EA will also work […] | | Sigma 24-105 mm F4 DG OS HSM lens ships in November Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:59 AM PDT Sigma is a company that makes aftermarket lenses for DSLR cameras and just about every manufacturer out there. The company also makes a number of other accessories such as flashes and lots more. Sigma has announced pricing and availability information for its latest lens, the 24-105 mm F4 DG OS HSM art lens. The new […] | | Batman: Arkham Origins Review Posted: 25 Oct 2013 12:01 AM PDT After the first 10 minutes of playing Batman: Arkham Origins, my original cold attitude toward another Bat-title were doused. Hearing first of an early Batman story made me disinterested – why would I want to experience Batman before all the good villains entered Gotham City? As it turns out, there’s not only a lot more […] | | Windows Phone’s integrated Twitter functionality causes data drain Posted: 24 Oct 2013 10:35 PM PDT Whether one has a modest monthly mobile data plan or an unlimited plan with a cap on, for example, 4G speeds, the waste of precious MBs cuts into one’s usage and is unwanted. Users on Windows Phone have been experiencing such extraneous data usage lately, something that results from the integrated Twitter feature, Microsoft has […] | | iPad Air gets thumbs-down from Woz Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:10 PM PDT Steve Wozniak has been vocal about the new iPad Air, and while he wasn’t critical of the device in general, he did say that it isn’t a slate that is applicable to him. He went on to explain why, and in doing so revealed the perhaps more surprising detail about his home Internet, namely that […] | | Samsung Q3 financial report reveals profit jump Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:16 PM PDT Following Microsoft’s latest quarterly numbers posted earlier this evening, Samsung has revealed its own latest financial results. Not surprisingly, the Korean company saw increased profits, making this another solid quarter in what has been a generally strong line of reports. This comes at a time when some of the company’s big products have failed to […] | | iPad Air already seeing pre-launch price cuts Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:07 PM PDT Earlier this month, we saw retailers offering price cuts on the iPhone 5c shortly after the smartphone’s launch, with Walmart in particular having launched the phone with an initial $20 pricing undercut of Apple, leading into a steeper discount soon after. Now it has done the same for the newly revealed iPad Air, with the […] | | Microsoft first-quarter results show revenue on the upswing Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:05 PM PDT Microsoft has announced its latest quarterly revenue numbers, with the quarter ending late last month showing an upswing in revenue in several areas, though Windows OEM revenue had dropped 7-percent. Overall, the company pulled in $18.53 billion in revenues, with its gross margin clocking in at $13.42 billion. Such numbers, says Microsoft, are a reflection […] | | Marvel Creativity Studio Stylus for iPad brings animated superhero drawing Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:06 PM PDT Marvel has unveiled a new Creativity Studio Stylus and accompanying app for the iPad, allowing kids and kids-at-heart to draw and ultimately animate a variety of Marvel’s best superheroes. With the app, users get access to superheroes drawn by artists that can be added upon in terms of both design and coloring, and some special […] | | BMW 2 Series Coupe gets official Posted: 24 Oct 2013 04:28 PM PDT BMW has officially taken the wraps off of its latest sports model, the 2 Series Coupe, promising punchy performance with a compact footprint and the promise of M Series power at the top-end. Differentiated from the existing 1 Series by its sharper cutlines, more aggressive grilles, and pronounced hood bulges, the 2 Series Coupe is […] | | FTC to begin planning regulations for the “Internet of things” Posted: 24 Oct 2013 04:21 PM PDT Connected home devices, such as network-enabled baby monitors, are often referred to as the “Internet of things,” and as with other devices, will soon come under scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission. Come November, the FTC will hold a meeting to deliberate about how it will regulate such connected devices, including issues related to how […] | | Tweetbot 3 for iPhone gets complete iOS 7 redesign (but you’ll have to pay) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 03:25 PM PDT Tweetbot 3 for iPhone has been released, one of the most popular Twitter clients for Apple’s platform, updated for iOS 7 and the shift away from skeuomorphic design. The new app keeps the features of the old Tweetbot, but matches the aesthetic of Apple’s latest iOS release, complete with minimalistic new iconography and new animations. […] | | Volvo: Wireless car charging works but isn’t ready for primetime Posted: 24 Oct 2013 03:06 PM PDT Volvo has completed a wireless charging system trial for EVs, concluding that though the technology works and is particularly convenient, the lack of a common standard means it’s not ready for the mass market. The trial, which saw a modified Volvo C30 Electric recharged by embedded induction coils in a wireless base-station, proved that not […] | | Star Wars VII crew expands: screenwriters, sound, and production Posted: 24 Oct 2013 02:53 PM PDT Today a new set of “master filmmakers” has been announced as working on the next Star Wars film, these including first and foremost J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan as screenwriters. Keen-eyed fans will recognize that Abrams is also the director of this film, tentatively titled Star Wars: Episode VII, while Kasdan was also already a […] | | Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer sets fire to the future Posted: 24 Oct 2013 02:23 PM PDT The first full-length trailer for Captain America 2 has been released, and inside you’ll find no shares of the past. While “The Winter Soldier” was at first – for a very short while – suggested to be covering the World War II-era Steve Rogers, we’re set here in the not-to-distant future with mutants, S.H.I.E.L.D., and […] | | iPad mini with Retina display supplies a third predicted demand warns IHS Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:58 PM PDT The iPad Air versus iPad mini with Retina display shopping question could be decided by severe shortages of the smaller tablet, analysts predict, with suggestions that supplies of the new high-resolution display could amount to less than a third Apple will need to meet demand. “Production is still ramping up on the 7.9-inch Retina panel […] | | iMovie 10 Review for OS X Mavericks Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:48 PM PDT Today we’re having a look at the newest edition of Apple’s basic video editing software, that being OS X Mavericks’ own iMovie 10.0. With the release of OS X Mavericks comes the “free” generation of Apple-made software, and both iLife and iWork coming to the public without cost – with new machines, that is. Here […] | | Tesla grabs Apple VP Doug Field for new EV drive Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:25 PM PDT Tesla has poached Apple’s Doug Field, who led the development of the most recent MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iMac computers, to be its new VP of Vehicle Programs and lead the development of new electric cars. Field, who describes Tesla as “the first high tech auto company in modern history,” joined Apple in 2008 […] | | Instagram adverts detailed as sponsored images arrive within a week Posted: 24 Oct 2013 12:56 PM PDT Instagram confirmed it would be including adverts earlier this month, and now the photo sharing service has given us an idea of just what they’ll look like, along with confirmation that US users will start to see sponsored content appearing in the coming week. The promos will look just like standard Instagram photos, only with […] | | Self-driving cars could save $450bn a year and 90% injuries says thinktank Posted: 24 Oct 2013 12:18 PM PDT Self-driving cars could cut crash and road injury rates by 90-percent and save the US economy by around $450bn each year, a new thinktank report suggests, though the technology risks being hamstrung by expensive components and a “disparate patchwork” of regulations. The independent research by the Eno Center for Transportation into autonomous vehicles such as […] | | OS X Mavericks upgrade already on 5.5% of Macs says report Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:37 AM PDT Apple’s OS X Mavericks free upgrade on Tuesday saw 5.5-percent of Mac owners update within 24 hours, new research suggests, significantly outpacing the rate of Mountain Lion adoption in 2012. A sampling of North American Mac users by ad network Chitika indicated upgrades of this week’s free OS release reached levels that the $19.99 Mountain […] | | Cover for Android adds contextual lockscreen with location magic Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:06 AM PDT Another day, another Android launcher alternative, but Cover claims to be doing more than making Google’s OS pretty like other skins promise. The new lockscreen uses location context to flag up the apps it believes users will be most likely to want – email while you’re at work, perhaps, but games and music while you’re […] | | Vine adds video editing and mid-session saves for 6-second Spielbergs Posted: 24 Oct 2013 10:19 AM PDT Vine has updated its video sharing app to support multiple sessions and the ability to edit clips, broadening its appeal from an impromptu gimmick. The new features, billed as Sessions and Time Travel, allow users to save up to ten work-in-progress Vines for later use, and to edit shots by shuffling or replacing the constituent […] | | BMW 2 Series M235i Coupe leaks Posted: 24 Oct 2013 10:02 AM PDT BMW‘s new 2 Series Coupe has leaked in M Series form, with photos of the range-topping compact two-door emerging ahead of the German company’s official reveal expected on Friday. The shots of the BMW M235i Coupe, leaked in the 2Addicts forum, show the car wearing its M body kit, paired with what’s expected to be […] | | iPad Air sparks iPad Pro tablet talk Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:46 AM PDT Almost immediately after Apple’s iPad Air was revealed earlier this week, talk of the next generation began. With the name “Air” in Apple’s notebook lineup, one of two different naming conventions, word sprung up that an iPad Pro could be in the works. While we’ve seen more than our fair share of leaks and tips […] | | Flash Player locked up in OS X Mavericks Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:37 AM PDT Adobe has corralled Flash Player in OS X Mavericks, sandboxing the much-maligned plugin in Safari on Apple’s latest Mac operating system so as to minimize its potential to allow through malware. The move – which follows Adobe sandboxing its plugins when used in Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox – follows Apple’s increasing moves to keep […] | | AMD Radeon R9 290X released for real, details and all Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:15 AM PDT Though the AMD Radeon R9 290X was teased last month, details have not been shared in full until this morning. Along with the release of these details comes confirmation in full of the power of the device, along with the fact that AMD aims for this graphics card to be their headline unit, top to […] | | Samsung Glass design filing tips growing wearable ambitions Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:58 AM PDT A potential design for Samsung’s rumored Google Glass rival has been revealed in a Korean filing, a sports- and media-centric wearable complete with a monocular eyepiece. Samsung’s “sports glasses” would apparently have fixed lenses, according to the design filing spotted by the WSJ, rather than the interchangeable visors of Google’s Glass Explorer Edition, as well […] | | Moto G release on low-end, Motorola flagship in 2014 Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:41 AM PDT The Motorola Moto X is out on the market across the United States, and only weeks after launch we’re being set up for a lower-cost option with the device known as Moto G. This device has appeared in the United States Trademark registration archive with word only of the possibility of it being a smartphone. […] | | Samsung ATIV S Neo hits AT&T with Windows Phone 8 Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:55 AM PDT This week the folks at AT&T have announced that they’ll be bringing the next-generation ATIV S Neo to the market with Samsung’s manufacturing finesse. This Windows Phone 8 device will be bringing on a 4.77-inch HD display with an 8 megapixel camera on its back and a 1.9 megapixel camera up front. This device will […] | | Planck deep space telescope receives its final command Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:30 AM PDT The Planck telescope is a deep space scientific instrument that has been in use for four a half years. During the telescope’s mission, it was able to determine that the universe is about 80 million years older than scientists previously thought. The telescope also made some other interesting discoveries such as spotting an 80,000,000°C gas […] | | Tesla to accelerate rollout of Supercharger network in Germany Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:54 AM PDT Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently traveled to Germany where he talked about accelerating the rollout of the Tesla supercharger electric vehicle charging network around the country. Tesla has already rolled out its supercharger network in some areas of the US and is targeting five-minute recharges for its Model S electric vehicle. The announcement comes as […] | | TiVo Roamio set top boxes stream live and recorded content outside the home Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:39 AM PDT TiVo announced its Roamio DVR line back in August of this year. The DVRs offered the ability to record four to six programs at the same time. The line includes the Roamio, Roamio Plus, and the Roamio Pro. TiVo has announced a new service is now available for this DVR line. The Roamio Plus and […] | | JBL Pulse audio system sparks LED light show Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:10 AM PDT JBL has announced a new audio product called the Pulse that provides more than simple audio playback. While the internal speakers provide something for your ears to enjoy, the Pulse also has multicolored integrated LEDs to provide a light show. The speaker also features integrated Bluetooth technology. Along with Bluetooth tech, JBL also uses NFC […] | | Japanese space agency test fires space cannon Posted: 24 Oct 2013 04:55 AM PDT Japanese space agency JAXA has successfully test fired its “space cannon” that is designed to launch a projectile into asteroid. The space cannon will eventually be mounted inside the Japanese Hayabusa-2 space probe. That space probe is expected to launch in 2014. After launch, the Hayabusa-2 space probe will head towards a rendezvous with an […] | | Hyundai creates the most powerful street-focused Veloster Turbo for SEMA Posted: 24 Oct 2013 04:30 AM PDT Hyundai has announced another very interesting show car that will be on display at SEMA kicking off next month in Las Vegas. The car was created by Hyundai in conjunction with Fox Marketing Cars and is claimed to be the most powerful street-focused Veloster Turbo ever built. The vehicle features a huge number of upgraded […] | You are subscribed to email updates from SlashGear
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Instagram Announces Advertising Product Details
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:28 AM PDT
| Instagram Announces Advertising Product Details Posted: 24 Oct 2013 02:01 PM PDT Andrea Teggart As you may have read, Instagram released details on their advertising product earlier this afternoon. In their blog post, Instagram shares that the ad product will be a “Sponsored Photo” and the promoted content will appear in an Instagram user’s feed just like a regular photo. Instagram’s focus is creative and engaging images, so they selected brands that are “already great members of the Instagram community.” The beta launch of the Instagram ads will roll out with ten top partners, Adidas, Ben & Jerry’s, Burberry, General Electric, Lexus, Levi’s, Macy’s, Michael Kors, PayPal and Starwood. Everyone who has an Instagram account will see ads from time to time. Instagram will use information on what you do on Instagram and Facebook, such as people you follow, the photos and videos you like on Instagram, your interests and other basic info on Facebook. The ads will be initially be shown to Instagram users 18 and over in the United States only. Brand Implications: - Content Strategy Focus: With the launch of Instagram ads, there's an even greater focus on high quality, on-brand content. Strong content, will also increase your likelihood of the account being discovered by non-followers, because your posts may appear on the Explore tab, which uses an algorithm to surface interesting content, or News tab, where people see that the users they follow have liked your posts.
Additional Resources: Brands mentioned include Edelman clients. Written by Andrea Teggart | You are subscribed to email updates from Edelman Digital
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The Power of Repost with Founder and CEO John Pettitt
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:24 AM PDT
| The Power of Repost with Founder and CEO John Pettitt Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:00 AM PDT 
John Pettitt is the founder and CEO of Repost, a content syndication platform that allows you to easily republish content without it losing attribution, advertising and more. A veteran of the tech space, John has successfully lead two companies into an IPO, including CyberSource which was acquired by Visa for $2 billion. What makes Repost a great tool for content creators? Repost means you don't have to create all the content yourself, and your original content can serve you beyond your own site generating audience and revenue. There is a very clear relationship between posting more and getting more traffic. In fact, traffic scales pretty linearly with the number of posts you make. Repost gives you a way of adding more content easily and quickly. Some examples – a hyperlocal site could add movie reviews from Fandango or a news site could add analysis from the Christian Science Monitor or The Economist. Sports sites can add national coverage from Fox Sports, SB Nation, FanIQ, and Bloomberg Sports. On the outbound side, the best ad for your content is your content. Every time somebody embeds one of your articles it generates ad revenue, traffic, and brand exposure. Readers of embedded articles are 95%+ new to that publisher’s content. Where else can you get that exposure and great CTR's with an asset you've already paid for? One issue that people may have with reposting content is the issue of duplicate content, and its potential effect on SEO. How does Repost combat this, and what have your findings been so far across thousands of publishers? We've not had any reports from publishers of negative SEO related to Repost, and we don't expect to. When we designed Repost, we intentionally constructed the embed code so that it contains the title of the article linked back to the original as an inbound, “do follow” link. However, the embed doesn't contain the full article text; that's loaded by our script in an iframe. Right now the search engines are not running our script so they don't even see full content. If and when they do run our script, they will find the iframe has both a meta "no-index" and a canonical header to ensure that the content is not seen a duplicative. Today, most online publishers make their money through advertising. Do you see that model staying the same, or will it evolve? If so, how do you see it evolving? That's a hard one to answer. Display advertising is still king, and we're seeing publishers with strong RP/M's from display where they have a good audience demographic. We're watching closely the "native" ad space, our technology is ideally suited to delivering native ads and content marketing. Because our embeds reformat automatically, update in real time, and allow publishers/marketers to attach their own analytics tags, it opens up some opportunities for real creativity. We're also seeing a lot of publishers embracing or at least flirting with paywalls and subscriptions. The thing about paywalls is that the best ad for your content is your content, but when you wall it off, you lose that benefit. We have a few paywalled publications in the Repost system who are selectively syndicating content to drive audience acquisition. We regularly see 5% CTR from embedded articles back to the originating site, and one publisher averaged 11% over a three month period. You’ve been involved in a lot of major technology companies, including BitTorrent and CyberSource which was acquired by Visa for $2 billion. What technologies are you keeping an eye on? What’s “the next big thing” in your opinion? The next big thing? Well that's the 64-billion-dollar question: look to science fiction for ideas. Seriously, pretty much every blockbuster product has appeared in science fiction way before the technology allowed its actual creation: computers you can talk to, tablets, and ubiquitous mobile communication using smart, location aware, devices. Wearable looks interesting although I'm skeptical about Google Glass. I suspect (showing my age) it's the Lisa or Alto of wearable computing. Great startups do one of two things: they solve a problem you didn't know you had, or they solve an old problem in a radically new way. Closer to home, and not so much about technology per se as the social issues surrounding technology, I'm a pretty active supporter of EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation). I'm on their fundraising advisory board, and my foundation is a regular donor. They do amazing work protecting all our online rights and deserve way more recognition and funding than they get. Where can people learn more about you? You can find more about Repost at http://www.repost.us/, and I blog about technology and security on my personal site at http://p.tt/. My professional bio is on Linkedin at http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpettitt/. The post The Power of Repost with Founder and CEO John Pettitt appeared first on The Blog Herald. | You are subscribed to email updates from The Blog Herald
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How Will Google’s Hummingbird Update Affect Small Businesses?
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:22 AM PDT
| How Will Google’s Hummingbird Update Affect Small Businesses? Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:00 AM PDT By Michelle Rebecca When Google issued its most recent update (named Hummingbird) to the company's 15-year-old search algorithm, it raised a number of concerns for small business owners. The update has two primary objectives: using so-called conversational searches to find results, as opposed to the traditional keywords, and displaying search content on the far right side of search pages. Many small businesses rely on search engine optimization to gain the notice of potential customers. As with any algorithm update, this one will impact SEO in a big way. Here's what small businesses can expect, and what measures they can implement to ensure that their rankings don't take a hit. 
Think Like Your Customer The Hummingbird shift to conversational searches is based in part on the impact that mobile phones are having on search. These days people can vocally ask their tablet or smartphone a question, like "where's the best Chinese restaurant within 5 miles of here," instead of simply searching "Chinese restaurant" with the keypad. Google's goal has always been to think like its users, therefore bringing back the most relevant and helpful results. And so it's changing its search to anticipate questions. Small businesses must do the same thing. Any SEO company should now advise their clients it's time to rethink search. You must expand beyond keywords and instead think about conversational search terms that could lead people to your site. Try to anticipate what sort of phrases people might use to search out your wares. For example, if you provide plumbing services, a good place to start would be "where can I find the best plumber?" More Focused Results In the past small businesses were often fighting with bigger ones, with bigger budgets, over choice keywords. But with the greater focus on phrases, which tend to be more precise, small businesses will gain an edge. Geo-targeting, or targeting by location, becomes increasingly important with these Hummingbird updates. Small businesses should increasingly focus on searches confined to a specific area, where they stand to benefit most, rather than broader search terms. Hummingbird will take the location of a search into account whenever possible, and a small business with a very narrow focus is more likely to come up in results than a big one with locations across the country. Dealing with the Drawbacks Of course, for every up there is a down, and the down for small business owners is the other Hummingbird adjustment, which is designed to give users answers to their questions without ever leaving the Google page. Displaying search content on the search pages means in essence that Google will try to anticipate the information people are searching and highlight the answer in special boxes on the right-side column that offer small glimpses into web pages without making the searcher click on the result. For example, if you're looking for the date that the song "My Girl" was released, Google might display a few lines from the "My Girl" Wikipedia entry that answer the question on the right side of the search results page, eliminating the need for further searching. The end result is less web traffic for your business's web site. The dilemma is how to get people to click to your site anyway. Small business owners will need to come up with some innovative answers. One is to offer something of value on the site that can't be "scraped" onto the right side by the Google bots, such as a coupon or voucher for a free sample. You might try offering contests on your site that you can advertise on the homepage but require clicking on the site to actually enter. The smartest businesses will play around with different approaches to see what delivers the most traffic, at least until Google offers another update. Will you be making any changes to your SEO strategy because of the Hummingbird update? Author’s Bio: Michelle is a freelancer who currently works for a top SEO company. She has a passion for the Internet, specifically social media and blogging. She loves how social media connects people across the globe, and appreciates that blogging gives her the opportunity to voice her thoughts and share advice with an unlimited audience. Follow her on Google+.  |
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Panopticons and social behavior
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:22 AM PDT
| Panopticons and social behavior Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:24 AM PDT "Panopticons and social behavior" was originally posted on September 26, 2008.  In the 18th century, English architect Jeremy Bentham designed the panopticon, a prison structure that allowed guards to watch prisoners without knowing when they were being observed - so that prisoners felt that they might be under watch at all times. Two centuries later, French philosopher Foucault applied the idea to discipline in the organization, particularly in the industrial age. Managers and foreman stood in offices high above the shop floor to observe activity below. In modern offices, the panopticon persists in today's cube farms - where open work spaces may foster collaboration, but also facilitate observation by managers and peers. In the 21st century, the panopticon has moved online. Today's IT departments install keystroke loggers and web proxies that monitor employees' computing activities. Employees usually react to panoptic observation by falling in line and acceding to discipline - or leaving the company (only to fall into the same situation, different brand on the door). But social computing fosters 100% anti-panoptic behavior. People become exceedingly transparent and open. Observation loses its power as workers share the information anyway. Today's enterprise appears to be headed for a panoptic-social conflict. Management desires control. Employees walk out the door every night and want to return with the technologies they find useful in their personal lives. You may block Facebook and Twitter today - but how long will it be until the Enterprise wakes up and realizes that community participation is the key to success? Tweet | You are subscribed to email updates from Being: Peter Kim
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Three Ways Marketers Can Help Sales With Hot Leads
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:06 AM PDT
| Three Ways Marketers Can Help Sales With Hot Leads Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:01 AM PDT The B2B sales cycle has undergone a complete change, and recent statistics revealed that the length of the B2B sales cycle process is shrinking as prospects engage later after doing their own research. With the move online, marketers have an even more important role to play in capturing prospects' attention as they do their research to generate, nurture, and deliver more sales-ready leads. That means taking a new approach to how leads are managed, scored, and measured and what steps are taken to move prospects along the sales funnel. The latest thinking and approaches from leading marketing organizations shows that combining automated lead management with content marketing strategies and closer sales and marketing alignment can deliver more Sales-ready leads. Here is what marketers should do to achieve exactly that. 1. Think Micro Today's marketers have to provide significant amounts of content to pull prospects in and keep them engaged. While content such as case studies, white papers, and blogs on your company website plays a crucial part in this, developing a “micro-content” strategy is also key. “Micro content” refers to the comments that you post on social media and on other people's blogs. With a strategic approach, micro content can help drive inbound marketing leads into your sales funnel that you can then score and nurture until they are sales ready. It's not just about written content either, as today's web-savvy audiences expect interactivity, images, and videos. Your overall content strategy has to include everything from the look and feel of your site(s) and tone of voice. Getting your content and micro content strategy right can drive engagement levels and position you as a thought leader in your field, so that when people want what you sell, your company will be the first that comes to mind. 2. Measure Everything “Everything” may be a slight overstatement—but the marketing automation solutions available today mean that the data available can give much deeper insights into buyer behavior.
By establishing a lead scoring process based on the digital behavior your prospects exhibit you can ensure that the qualification process is robust enough to improve the quality of the leads that you deliver to the sales team. Research by Aberdeen Group has shown that best-in-class businesses using marketing automation to score and nurture leads have 40% of the sales pipeline coming directly for marketing generated leads. Combining the functionality of marketing automation with these B2B Lead Management 6 Best Practices will see the number of leads accepted by the sales team improve significantly. 3. Work Together One of the biggest problems businesses face in taking advantage of the opportunities that the digital world brings is that their sales and marketing teams don't work together. In the best-performing organizations, sales and marketing are closely aligned and meet 69% more frequently than in other companies, resulting in 31.6% year-on-year annual growth, compared to the industry average 18.2% growth. The latest version of the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, which was released in summer 2012, shows how the sales and marketing teams should be brought together to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the lead management process instead of wasting time, money and resources working independently to achieve the same goals. To be successful both sales and marketing need to recognize their specific accountabilities and understand how they are related. The following are some of the questions that need to be asked throughout the process. - Marketing: How many enquiries can be generated?
- Sales: How much is needed at the top of the pipeline?
- Marketing: What are the lead conversion rates?
- Sales: Are all marketing-qualified leads being tracked throughout the pipeline?
- Sales: What is the win rate per lead source?
By combining closer sales and marketing alignment with marketing automation solutions, inbound marketing, and well-defined content strategies to manage and nurture leads, businesses have been shown to generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. |
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8 Ways To Spot Great Leadership
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:04 AM PDT
| 8 Ways To Spot Great Leadership Posted: 24 Oct 2013 02:26 PM PDT 
By Mike Myatt, Chief Executive Officer, N2growth If you ever wonder why we're in a crisis of leadership all you have to do is to watch and listen to those in positions of leadership. While there are clearly many aspects of leadership that must work together in harmony in order for leaders to be effective, everything breaks down when leaders don't understand how to engage effectively. Let's start with what leadership is not: Leadership is not a monologue, a speech, a lecture or a filibuster. Leadership is not talking at or over people. Leadership is not sequestered, does not live in a bubble or operate in a vacuum. Leadership is not exclusive or arrogant. Leadership is not about the leader. | You are subscribed to email updates from N2Growth Blog
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Blogs - ASP.NET Weblogs
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT
| Blogs - ASP.NET Weblogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Unlike other engineering industries, the software engineering industry is really lacking maturity. The lack of maturity can see in different aspects of entire ... | | MSDN Blogs - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Learn more about the MSDN Blog Platform at the MSDN Blogs - Help blog! Provide Site Feedback on MSDN Blogs | | Blogs : The Official Microsoft IIS Site Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Read or subscribe to IIS blogs. Bill Staple's blog and other Microsoft IIS team blogs. | | .NET Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT The .NET blog (AKA: dotnet blog) discusses new features in the .NET Framework and important issues for .NET developers. | | Developer Tools Blogs - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Search this blog Search all blogs. Related resources. Visual Studio Developer Center Visual Studio Product Website; Buy an MSDN Subscription; | | Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Official Microsoft Developer Network blog providing the latest news and information about the operating system. | | MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT This morning, Mozilla shared their feelings on IE9 with a post that claims to answer the question, "Is IE9 a modern browser?" While they grudgingly concede that ... | | Matt Harrington - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Office hours: in-person help for US developers working on Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps | | MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT To follow up on our announcement of releasing Rx 2.1 , we'd like to let you know what changed in this release. We have updated the Reactive Extensions for .NET ... | | MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT In case you are capable of the German language, Christian Binder has posted an interview with me taken during TechED 2009 in Berlin, and we augmented it with an ... | | Terry Zink's Cyber Security Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT A blog about fighting spam and malware by a member of Microsoft Forefront Online Security anti-spam team | | Windows PowerShell Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT In addition to being a scripting language, Windows PowerShell is also used as a platform in many applications. This is possible because the Windows PowerShell engine ... | | The Silverlight Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Silverlight Show: Windows 8 and the future of XAML Part 7: The application lifecycle of Windows 8 applications | | IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Microsoft corporate weblog about the IE browser. | | The Old New Thing - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway: Planting DLLs into directories on the PATH for applications whose current directory is always ... | | Official T4 team blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT T4 stands for Text Template Transformation Toolkit and is Microsoft's template based text generation framework included with Visual Studio. | | MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT My name is Jeff Cardon. I'm a member of the Microsoft OneNote team and I'd like to share some of the tips and tricks that are available in this fantastic product. | | The Visual Studio Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT The Visual Studio Blog. The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team | | MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT Jensen Harris' blog about the Microsoft Office user interface | | Microsoft Research Connections Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Posted: 25 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT The Microsoft Research Connections Team Blog is a venue to share stories of building partnerships worldwide to advance the research process and its role in innovation. | You are subscribed to email updates from Search Msdn
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The @Unmarketing Keynote by Scott Stratten at #Pubcon Las Vegas
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:51 AM PDT
| The @Unmarketing Keynote by Scott Stratten at #Pubcon Las Vegas Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:59 PM PDT The @Unmarketing Keynote by Scott Stratten at #Pubcon Las Vegas was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.  QR Codes Kill Kittens by Scott Strattern Scott Stratten has given us all a copy of his latest book QR Codes Kill Kittens. It's a book about telling people off. Scott's world is "unmarketing" – Twitter name, website name, his first book. His biggest claim to fame is the Nooooooooooooooo button – now a free app! "N" + 15 "O"s Scott has been online since 1994 and that button is what he's known for, he rants. The average visit duration is 27 seconds. The "Noo!" is 3 seconds. What are people doing for 24 seconds? 29% of visitors are repeats! He thanks them. He shows us the keywords he ranks for. Basically any version of "no" with more than one "O". The audience laughs at the slide of a list of "nooo"s and he says we're the only crowd he'll speak to who will ever enjoys that slide. Branding 
Which is more valuable in the slide above? Joshie is a stuffed giraffe that a kid left at a hotel. When the kid got back home and was freaking out, his dad lied and told him Joshie was enjoying an extended vacation. His dad called the hotel and not only did the hotel find and overnight Joshie back to the family, but they took photos of Joshie on vacation, lounging at the pool, hanging at the bar. They even made Joshie a staff badge as part of the Loss Prevention unit. They took all this and put it in the package back to the family. When dad got it, he tweeted it everywhere, told everyone and blogged it for the Huffington post. 
Scott has been doing viral WOM marketing for a decade. There's no secret to it. Do something worth talking about. The biggest myth of social is that you have to be there. He puts the Ritz-Carlton logo back on the screen. We think this is branding. If we had a better logo, we'd be more effective. No one ever said, the bed is hard and the service sucks but did you see the logo?! When you see a logo you think what do I know about that brand? What story do I know about that brand? Do you want to know what your brand identity is? Ask your customer. The 2 things you remember about a company is your last interaction with them and the most extreme. Your last interaction counts. A brand is organic, it changes every interaction. Marketing is not the job of the person with "marketing" on their card – it's everyone's job. He has a problem with QR codes. It's not technology that's the problem. It's marketing that screws it up. QR codes have potential. Parents know this means "he sucks today but in the future he may not suck as much." For every good example of QR codes there are a thousand bad ones. The slide has a photo of a plane pulling a banner with a QR code and he runs across the stage miming holding up a cell phone to take a picture. Think before you QR: - Does it make sense?
- Have my customers adopted the technology yet?
 Scott goes on an epic rant and the audience is cracking up. He's seen a QR code on a website and scanned it and where does it take him? The website. Every time we use a QR code wrong it makes people less likely to scan it again the next time; we're hurting ourselves.
Breaking it down with data: - 85% of people have a cell pone
- 50% of phones are capable of scanning a QR code
- 17% have scanned a QR code
- 50% were successful and would use it again
- …3.6% of people total
- 99% of people can call a phone number with their phone (1% variance)
The main reasons brands use QR codes now is to use QR codes. Data Is Dangerous Be careful with "headline data" – data that says one thing; always dig deeper with numbers. Google+ said that 60% of users signed in daily. In reality, the number was 60% of Google account users sign in daily, not using Google+, but because it's part of signing into Google. If it works for you, keep using it. The most important benchmark or case study is yours. If you're using a social media site for SEO you're not social. He says LinkedIn is like a contact management system, not a social network. Be careful when you hear pictures spread most on Facebook because it's what's in the picture that spreads. Immediacy Is as Important as Authenticity He had a problem with Delta Airlines. He was early at JFK for his flight and going through the security line and security started letting people to the front of the line who were late for their flight. This got him onto the first level of Canadian anger – passive aggressiveness. He keeps snaking through the line and then it was the dance of the flight attendance. They didn't say thank you or excuse me and didn't even look at anyone. By the ninth flight attendant who has bumped into him without a word he gets to stage 11 of Canadian anger: swearing. He turned to her and said "C'mon!" She turned around and shouts, "What?!" He said, "Not one of you said excuse me." She said, "Well open your ears!" 
He indulges in a fantastic rant about shunning Delta for all the next generations of his posterity. He tweeted his 160k followers about the incident. 3 minutes later @DeltaAssist tweeted him back an apology. He was totally consoled. Not only is authentic response required but also immediacy. If it had been 3 hours later or 3 days (the average turnaround time on Twitter) it would be much worse. If you're not going to be there quickly, then get out. The worst thing is mandatory social. If you do social, you have to do it well. Scott launched the Unpodcast 5 weeks ago. It's the most fun he's had in business. As creatives know, when you publish something you're putting yourself out there and are a little vulnerable. It costs about $500 for each high-quality video podcast. One piece of feedback he got from someone who hadn't even listened to it yet was "56 minutes?!" Be careful what you do with feedback. A FedEx delivery man was photographed by a security cam throwing a package over a gate without buzzing or anything. This video went viral more quickly than everything he's ever seen. It was computer monitor, i.e. a package for a geek. You don't want to piss off geeks. How does FedEx recover? They did one of the greatest corporate blog posts on the same day (immediacy!) called "Absolutely. Positively. Unacceptable." They owned it and explained what they'd do for the customer and to the employee. They left the comments on the post open. The posted a video from the Senior VP of U.S. Operations. If you just own it, we're a forgiving society. FedEx made themselves look better than they looked before the screw up. You can't stop the viral but you can tack onto it with an applause-worthy interaction. You can't control the fact you're in the spotlight, but you can control how you act when you're in it. @MensHumor: This morning I gave birth to a food baby and I think @tacobell is the father. 4 minutes later… @TacoBell: @MensHumor I want a DNA test. | | How a Google+ Strategy Can Help Get You to Page One in the SERPs Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:36 AM PDT How a Google+ Strategy Can Help Get You to Page One in the SERPs was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips. Forget link building; I say we shift gears and start focusing on circle building. Ok, ok. I may have gotten a little carried away there. Don't forget link building (it's still critical to getting your Web pages to rank highly in SERPs), but let's remember why we want high SERP rankings (to get links to our content to show up on page one of search results pages when people search for queries that are highly relevant to our products/services/thought leadership/etc.) and then let's dig into a conversation about how focusing on Google+ circle growth, influencer outreach, and content strategy could score you page one representation for highly competitive search queries quicker and possibly with less effort than some traditional optimization efforts. And, no, this isn't just another post about theoretical social signals. More than anything it's a case study of my own experience, how the 30 people I have circled on Google+ have changed the way I find and consume content, the tactical insights I've gleaned from this experience, and how you can apply these tactical insights to increase the number of times your brand shows up in page one results. How the People In My Circles Have Changed the Way I Find And Consume Content I have found myself reading a lot of content in or through Google+ posts lately. And not because I am going to Google+ seeking content (like I frequently do with Twitter, admittedly my primary social network of choice). I don't go to the Google+ content – the Google+ content is coming to me via page one of my Google Search Plus Your World results. For instance: 
In this example I am seeing two links to read Google+ content listed in the top 10 results for the single-word query "Hummingbird;" the first of which is showing up above Hummingbirds.net (a highly relevant website for the word, I'd say). I don't think anyone needs convincing that result number two for a single word search query is some prime real estate! I am not following very many people on Google+ (as mentioned, only a nice round 30), and I see links to content from people in my G+ circles all the time. In fact, I just did 15 searches for queries related to online marketing/optimization (because that is usually what I am searching for) and 12 out of 15 of those searches showed one or more links to Google+ content in page one results. Here's a SlideShare of my results for added effect: To reiterate, 12 out of 15 queries means that 80% of my recent searches have shown at least one link to Google+ content in the top 10 SERP results. What does this mean? (cue double rainbow guy) Well, it means that: - Google is indexing G+ content and considers content from people you have circled to be highly relevant, trustworthy, and best suited to solve your problem
- By allowing people to choose who they circle, Google+ actually allows people to tell Google who they prefer to see content from, and accordingly, to play a role in (perhaps inadvertently) curating their own SERP results
- Accordingly (and because encouraging activity in G+ is also beneficial to Google) Google gives a lot of weight to Google+ content
- You, the online marketer, have an incredible opportunity to push your competition out of the top 10 with G+ content
- You have an incredible opportunity to rank highly for competitive search terms with G+ content, and, accordingly, an incredible opportunity to drive more organic traffic to your Web pages through links in optimized Google+ content
- That I know Mark Traphagen's name, his face, and that I end up reading a lot of content from him and the external Web pages he links to (In fact, I actually considered naming this article "Why Mark Traphagen is Killing It On Google+")
Is Circle Building the New Link Building?
Well, not quite. As mentioned in the intro, Google+ content shouldn’t be considered a replacement for link building (we still want our Web pages to rank!), but if you’re looking for a way to communicate brand/content relevance, trust, and quality directly to Google, Google+ content and circles are powerful supplemental tools. Think of it like this: Inbound links pointing to your content help your Web pages show up on page one of the SERPs because inbound links cast “votes” of trustworthiness and relevance which Google takes as third-party endorsements, translates into PageRank, and uses over time to infer what it thinks might be the best results for each unique searcher for each unique search query. In other words, we build links to improve our SERP rank because inbound links improve Google's understanding of our Web pages as high-quality, trustworthy, and relevant. With Google+, by circling someone, you tell Google directly "I trust this person/brand, they are relevant to me and my interests, and I am interested in reading content from them." It's a first-hand endorsement that lets Google skip all the he-said she-said PageRank inference business, which can help get your G+ content into page one results for competitive terms quicker, and ahead of your perhaps-slightly-less-relevant-to-this-specific-user’s-preferences competition. (The concept is kind of like a magic eye. You have to stand back and blur your eyes a little to see the rocket ship. And then all of a sudden, bam! It’s hard to believe you could never see it before.) So, how do you do it? How can you use Google+ to get your consumers to curate your content into their page one results, bump your competitors out, and make yourself the name/face that people remember because you're always there? These four steps are a great place to start: Four Steps to Creating a Google+ Strategy That Dominates Page One of the SERPs Channel your inner Mark Traphagen with these four tip-of-the iceberg Google+ strategies that will get your content showing up in page one of the SERPs quicker than any link building strategy can: 1) Build your Google+ network (i.e.: Get people to add you to their circles)
I see content from Mark Traphagen, CopyBlogger, and Jonathon Colman all the time because I have them circled on Google+. Get people to circle you to get seen more frequently on page one in Search Plus Your World results. Not sure how to get started building your pack of circling wolves? (I couldn’t resist.) Wade Harman offers some great tips on how to build your Google+ circle following in his blog post, How I Got 1,200 People To Circle Me On Google Plus In 3 Weeks. Here are my three favorite takeaways from his post: - Use engagement to get on the radar: Find people relevant to your niche (everyday Joe consumers who you want to follow you, and big-name thought leaders) and engage with their content. People tend to notice when you +1, share, or comment on their posts more than once.
- Use Circle Sharing (and #CircleSharing to find circle sharing opportunities)
- Make it easy for people to circle you by using the Google Developers badge tool to add a Google Plus badge to your site/blog, like this:
2) Regularly post original and curated content to Google+ This one is pretty self-explanatory. Aside from the 'more optimized content = more page one results' #win equation, remember that Google+ is a social media network first and foremost so you need regular content updates to keep your followers (circlers?) engaged. Like any other social media cocktail party, don't spend all your time talking about yourself. Curate the content of others and genuinely contribute to the conversations that matter to your community. Happy community = bigger community = more chances to get the posts you do write about yourself/your website/your product seen (in Google+ and in SERPs. Remember a G+ circle signifies an endorsement, which means your G+ posts can show up more frequently in Search Plus Your World personalized SERP results). Curating/sharing the content of others is also a great way to grow your circle of influencers (see number four below). 3) Make sure the content you create is optimized for keyword phrases
Google creates the Meta title for your Google+ post SERP listing from the first line of your post text and then includes the keyword phrase in bold. Always write for the human first but try to work your target keyword phrase in close to the beginning of your G+ post if at all possible. Said another way, write smart but don't over optimize by cramming a keyword phrase that doesn’t make any sense into the first sentence because you want to rank for that phrase. For example: 
4) Focus on Google+ influencer outreach
Who are the thought leaders in your niche? Who are the players that have the largest relevant following? Get a niche leader like Mark Traphagen to curate your content in their stream and you can utilize the power of their circles to get your content into more Search Plus Your World page one SERP results. Need a visual? I read this article from Ammon Johns because I did a search for ‘Hummingbird’ and Mark Traphagen showed up in spot number two of my SERP results. In other words, this article from Johns got in front of me because it was curated by a thought leader whom I had circled (Mark). I would never have seen Johns’ article if Mark hadn’t curated it to his Google+ account. See the power of connecting with influencers and politely coercing them (either organically or by direct outreach) to curate your content? 
Need help figuring out how to get influencers to take notice of your content? Curating and sharing their content is a great place to start. Simply engaging the influencer in comments is also a smart, straightforward approach. Learn more about how the Bruce Spingsteen of Google+, Mark Traphagen, identifies and evaluates his Google+ influencer opportunities in this SlideShare presenation, Building a Powerful Google+ Network, from SMX West 2013:
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Now Buy Google Chromebooks in India
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:50 AM PDT
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Attention Companies: Using Social Media Does NOT Make You Social!
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:40 AM PDT
| Attention Companies: Using Social Media Does NOT Make You Social! Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:29 AM PDT  About a year ago I unfollowed a guy on Twitter. It wasn’t for anything he said or did, it was for the way he said it. He was Captain Disagreeable. He challenged everything, and typically the points he challenged were incredibly minor. It would result in the person he was challenging bending over backwards to pacify him, and that would only intensify his ‘challenging’ them. It was obvious that this person simply enjoyed arguing with people and he would until he got bored, then move on.
Now imagine that this guy is going to be using social media to connect with your customers everyday, and to represent your brand online. The simple fact is that putting social tools in the hands of socially-challenged people is a disaster waiting to happen. Not every employee in your company should be connecting with your customers directly via any communication tool. Now I’m not saying that your employees shouldn’t be trained in social media. There’s enormous value in understanding how your customers are using these tools. Even if that employee won’t be using social media to connect directly with your customers via those tools. But not every employee should be connecting directly with your customer, regardless of the tool used. Nordstrom has a great list of social media guidelines for its employees, but note at the very beginning it clearly states that these guidelines are for employees that have been approved to use social media as a way to communicate with the brand’s customers. Putting social media in the hands of an anti-social employee won’t suddenly improve their communication skills, it will improve their ability to connect with your customers. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a smart move or not.   |
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Insider Conversations: Comings and Goings in Twin Cities PR and digital marketing – 10/21
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:34 AM PDT
| Insider Conversations: Comings and Goings in Twin Cities PR and digital marketing – 10/21 Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:31 AM PDT Each quarter, I share a short list of comings and goings and other PR/digital marketing industry news right here in Minneapolis/St. Paul (sorry out-of-towners). Let’s take a look at what’s been going on in MSP the last few months: Melissa Berggren, formerly of Allina Health accepted a leadership position with WCG’s new office here in Minneapolis. 
Heidi Bobier, who has spent time at Supervalu and Axiom is now over at Weber Shandwick on the digital team as a senior account executive. Heather Cmiel, landed at Bellmont Partners in Prior Lake. Sounds like she’s pretty darn happy, too. 
Tim Bursch, formerly of Imagination (and embedded at General Mills) is now market director at Spredfast and officing out of CoCo Minneapolis. Aaron Craig, who was previously with Thermo Fisher Scientific recently took a position as marketing director at Graco. Laura Fitzpatrick recently took on the role of assistant AE, social and emerging media at OLSON working for George Fiddler. 
Christina Khoury, who was out in New York City working for a small public relations firm, recently took a position as manager of engagement with the Minneapolis WCG office. (personal note: Excited to have Christina in town!) Zach Schwartz, who was over at the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, is not a senior account executive at Himle Rapp & Company (personal note: Worked with Zach on a client project the last year-plus–very excited for him!) Well-known independent PR counselor, Dennis McGrath, recently joined Public Affairs firm, Himle Rapp & Co. as senior counselor. Andy Leapaldt recently took the job as director of emerging marketing for Gage after a year-plus as manager of social business strategy at Target. My friends over at Beehive PR recently announced a couple nice new business wins with specialty insurance carrier BMS Group and local insurance provider Preferred One. Congrats Beehivers! Eric Wheeler formerly of Kohnstamm Communications accepted a position as digital communications specialist with Metro Transit. 
Hyedi Nelson, who had spent time at HealthPartners and Labreche, is now over at Bellmont PR (quite the team the Bellmont folks are building!) Sara Gavin, longtime president of the Minneapolis Weber Shandwick office, was promoted to president of Weber Shandwick North American operations. Earlier in Sept., Padilla Speer Beardsley acquired CRT/tanaka, a integrated agency with offices in Virginia and Washington, D.C. The new firm is named PadillaCRT. Natalie Zheng, formerly with Mayo Clinic down in Rochester, is now over at Allina Health as a marketing communications specialist. Thanks for installing the Bottom of every post plugin by Corey Salzano. Contact me if you need custom WordPress plugins or website design. Insider Conversations: Comings and Goings in Twin Cities PR and digital marketing – 10/21 is a post from: Communications Conversations |
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What Are People Doing On All Those Cheap Tablets?
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:20 AM PDT
| What Are People Doing On All Those Cheap Tablets? Posted: 24 Oct 2013 03:41 AM PDT I saw this chart on our favorite analyst's blog this morning:  And I thought "that's a shitload of cheap android tablets." 30mm cheap Android tablets in the first six months of 2013? And of course Benedict was asking the same question I was thinking: Why are people buying these? What are they being used for? They're mostly in China (that's the pink bar above) and emerging markets and in lower income groups in the west. And it seems that they're being used for a little bit of web, and a bit of free gaming. Perhaps some book reading. And a LOT of video consumption. In fact, one might argue that for many buyers, these compete with TVs, not iPads, Nexuses and Tabs. But regardless of what they're being used for, they're not being used the way iPads are used. In effect, they are the featurephones of tablets. I use the Nexus7 (the thin yellow line). I have a bunch of them. One on my bedstand at home. One on my bedstand at my beach house. I use them for remotes in our family rooms and I use them as recipe stands in our kitchens. I may make up that entire yellow band. I love the Nexus7. But clearly most folks like me use the iPad. The people who are buying the cheap Androids are using it for something very different. But how long will that last? I was at a school the other day. The school had laptop carts full of macbooks and the Principal was talking about getting iPad Minis for the kids. I suggested laptop carts of Chromebooks and Nexus tablets instead. It will save the school hundreds of thousands of dollars. Education, Healthcare, etc, etc. These industries need commodity mobile devices but in volume price matters a lot. I think cheap Android tablets have a lot of room to grow and the use cases will widen and this chart will change. At least that's my bet.  | You are subscribed to email updates from A VC
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9 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Text Message Marketing
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:19 AM PDT
| 9 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Text Message Marketing Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:57 AM PDT 9 Things You Probably Don't Know About Text Message Marketing written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Justin Mastrangelo – Enjoy! When we talk to businesses and non-profits about text message (SMS) marketing, there are a few misconceptions that commonly come up. Unless you're a spammer, it's permission-based. Amazingly, many organizations think you need to already have a list of phone numbers, or worse, you need to buy this list before you can start sending out text messages. Not only is sending unauthorized text message terribly ineffective, it's illegal and could lead to lawsuits and penalties. The effective and legal way to do SMS marketing is to grow your own list through campaigns promoted to your targeted audience. You don't need to get your own shortcode. One of the first questions we get from newcomers to SMS marketing is, "How do I get my own shortcode?" While some large brands may find value in getting their own shortcode, most businesses and non-profits can save the expense and hassle. Like many SMS marketing providers, we provide our shared shortcodes to clients. This saves them money and allows them to get up and running quickly. It doesn't cost a lot and it's very cost-effective. Frequently, marketers are surprised to hear the entry-level costs for SMS marketing. For whatever reason, even small organizations assume it will be a significant investment for them to start using this technology (it's not!). Once they learn how small the investment is, they quickly stop worrying about how difficult it will be for them to prove the value to their bosses. It's extremely easy to setup and manage. When we help a new client setup their first SMS campaign, they're usually surprised how easy it is. I think this comes from the email marketing world where setting up a campaign for the first time involves a lot of configuring, template building, graphics uploading, etc. With only 160 characters to work with, it almost always takes longer to decide the message than it does to set up the software. Your audience wants to receive text messages from you, if they're valuable. Because at this point almost everyone has received at least one of those spam "you've won this gift card" messages, organizations assume their messages will be received the same way. This just isn't true and they're always surprised after their first outgoing campaign how well the messages are received by their audience and how few people opt-out. You can capture email addresses and other information with text messaging. Initially, organizations are very focused on growing a big list of mobile numbers so they can "blast" out messages to many people and they often overlook the two-way capabilities of SMS. Many organizations have captured email address, zip code, survey responses, product numbers, and more through text message. Don't focus too much on the outbound part of SMS and miss an opportunity to gather valuable data and feedback from your users. It works best in three situations. We've worked on a lot of SMS campaigns, and while many unique campaigns have generated great results, there are three types of campaigns that always seem to work the best. Those that are promoted at events, at a physical location, or any campaign run over traditional media (TV, radio, print, or outdoor). These campaigns always seem to grow the biggest mobile databases, assuming the incentive was attractive to the audience. SMS is used by some of the biggest brands in the US, but remains relatively "untapped" by small and mid-sized businesses. Many small to mid-sized businesses we talk to are amazed to hear how many large, well-known brands are using SMS marketing today. They're also amazed when they realize not many, if any, of their competitors are using it. Quickly, the conversation turns to "why haven't we considered this sooner" and "when can we start?" As with any form of marketing, whenever you can reach the audience where your competition isn't, the more effective it can be. It's not just for a "young" audience anymore. We don't hear this one as much as we used to, but every so often we have to pull out the stats (81% of mobile users use SMS) to prove texting is not just something teenagers do any more. Look around, everyone uses it!  Justin Mastrangelo is the Founder of the JA.TXT text message marketing software platform. As President of the parent company, JA Interactive, he has worked with businesses, nonprofits, and agencies to cost-effectively reach new audiences through digital marketing and technology. Justin launched the JA.TXT platform to give these same organizations an opportunity to start strategic mobile marketing campaigns using text messaging (SMS).
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Audio Branding and Its Importance to Your Personal Brand
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:14 AM PDT
| Audio Branding and Its Importance to Your Personal Brand Posted: 24 Oct 2013 12:30 PM PDT Audio branding, also known as sonic branding, is a verbal identity that gives a personal brand its own distinct personality using tone of voice. It makes use of sound to reinforce a company's identity and brand. Sound has always been a great tool to convey memorable messages to consumers as it is something that we've been able to consume even when we were in the womb according to Colleen Fahey, U.S. Managing Director of Sixieme Son, an Audio Branding Agency. Listen in to a recent interview we did about what audio branding is and its impact on your personal brand.  Despite sound being a very integral part of communication, it wasn't highly thought of when it came to personal branding. And, it's still only conversed about in a limited bases in corporate strategic meetings. Having an audio brand is a good step to take to ensure that no other firm uses similar audio and to truly deep dive into your brand DNA and ensure that at every touchpoint the expression of your brand is consistent.
Feel the sound With the dynamic nature of sound you can create an emotional connection with the target audience in your business. In some instances, people often tap their feet or hum to a company's unique tune even when it is not playing at that particular moment. Sound, and by extension music, taps into the emotions of an audience. When it is delivered reasonably, audio conveys information, entertain consumers, and in the long run helps form a lifelong positive association with customers that reinforces brand values. Sound is the most commonly used medium of communication. This is another reason why you should study your audio usage in your personal brand. What do you currently use as your ringtone, presentations, videos, and your booth at a tradeshow or even on your personal website? By coming up with good sound (that is a sound that communicates your brand attributes effectively), audio becomes an effective form to communicate. This can be used with in collaboration with visual or verbal communication. The sounds can then be used to convey meaning and ideas. From previous studies, it has been shown that an audio brand is equally or more impactful on how a brand is perceived as its visual identity is. When creating successful audio, one has to understand that sound can as well pollute the environment. An audio pollutes when it delivers a different meaning or energy to a brand. The inconsistency is confusing and when something is confusing others rarely spend time to figure out where the disconnect is. In fact, if your personal brand is confusing or difficult for someone to communicate to their contact sphere, they just won't say anything at all. And, internally they will feel that something is "misfiring" or "not right" even though they can't put their finger on exactly what that is. Coming up with audio Designing an audio brand would mean more than just creating a short melody or a catchy jingle. [tweet this] When considering the right music production source, listen to most of their work as much as possible then compare the overall quality. Take charge of your personal brand and really know what the five attributes are that you would like to convey in every aspect of your brand. Take your time and do the research; talk to the producer and writer to get a feel for their work before you start the project. And you, be the strategist and leader in your own personal brand, to make sure that in every way you express your brand that it's truly – on brand. Author: Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks– a word of mouth marketing firm, and a professional speaker and trainer on developing social networks that work. She provides workshops, webinars, seminars and direct services that help create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is founder and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers. Are you busy? Here's some quick and easy tips on Social Marketing for busy people. | | The Culture, Stupid Posted: 24 Oct 2013 10:30 AM PDT In 1992, James Carville, working as a strategist for Bill Clinton (the Democratic Presidential Nominee), coined the campaign strategy phrase “The economy, stupid.” He was attempting to focus the campaign staff on the most crucial themes of the election. This phrase was meant for internal ears, however the words eventually made their way into mainstream America and became a mantra of the 1992 election in which Bill Clinton unseated the incumbent, George H. W. Bush. The phrase became the rallying cry of what turned out to be the most crucial issue of the election.  Most hiring managers will agree that the most crucial factor in hiring is a culture match between a candidate and the hiring organization. Technical skills, relevant experience, and desired academic degrees may get you onto the short list of candidates, but it is your culture fit with the organization that gets you the offer. In short, the most important factor in deciding between candidates… “The culture, stupid.”
So if a culture fit between the candidate and the company is so important, how does one communicate a culture match to a potential employer? “Your personal brand, stupid.” Many of us focus on technical and other tangible skills when creating one’s personal brand. However, one must put forth attributes that communicate one is a solid match with the company culture. Does the organization pride itself on an entrepreneurial spirit? Demonstrate this culture match through your brand. Is the firm known for its strong customer service? Communicate your commitment to customer service as part of your brand. Your brand has to convey your hard or technical skills that are desired and the aspects of yourself that make you a good fit with the company culture. Having this type of comprehensive brand will help you with your job search to ensure you find the proper match, culturally. And in the end, what really matters the most in finding a good career fit is “The culture, stupid.” Author: Kevin Monahan is the Associate Director of the Notre Dame Career Center. In this role, he leads the center's employer relations efforts in addition to coaching young professionals in career management and career change capacities. He combines career consulting services with employer outreach to help find opportunities for both constituencies. He is the author of the Career Seeker's Guide blog. | | Talking Money: Job Offer Negotiations Part 1 Posted: 24 Oct 2013 02:30 AM PDT In my previous post (Talking Money: It’s All About the Benjamins!), we discussed general principles for compensation, when to anticipate that such discussions could crop up, and ways for handling typical questions such as “What are your compensation expectations?” That information will provide you tools for handling money discussions during most of the job interview process. Now, let’s assume you are fortunate enough to be selected as the candidate of choice and are told you will be provided a job offer. Don’t celebrate just yet … you still must close the deal!  One way to close the deal is simply to accept whatever offer has been provided. There are some cases in which I would recommend this to a client. Those situations are as follows:
1. You are in an economic position where this income will save you and, otherwise, you may be in economic peril now or shortly. Remember: You are not married to this job and you can continue to look for something better. 2. There was a great deal of competition for the job (especially published/posted ones), you know they have interviewed several other qualified candidates, they have not given strong indications that they have fallen head over heels in love with you, and the compensation package seems reasonable. Remember: They have similarly qualified substitutes for you. 3. You are generally happy with the company, the boss, and the compensation package. Remember: If you fail to close this, you may be looking for quite a while longer before you get another offer. 4. You are afraid to negotiate and do not want to take any risks. Remember: If you handle negotiations poorly, you might cause them to withdraw their offer. It’s important in your negotiating strategy to note whether your job offer is a verbal or written one. A verbal offer is more tentative, whereas a written offer places the employer in the position of having gone through approval processes and made a commitment to you. My general recommendation is to avoid making hard commitments regarding accepting a verbal offer and defer any tougher negotiations until you have a written offer in hand. This improves your negotiating position. So, how might you avoid making a commitment to the employer when they are making you a verbal offer such as “Nancy, I am happy to let you know we can offer you a starting salary of $120,000 with a performance bonus of up to $30,000 annually. If that will work for you, I will ask Jim to get an offer out to you.” With some wording similar to the preceding (some are much more pointed), the employer seeks to close off negotiations by gaining your verbal agreement. If you have thought about the four previous reasons for not negotiating and have decided to accept the offer, then agree and move on. But what if you want to negotiate? Then, your objective is to provide them whatever level of comfort you can without fully committing. Handled correctly, you may stand to gain $10,000, $25,000, or far more in annual income …. handled poorly, the verbal offer may be withdrawn. Establishing yourself as a confident, effective negotiator can also provide positive positioning of your personal brand! There are many ways for you to respond to a verbal offer when you want to negotiate. Here is one generic example: “Janice, I’m flattered that you are making me this offer (assumes the positive, that they will follow through). I would love to work for you and I am confident, now that I fully understand your needs, that I could excel in this role. Please email me the offer with the associated benefits information, give me two or three days to review it, and I will get back to you with a positive response.” During offer negotiations, your career and income are literally “on the line.” As I note in Chapter 14 of Fast Track Your Job Search (and Career!), “The best time to establish unemotional criteria for accepting an employer job offer is today – well before you find yourself emotionally involved in evaluating a job offer.” Perhaps now you can see why I would suggest that you always enlist a coach or trusted mentor in developing your negotiating strategy. In my next post, we will examine how to evaluate a written job offer for suitability. Author: Richard Kirby is an executive career consultant, speaker on career strategies, and author of Fast Track Your Job Search (and Career!). Richard Kirby's earlier experience includes managing engineering, human resources, marketing and sales teams for employers that ranged from a Fortune 100 to a VC-funded entrepreneurial startup. For the past 11 years at Executive Impact, Richard has helped hundreds of executives and professionals successfully navigate today's transformed 21st century job market and achieve better employment for themselves. Richard's expertise includes career assessments and goal setting, personal marketing/branding, resume enhancement, strategic networking and job interviewing, and "contrarian" job search methodologies. He is a Board Certified Coach (in career coaching) and a Certified Management Consultant (recognized by the ISO). |
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NY Times Loses The Hyphen In Email
Posted: 25 Oct 2013 01:11 AM PDT
| NY Times Loses The Hyphen In Email Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:41 AM PDT The NY Times, the guardian of old-fashioned journalistic English, has acceded to the incremental vocabulary changes caused by the internet, although they still insist it is the ‘Internet’: Eric Levenson, 'To Tweet' and 'Email' Are Now Fit to Print at The New York Times e-mail is now email. ”By popular demand, we’re going to remove the hyphen from e-mail,” wroteTimes editor Patrick LaForge in a post on the newsroom’s internal blog, he confirmed in an email. TheTimes had been one of the last holdouts still using the hyphenated “e-mail,” a vestige of the "information superhighway" era of the Internet. The AP stylebook removed the hyphen in email in 2011. But the e- prefix is not completely dead at The Times;e-book will maintain its hyphenated status. Tech words as verbs: The Times loosened its allowance of the verb “to tweet” in their writing,Times national political writer Amy Chozik tweeted. Still, Corbett explained that the style guide continues to discourage using “tweet,” “google,” or “friend" as verbs too often, because their use is too informal. Capitalization changes: It’s the end of the line for “Web site,” which can now be written as “website,” without the capital W. “Internet” will continue to be capitalized. I wonder if that means that Times writers can write ‘web’ now, too? | | (via How Winglets Work - Graphic - NYTimes.com) Airlines are... Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:51 AM PDT  (via How Winglets Work - Graphic - NYTimes.com) Airlines are adopting 'winglets' at the end of wings and tails, in an effort to increase flight — and ultimately fuel —efficiencies. Winglets can cut fuel use by as much as 5%. Airlines have also experimented with other weight reduction practices, like lighter paper in in-flight magazines, and replacing flight manuals with tablets. Next we'll see ticketing passengers by weight, since 1/3 of the cost of a flight is fuel. | You are subscribed to email updates from Stowe Boyd
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Bon-Ton Stores Announces Thanksgiving Day Opening, Reveales Sneak Preview of Doorbusters
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT
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Apple Stores will open at 8 AM November 1 for iPad Air launch
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:04 AM PDT
| Apple Stores will open at 8 AM November 1 for iPad Air launch Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:30 AM PDT | | TiVo updates its iOS app for out-of-home streaming Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:00 AM PDT | | Skitch updated with OS X Mavericks compatibility, spiffy new icon Posted: 24 Oct 2013 10:30 AM PDT 
Bloggers -- and many others -- rely on their screenshot apps to capture and annotate images. That's why it's irritating (I'm looking at you, SnapzPro X) when an app isn't updated to work with a new operating system release. Fortunately, the powers-that-be at Evernote have come to the rescue of those who need to grab screenshots with an OS X Mavericks-compatible update for Skitch. Skitch 2.7 also sports the awesome new "feather" branding that has been rolling out the last few days, visible in the screenshot -- captured with Skitch, naturally -- above. Other improvements include a new app window design to improve usability, grouping of Evernote-related functions into one area, grouping of all image output functions in another, a totally redesigned toolbar and separate Color and Size selectors. The team also says that there have been "lots of bug fixes" and that the Skitch Markup Engine has been updated for better stability and performance. Skitch updated with OS X Mavericks compatibility, spiffy new icon originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 Oct 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | iMovie 10 for Mac: TUAW hands-on video walkthrough Posted: 24 Oct 2013 10:00 AM PDT | | OS X Mavericks: Export as PDF from the File menu Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:00 AM PDT | | Video tip: Sending directions from OS X Mavericks Maps app to your iPhone Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:00 AM PDT | | Microsoft's Frank Shaw rips into new iPads and iWork pricecut Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:00 AM PDT 
If there's one thing we know about Frank Shaw, Microsoft's Corporate VP of Communications, it's that he isn't afraid to speak his mind. So with Apple announcing a range of new software and hardware this past Tuesday, Shaw couldn't help but try and pour some cold water on the Apple hype machine. During Apple's media event this week, Tim Cook took some not-so-thinly veiled potshots at Microsoft's strategy with its line of Surface tablets. You know, the ones that are part laptop, part tablet. Our competition is different: They're confused. They chased after netbooks, now they're trying to make PCs into tablets and tablets into PCs. Who knows what they'll do next? I can't answer that question, but I can tell you that we're focused. For added effect, Cook's statement was accompanied by a photo of a pretzel-like highway sign. The implication was obvious -- Microsoft is lost and lacks any semblance of direction. Shaw, however, isn't buying what Cook is selling. Since we launched the Surface line of tablets last year, one of the themes we've consistently used to talk about them is that they are a terrific blend of productivity and entertainment in one lightweight, affordable package. In fact, we're confident that they offer the best combination of those capabilities available on the market today. That's not an accident, it's exactly what we set out to design. We saw too many people carrying two devices around (one for work and one for play) and dealing with the excess cost, weight and complexity that "dual carrying" entails. We believed that there was another, better way: A tablet built to offer great touch-based entertainment activities combined with a productivity powerhouse that helps people crank through the stuff they have to get done before they watch zombies or flick birds. A jab at Angry Birds?! Okay, now it's personal. Continuing, Shaw writes that creating a tablet for content consumption is a piece of cake. Creating a tablet that allows one to be productive, however, is much more challenging. And therein, Shaw articulates, is where the Surface really shines. The only problem for Microsoft is that the iPad is much, much more than a device simply used to "watch zombies or flick birds." On the contrary, there are innumerable examples of the iPad being used in all sorts of content creation and productivity contexts. So sure, there may be no full Microsoft Office equivalent for the iPad, but Apple's business model isn't centered on catering to a niche group of business professionals who absolutely demand the full and unmitigated power of Microsoft Office. Oddly enough, Shaw goes on to say that Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver a productivity-enabled tablet because "Microsoft understands how people work better than anyone else on the planet." Say what now? Shaw explains that because Microsoft has years of experience selling Windows and Office across the globe, it, and it alone knows what features people want and need to be productive when using a tablet. According to Shaw, that feature list is about three items deep; Microsoft Office, a keyboard and the ability to "use apps and documents side by side." Conveniently, they just also happen to be three features which differentiate Microsoft's Surface tablets from the most popular tablet on the market -- Apple's iPad. It's no secret that consumers aren't shy about indicating which features they care about most. They relay their opinions with cold hard cash, and the reality is that the metaphorical Surface cash registers up in Redmond continue to remain rather spacious. Indeed, it wasn't all that long ago that Microsoft instituted a price cut on the Surface Pro due to less-than-stellar sales. Returning to Shaw's skewering of Apple, he also takes time to scoff at iWork. In that spirit, Apple announced yesterday that they were dropping their fees on their "iWork" suite of apps. Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it's hardly that surprising or significant a move. And it doesn't change the fact that it's much harder to get work done on a device that lacks precision input and a desktop for true side-by-side multitasking. But you wouldn't know that from reading some of the coverage I've read today. Perhaps attendees at Apple's event were required to work on iOS devices that don't allow them to have two windows open for side-by-side comparisons, so let me help them out by highlighting the following facts: o. The Surface and Surface 2 are less expensive than the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively, and yet offer more storage, both onboard and in the cloud. o. ... come with full versions of Office 2013, including Outlook, not non-standard, non-cross-platform, imitation apps that can't share docs with the rest of the world. o. ... offer additional native productivity enhancing capabilities like kickstands, USB ports, SD card slots and multiple keyboard options. o. ... include interfaces for opening multiple windows, either side by side or layered to fit the way most people actually work. So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don't see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up. In articulating why iWork isn't up to snuff with Microsoft Office, Shaw is effectively winning an argument that Apple's isn't interested participating in. Apple isn't trying to to transform iWork into a feature-by-feature replacement for Office. Instead, it's offering an attractive and free alternative for users who simply don't need 90 percent of the features that Office offers. Is Apple playing catch up? No doubt about it. But remember that Apple in this case has everything to gain, while Microsoft has everything to lose. Daring Fireball's John Gruber nails it when he writes: Any gains in iWork usage are just icing on the cake for Apple - but any corresponding loss in Office usage (or perhaps better put, Office dependency) is very bad news for Microsoft. Shaw is correct in stating that consumers absolutely want and are drawn to productivity software. Where he falls off track is in assuming that productivity software begins and ends with apps like Word and Excel, titles I'd wager that most folks associate with boredom, at best. Microsoft's Frank Shaw rips into new iPads and iWork pricecut originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 Oct 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | A look at how Mac Pros are made Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:00 AM PDT 
Ever since Apple first gave us a peek at the all-new Mac Pro at WWDC, Apple fans have been champing at the bit to learn more about the highly anticipated machine. During this week's media event, Apple was all too happy to oblige, announcing that the machine will begin shipping in December with pricing that begins at US$2,999. In typical fashion, Apple also released a video detailing the manufacturing process behind the Mac Pro. Interestingly enough, Apple executive Jeff Williams notes at the beginning of the video that Apple, in making the Mac Pro, had to "pioneer entirely new processes." Now the video is certainly interesting, but the significance of what it depicts may easily be lost on folks not steeped in the latest manufacturing trends and processes. To address that, product designer Greg Koenig took an in-depth look at the video above, extracting a number of fascinating and informative tidbits about Apple's manufacturing methods and innovations in the process. What the Mac Pro video puts on display is Apple's unique talent for bringing together disparate manufacturing technologies to produce incredible precision at extremely high volumes. Sure, having $140B in the bank and the ability to bring a mind boggling number of zeros to a purchase order has its benefits, but plenty of resource rich product companies would never think of combining processes in the manner that Apple does routinely (see: injection molding, machining, polishing and coating an iPhone 5c case). With the Mac Pro, Apple has elevated a relatively low-precision/low-tolerance process (deep draw stamping) used to make my dog's water bowl and toilet brush canister into the creation of an aerospace grade piece of desktop jewelry. Simply put, if you'd like to learn more about just what all of those crazy machines in the video above are doing, check out Koenig's piece in its entirety. While folks always love taking a look at teardowns of Apple products, sometimes it's just as nice, if not more interesting, to take a look at how those products are put together in the first place. To that end, Koenig provides some great context for Apple's latest manufacturing video. A look at how Mac Pros are made originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 Oct 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Linus Torvalds: 'free' OS X Mavericks is no threat to Linux Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:30 PM PDT 
After yesterday's surprise announcement of the free upgrade to OS X Mavericks, some Twitter wags and industry pundits assumed that the free OS would be a danger to the continued existence of Linux. Speaking at LinuxCon Europe today in Edinburgh, Scotland, Linux creator Linus Torvalds was quick to point out that there's no threat to the open-source operating system. As Torvalds noted, while Mavericks is free, it's far from open source. While OS X Mavericks is pretty well tied to Apple hardware for the best possible compatibility (although one can create a hackintosh quite easily), Linux has been ported to just about every possible combination of hardware by an active and dedicated developer community. Whether running on server hardware or a single-board Raspberry Pi, Linux is a scalable and robust operating system. Several commenters on the original PCWorld post brought up the fact that OS X really isn't free, being included only in the cost of the somewhat expensive hardware that it runs on. In addition, OS X Mavericks won't run on older Mac hardware, while a Linux distribution can be found to run on just about any PC hardware in existence. Torvalds said it most succintly when he exclaimed that, "The fact that Apple gives the OS away is highly irrelevant. I don't think that it impacts Linux at all." Linus Torvalds: 'free' OS X Mavericks is no threat to Linux originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Wanna talk OS X Mavericks? MacTech can help! Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:00 PM PDT  Goodness, but we had a lot of news from yesterday's event! Now if only you could get together with a bunch of other people who have also spent time with OS X Mavericks and iOS 7. Where, oh where could you find such a place? Well let me tell you...
At the 2013 MacTech Conference is where! This is going to be the first place people can finally stop calling it [TOMCRUISE] and [REDACTED] and say whatever they want. Or as MacTech describes it, "Where 7 and Mavericks Meet Reality" This year's MacTech Conference is the first major event after Apple shipped both its new operating systems. And it's primarily geared toward developers and IT professionals, so there's a lot of in-depth, nuts-and-bolts style information here on everything from enterprise Mac/iOS management to deep development talks about a variety of subjects. (I got the chance to go last year and seriously you guys, if you even sit next to the Mac IT person at work, you should be here.) And as a reminder, TUAW readers who register today can save an additional $400 just by being TUAW readers! If it is at all possible for you to attend, you've heard me go on about the "hallway track" in the past, and I've had some truly memorable hallway track encounters at MacTech so I cannot recommend this conference highly enough. Where else can I find myself standing in front of Darth Vader while Andy Ihnatko takes my picture? (Answer: Nowhere else.) Wanna talk OS X Mavericks? MacTech can help! originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Sex Criminals #2 still under review by Apple, ComiXology helps fans with work around Posted: 23 Oct 2013 05:30 PM PDT 
Comics books aren't just for kids, and the sometimes adult content is putting Apple's content standards to the test. Last year there was a bit of a dustup over Brian K. Vaughan's Saga issue 12 being unavailable for purchase from the ComiXology app. Initially it looked like Apple was behind the ban due to the issue's sexual content, but eventually ComiXology took responsibility for pulling the issue. ComiXology's CEO said the issue was pulled based on an assumption of Apple's policies regarding content. The issue of what content is too adult for the App Store has risen again with today's release of Sex Criminals #2. While the title of the book may make it seem like this a pornographic comic, it's no more graphic than many R-rated comedies. The title revolves around a group of robbers who can stop time when they have sex. And it's under review by Apple. Last night, the book's writer, Matt Fraction, tweeted the following. HEY DIGITAL COMICS BUYERS: SEX CRIMINALS #2 is still "under review" at Apple. This means no iTunes or @Comixology tomorrow. > - BUTT STUFF WEREWOLF (@mattfraction) October 23, 2013 I know @comixology is trying to fight the good fight for us but they, like us, have to wait for Apple to decide we are Acceptable. Ha ha. > - BUTT STUFF WEREWOLF (@mattfraction) October 23, 2013 The first issue was sold on ComiXology's iOS app with no questions, explicit content and all. However, the second issue seems to have raised its ire. ComiXology has provided readers with the following workaround so they will still be able to read the issue on the Apple devices. While Sex Criminals #2 is still under review at Apple, this fantastic follow up to Fraction and Zdarsky's hilarious debut will be available for purchase Wednesday(NOW) across the entire comiXology platform with the exception of iOS. So not only can you get it on, and subscribe from, comiXology.com and sync to your iOS device, you can also read via the Kindle and Google Play store! So don't let this little hiccup stop you from enjoying this great new series! Sex Criminals artist Chip Zdarsky posted an interesting take on the Apple/ComiXology approval situation over on his Tumblr. Yes, Issue two is "under review" at Apple to see if it meets the high standards of the sexless ghost of Steve Jobs or something. What does that mean? Well, this is my limited understanding of what the situation is like: -Matt and I have created a magazine which is a cross between National Geographic and Cosmopolitan with jokes. -Comixology is a convenience store. -Apple is the magazine distributor. -Apple is worried that Comixology is going to allow adults into their convenience store with stepladders so their kids can reach the book up there with titles like Fisting Quarterly and Barely Bare Bears. They are also worried that these same adults will take the magazines home and just leave them in the kids' lunches to take to school or something. God bless Apple. Apple has not released a statement about the delay in reviewing the magazine. Sex Criminals #2 still under review by Apple, ComiXology helps fans with work around originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | OS X Mavericks video tip: Using Automator and Speakable Items to control your Mac by voice Posted: 23 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT | | Lifehacker video describes OS X Mavericks secret features Posted: 23 Oct 2013 04:30 PM PDT | | SpyMeSat lets you know which satellites are looking at you Posted: 23 Oct 2013 04:00 PM PDT  SpyMeSat is a clever US$1.99 iOS app from Orbit Logic Incorporated that lets you know when you are in range of an imaging satellite that might be snapping a picture of your location. You can see details on what imaging satellite is overhead, plus a map that updates a satellite's location in real time and a picture of what it looks like.
You can configure alerts to let you know when the satellite is nearby. The details of what a particular satellite can see are quite interesting, with some of the satellites having resolution of about one meter. That makes for a pretty detailed view, though I suspect classified satellites can do even better. Using the app is easy enough, but when I launched it, my position defaulted to the East Coast, when in fact I am in Arizona. I had to go to the settings and let the GPS on my iPhone tell the app where I was. It would be better if the app automatically picked my location on first startup, and it looks like that feature will be in an upcoming version of the app. I'd also like to see the ability to save a few different locations, and also see the field of view of the satellite on the map. Still, SpyMeSat is an intriguing application. I think it would also be useful for trying to sight some of these satellites at night, since the orbital pass position is so precise. SpyMeSat requires iOS 6, and it's optimized for the iPhone 5 series. It is not universal, so it's best suited for the iPhone. SpyMeSat lets you know which satellites are looking at you originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Why the iPad Air makes rumors of a 13-inch iPad a bit more believable Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:30 PM PDT 
Apple rumors are a dime a dozen, and an overwhelming majority never materialize. So, when the rumors of an almost-13-inch iPad made the rounds earlier this year, it was easy to dismiss it as just another whisper in the endless hum of Apple conjecture. But then Phil Schiller took the stage in San Francisco and showed off the iPad Air for the first time... and the mega-iPad rumors suddenly make a bit more sense. An odd lineup Right now, Apple is selling four tablets: iPad 2, iPad mini, iPad mini with Retina, and iPad Air. The iPad 2 and standard iPad mini are arguably the "budget" options, while the Retina iPad mini and iPad Air are the top-of-the-line models -- at least for now. The new iPad mini and the iPad Air are so remarkably close in terms of specs, the only important distinction between them is the screen size (9.7 inches vs. 7.9 inches) and even that isn't really all that big of a choice. They're both powered by the A7 chip, the camera capabilities are identical, they are both shockingly lightweight, etc. At just $100 USD difference between the two base models, it all comes down to how big you want your display to be. It's not out of the ordinary for Apple to occasionally allow two of its products to come dangerously close to each other in terms of specs, but the company uses these moments as an opportunity to once again widen the gap with a ridiculously desirable new device. You need only look at Apple's notebooks for proof of this: For a time, the MacBook Air was encroaching on the MacBook Pro's turf, and some questioned the feasibility of both products existing side by side. That is, until Apple showed us the MacBook Pro with Retina, and the tech world collectively nodded its head in understanding. Room for more While the iPad Air is currently being billed as the big dog in the iPad cage, it doesn't set itself apart from the rest of the company's tablet offerings -- especially the Retina iPad mini -- in any truly meaningful way. But why not? Why doesn't the top-of-the-line iPad offer some of the company's newest toys like Touch ID and slow-motion video capture? Why does the bigger and heavier of the two newly-minted tablets carry the "Air" label? Maybe it's because the iPad Air isn't meant to be Apple's most feature-filled tablet. Maybe there's an iPad Pro on the horizon. If it exists -- and that's a remarkably huge "if" -- it follows that the device may be bigger (13 inches, for example), faster, heavier, and more pricey. It would also probably include Touch ID, slow-motion video, and some other bells and whistles, and its existence would put the iPad Air in a place it would make sense: A lighter, smaller, less feature-packed alternative to the top-of-the-line Apple tablet. So, does an iPad Pro really exist? As easy as it is to pretend that these factors point to a new, larger iPad, reality has a way of reminding me that I've never wished a 13-inch iPad exists. The biggest argument against the iPad as it stands now is that it's significantly more expensive than its modern competitors, and introducing an even more expensive version of the device wouldn't exactly help the brand to appear more consumer friendly. Of course, neither does a $2,999 über-powerful desktop computer, but Apple's got one of those, too. If there is a market for larger tablets -- and I imagine there is, especially among creative types -- a super-iPad would probably do quite well in that space. But will Apple tempt fate and look to capitalize on a new, possibly mythical class of consumer? The iPad itself is proof that they've had the guts to do it in the past, but the untold number of failed prototypes in Apple's basement suggests that they could just as easily ignore it altogether. In short, I have no idea, and neither does anyone else (save a few Apple folks, of course). But if it does come to fruition, it would be a fantastic way for the company to once again set a new standard in tablets, and we could probably hold our breath for as long as it takes Apple's competitors to introduce their own mega-tablets as well. Why the iPad Air makes rumors of a 13-inch iPad a bit more believable originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Daily Update for October 23, 2013 Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:15 PM PDT | | Amazon takes a dig at iPad Air with Kindle Fire HDX ad Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:00 PM PDT 
Apple is no stranger to its competitors taking shots at its work. Some of them are downright hilarious. But at least they're usually fair comparisons. Amazon took yesterday's announcement of the iPad Air as an opportunity to subtly dig at Apple and promote its Kindle Fire HDX tablet. You can see the ad above. What the ad doesn't say is that the Kindle Fire HDX is lighter than the iPad Air because it isn't the same size as the Air. The Fire HDX indeed is lighter than the Air's one-pound weight, at 0.82 pound. But it also features nearly an inch smaller screen, 8.9 inches for the Fire to Apple's 9.7-inch Retina display. Shockingly, a bigger screen means a 0.18-pound difference in weight. So yes, be aware that the iPad Air is a little heavier than the Fire HDX. We would still recommend the iPad Air over the fire HDX if only for the 64-bit processor that smokes the Fire's 32-bit engine. We promise. It's worth the extra time you'll spend working out to make sure you don't get tired lifting that extra 0.18 pound. Amazon takes a dig at iPad Air with Kindle Fire HDX ad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Anki Drive available in Apple Stores Posted: 23 Oct 2013 02:30 PM PDT 
One of the most remarkable gaming moments at this year's WWDC keynote was the debut of Anki Drive, a racing game that allows players to pit an iOS controlled toy car against a computer controlled competitor. The car is equipped with sensors that allow it to intuitively provide a challenging opponent for the player. Anki Drive is now available for purchase in Apple Stores nationwide. The starter kit, which retails for $200, comes with a vinyl track and two cars. Additional cars are available for $70 apiece. Each car has unique statistics and attributes including different levels of acceleration. Gamers can look forward to multiplayer support alongside the single player modes. The Anki Drive app is free to download in the App Store, so if you've got a friend with Anki you'll be able to play along. Anki Drive available in Apple Stores originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | During the last 4 months, Apple paid out $25 million per day to iOS developers Posted: 23 Oct 2013 02:00 PM PDT 
During yesterday's media event, Tim Cook gave us his typical update on all things App Store. Specifically, Cook informed us that the App Store now houses more than 1 million apps and has seen more than 60 billion downloads. But there's one data point in particular that's worth some extra attention, namely that Apple has thus far paid out US$13 billion to iOS developers. Now anytime you're talking about "billions," you're clearly talking some serious business. Indeed, the $13 billion figure is so large it's easy to casually gloss over its significance. To help put the figure into perspective, here are some facts about Apple's App Store payouts to developers over the past five years. 1. The App Store has grossed $18.57 billion, with Apple keeping $5.57 billion of that. With the $13 billion figure, and Apple's 70/30 revenue split, it's easy to deduce how much money Apple has grossed and netted. Since the App Store first opened up for business in July of 2008, Apple has netted $18.57 billion. Of that total, $13 billion was paid out to developers with Apple keeping the remaining $5.57 billion. 2. Apple's monthly payout to developers are not just increasing, they're also accelerating. It took Apple nearly two years (June of 2010) to reach the $1 billion payment threshold to developers. Since then, the number of iOS devices has exploded, and naturally, the payouts to developers have increased at an accelerated rate. From January 2012 to January 2013, Apple's payout to developers increased from $4 billion to $7 billion. That payout comes out to an average of $250 million a month to developers over the 12-month timeframe. From June 2012 to June 2013, Apple's payout to developers increased from $5 billion to $10 billion, representing a cool $5 billion in payments in 12 months. That comes out to about $416 million per month in developer payouts during the 12-month timeframe. From June 2013 to October 2013, Apple's payout to developers jumped from $10 billion to $13 billion. That's an increase of $3 billion in just four months. Translation? During the last fourth-month period, Apple has been paying out an average of $750 million per month to developers. 3. Over the last four months, Apple has paid out $25 million PER DAY to developers. An average of $750 million per month comes out to $25 million per day in developer payouts. Again, that's $25 million every single day. 4. In one month, Apple pays to developers more money than the cumulative 2013 payroll of the three Major League Baseball teams with the highest payrolls. The 2013 payroll for the New York Yankees was $228 million. The Dodgers come in second with $216 million, while the Phillies come in third with $165 million. If you add that all together, Apple could cover those teams' entire 2013 payroll with just one month of developer payouts. During the last 4 months, Apple paid out $25 million per day to iOS developers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Apple posts slew of iPad videos, including iPad Air commercial, online Posted: 23 Oct 2013 01:45 PM PDT 
Apple today posted a number of iPad-related videos to its YouTube channel that it first showcased during yesterday's media event. First up, we have Apple's first commercial for the iPad Air. Titled "Pencil", the commercial cleverly touts how thin the new iPad Air is while driving home the point that it's undeniably a content creation device. Next we have Apple's video introducing us to the iPad Air. Per usual, Jony Ive is front and center as he details everything that went into the creation of the Air, a device which he notes has been in the works for years. And finally, we have an Apple produced video titled, "Life on iPad". As the name implies, the video highlights the versatility of the iPad by pointing out the varying number of ways the tablet is used by surgeons, musicians and more. Apple understandably loves putting videos like together, and with good reason. Apple posts slew of iPad videos, including iPad Air commercial, online originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Samsung denies Nokia's version of events in Apple and Nokia's licensing agreement Posted: 23 Oct 2013 01:30 PM PDT 
Earlier this month, we reported that Apple was seeking sanctions against Samsung after word emerged that Samsung executives were improperly given access to confidential details from Apple and Nokia's confidential 2011 licensing agreement. According to a court order penned by Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal a few weeks ago, it appears that a damages report put together by a Samsung damages expert was not marked "Highly Confidential -- Attorney Eyes' Only" as it should have been. The report included "key terms" from Apple and Nokia's licensing agreement and was erroneously posted to a Samsung FTP site that was available to a number of Samsung employees. As the story goes, when Samsung was holding its own licensing negotiations with Nokia in June 2013, Samsung executive Dr. Seungho Ahn told Nokia's Paul Melin that he was aware of the specific terms from Nokia's licensing deal with Apple. The court order reads in part: Specifically, according to Mr. Melin, Dr. Ahn stated that Apple had produced the Apple-Nokia license in its litigation with Samsung, and that Samsung's outside counsel had provided his team with the terms of the Apple-Nokia license. Mr. Melin recounts that to prove to Nokia that he knew the confidential terms of the Apple-Nokia license, Dr. Ahn recited the terms of the license, and even went so far as to tell Nokia that "all information leaks." Mr. Melin also reports that Dr. Ahn and Samsung then proceeded to use his knowledge of the terms of the Apple-Nokia license to gain an unfair advantage in their negotiations with Nokia, by asserting that the Apple-Nokia terms should dictate terms of a Samsung-Nokia license. As we noted at the time, this merely represents a version of events according to Melin. With a hearing on the matter scheduled to take place today, a number of filings from Apple, Nokia and Samsung have been made with the court. Florian Mueller has a complete run down on those filings over here. Of particular interest is that Ahn categorically refutes Nokia's version of events. 22. I am certain that I did not tell Mr. Melin at the June 4, 2013 meeting that I received Apple/Nokia licensing terms from my outside counsel in the Apple/Samsung case, because it is not true, and because it would be a very foolish thing to say. I hold a J.D. from an American law school, Santa Clara University, and until I moved to Korea approximately ten years ago I was a member of the California Bar. I am well aware of the importance of protective orders in United States litigation. I have been responsible directly or indirectly for the supervision of hundreds of patent litigations. In most, if not all of them, a protective order is entered. These invariably cover license terms which I know from experience are highly confidential and sensitive information. The confidentiality of this type of license information is as important to Samsung as it is to any other technology company. It would be incredibly reckless for me to have made such a comment to Nokia. It would amount to my admitting to an adversary that our outside counsel and Samsung had violated a protective order protecting the adversary's information and that I was attempting to use the information gained by such a violation to negotiate license terms. The idea that I would violate a protective order is simply wrong, and the idea that I would tell my adversary that I and my outside counsel had violated it and furthermore were violating it in that very instance by trying to profit from its use is preposterous. [REDACTED] 23. I may have used the word 'leak' at the June 4th, 2013 meeting with Nokia, or some other word to reference the idea that all information gets out, though I don't recall the precise phrase I used. I do believe that there may have been some sort of leak due to the contemporaneous media reports outlining the terms of the Apple-Nokia license. But I cannot be certain of this. It has in fact been my own experience that information gets out. I know this from my own experience and I recounted to Mr. Melin a situation a few years ago where Samsung had entered into a confidential settlement with another company and very shortly thereafter everyone in the industry seemed to know it. Well, both of them can't be telling the truth. Again, Samsung denies that its actions warrant any punishment because any wrongdoing on their part was completely inadvertent. Apple, meanwhile, wants more discovery on the issue while Samsung, of course, thinks the whole issue is overblown. Samsung denies Nokia's version of events in Apple and Nokia's licensing agreement originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Daily iPhone App: Distress Signal alerts authorities when you are in trouble while traveling Posted: 23 Oct 2013 01:00 PM PDT 
Distress Signal is an essential companion for adventure travelers who are concerned about their safety. The app stores your contact details and then sends them to local emergency services when you are in distress. Distress Signal is more than just a fancy address book that allows you to enter the contact information for the local police or fire station. The app tracks your location and knows the numbers for emergency services for every country in the world. If you are in trouble in place like Latvia, the app will send your contact information and location to local authorities in the language of the country you are visiting. The app can also be configured to send your location to your family or friends so they can find you using these coordinates. They can also use Distress Signal app to find you if you are nearby. Other useful features include a torch with the ability to send out an SOS signal, a compass, an alert siren, a guide to show you where you last had cellular signal and a map to help you to find the local hospital and police station. Adventurers looking for another layer of protection can download Distress Signal from the iOS App Store. It is available for US$1.99. Right now, the SMS emergency text-messaging service works in the UK, Ireland, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Latvia, Austria, Luxembourg, Portugal, Philippines and Iceland. It is coming soon to the US and other parts of Europe. Daily iPhone App: Distress Signal alerts authorities when you are in trouble while traveling originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Mavericks' dock-on-every-monitor feature doesn't work for me Posted: 23 Oct 2013 12:30 PM PDT 
One of the features I was most looking forward to with the release of Mavericks was the promise that I could have access to the menu bar and Dock on every monitor. It might seem like a minor tweak, but it's always annoyed me that I had to pick one of my screens to be "in charge" of things, when I'd prefer to be able to launch and manage my applications from either screen, depending on which one I'm working with at the time. The promised top menu bar multiplication has arrived as described, but unfortunately the "Dock for every screen" bullet point comes with a big, fat asterisk. You see, I'm one of those weird people who doesn't let his Dock sit at the bottom of the screen -- I like my Dock to sit vertically on the side. The way the multi-screen Dock works in Mavericks requires you to place your mouse cursor along the bottom of the screen on whichever monitor you'd like the Dock to magically appear, and this simply doesn't work if you have your Dock located anywhere but at the very bottom of the display. I know, I know, I'm a small minority, but the vertical Dock configuration is just what has worked best for me over the years, and it seems Apple hasn't come up with a solution that lets me, for example, have my Dock appear on both the far left and far right sides of my multiple-display setup. It seems like this type of change wouldn't be very hard to implement, but the moment it's just not an option. Bummer. Mavericks' dock-on-every-monitor feature doesn't work for me originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments | | AppleScript and Automator gain new features in OS X Mavericks Posted: 23 Oct 2013 12:00 PM PDT  Mac power users love to play with scripting and automation. If there's something that's repetitive that needs to be done, it's a lot easier just to either use Automator to automate the process or write an AppleScript to dive in a little deeper. With OS X Mavericks, it appears that Apple has added some features that will help "self-developers" who want to add their own capabilities to their Macs and commercial apps. On the other hand, there are fewer scriptable items available in many of the new Apple apps...
iCloud Sync To begin with, there's a surprise for anyone who launches either Automator or AppleScript Editor. The first thing you'll find is that both apps were updated with iCloud compatibility. AppleScripts that you've created or Automator workflows can now be moved into the cloud and synced to all of your Macs that are running OS X Mavericks. Sure, that's a little thing, but it's useful if you're creating and updating scripts or workflows that need to be deployed to a handful of Macs automatically. 
Notifications Want to annoy yourself? AppleScript and Automator now includes a Display Notification command that you can use to send yourself notifications from your own scripts. That's actually quite useful if you want to write a script or run an Automator action that's going to ping you when it's done through Notification Center. There's got to be a way to use this to annoy coworkers... 
Libraries Now this is cool. Let's say that you have code that can be used in a number of scripts. Now you can create an AppleScript Library, which is a script that contains a frequently used routine. Store that in ~\Library\Script Libraries\, and now any other script can use that code by simply calling it with a new use clause. Write once, use many times. Blogger Don Southard over at MacStories has a good example of how to use libraries in his writeup of scripting and automation improvements in Mavericks. Code Signing This may not sound like a big thing, but it's huge. Apple developers can now generate signed copies of applets and droplets as part of the export process in both AppleScript and Automator. Signing these applets means that users launching them will not get the usual Gatekeeper security warning, and adds an incentive for developers to include easy automation tools in their solutions. Speakable-Workflows Now here's a wonderful addition for those who are creating accessible solutions. If Speakable Items is activated in the Accessibility system preferences, Automator adds a new option to the save dialog to save applets as Speakable Items. With that one click, those items are saved to the Speakable Items architecture and can be executed by speaking the name of the applet. Now, about those new apps... On the bad side, some of the new apps appear to be missing a lot of commands in their dictionaries. For example, opening the dictionary of Pages '09 displayed the following: 
Compare that to the new dictionary for the current iteration of Pages: 
What's missing? Well, a lot. The Pages Application Suite used to let you do things like script the addition of a chart or table to a document; the Graphics Suite made it easy to script changes to things like the alpha threshold of an image; and the Text Suite even allowed scripting of things like inserting a table of content to a Pages document or fine-tuning the look of character styles. Can't do that with the new Pages... Hopefully Apple will add these capabilities back in an update to Pages and the other iWork apps. (Thanks to reader Peter P. for noting this omission from Pages.) This is just what I've been able to find -- or not find -- in a cursory look at Maverick's automation tools. As more capabilities and deletions become apparent, this post will be updated. I'd also recommend taking a look at MacOSXAutomation.com, which is always helpful and useful when you're considering the use of the built-in OS X automation tools. AppleScript and Automator gain new features in OS X Mavericks originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What a narrow definition of success
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:54 AM PDT
| What a narrow definition of success Posted: 23 Oct 2013 05:16 PM PDT Harvard Business Review has another rah-rah piece for Silicon Valley. While on the surface it looks like a well-researched article, its error lies not in methodology but in definition. In the minds of the author, the definition for startup success is confined to this: If you judge entrepreneurial success as surviving or selling (including raising follow-on funding, being bought, or successfully IPO'ing) as no doubt your investors do, then your odds of success are lower outside of the superhubs. What a shitty definition of success! The world outside of Silicon Valley is rightfully not succeeding by the narrow definition of success espoused by proponents of the Valley VC model. DUH. But there are many other definitions of success to measure yourself against. We’ve long been campaigning for the success of bootstrapped, proud, and profitable. Businesses, who like 37signals didn’t get off the ground by a Series A round of funding, and who do not see IPO, acquihire, or any other form of acquisition as a successful outcome. This is how most of the world’s businesses work! And not only work, but prosper, and sustain themselves in the long run. But that’s the boring path of turning great products and services into profitable outfits in less than the average 10+ years it seems to take most Silicon Valley startups. Do not let the VC merchants and their stooges tell you what success looks like. Do not accept that this path has to go through their 10:1, or 100:1, lottery funnel. You do not have to pick up their shovel and dig gold only where they have marked the X. The best ideas and the best talent in the world is not confined to these tiny geographical areas, except in the minds of those who live there. Start your business wherever you want to live with pride. Recruit the best remote workers where they want to live with vigor. Success on your terms will come soon enough.  | You are subscribed to email updates from Signal vs. Noise
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5 Tools Every Social Media Manager Should Know About
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:54 AM PDT
| 5 Tools Every Social Media Manager Should Know About Posted: 23 Oct 2013 09:50 AM PDT Managing a social media presence requires nothing short of a little touch of magic. Your clients will always want more; they depend on you to deliver results, nothing less. 
In the social media management scene, you run into two different problems. For one, you have to manage your workflow in a way that allows you to cater to more projects. Secondly, your social media magic needs a little bit of pixie dust. In essence, this pixie dust consists of tools and applications that help you keep organized while making you more aggressive and awesome at figuring out social media. 5 Star Social Media Tools After working with and without customer relationship management (CRM) and social media management tools, I can tell you that you're missing out on a lot if you feel like you can handle everything without them. 
Sure, it's another learning curve, and sometimes it can get a bit annoying to learn something new especially when you have a ton of work to do. But each hour you put into learning to use one of these tools translates to several hours saved chasing after tasks and placing bets on what the next move should be on your social media presences. Think of your whole operation like an engine: It takes time to grease up the squeaky bits, but doing so will make the engine run more smoothly and live longer. As you bring more people on board and take on more tasks, you add more pistons, belts, and chains. Oiling it becomes mandatory at one point. But here's where social media management differs from running an engine: A piston is a piston is a piston. Each social media presence you manage however, is a completely new challenge on its own. To manage one presence efficiently does not mean that you can apply the same rules to all of them. As a result, you'll need as much assistance as you can get. Let's have a look at some of these tools. A CRM – Social Network Thingamabob – Bitrix24 Bitrix24 is a free enterprise social network that comes with more than 30 different collaboration tools. You'll appreciate the explosive opportunities this platform allows you to take advantage of with your clients or employer. 
It works as a team application. The "activity stream" area highly resembles a Facebook news feed and allows seamless interaction between people you invite. Also like Facebook, Bitrix24 allows you to "like" comments and posts on the activity stream. This will allow you to easily pull up any content that's useful or popular when using the internal search engine. Need to talk to someone privately? Bitrix24 has an internal instant messaging system that lets you talk on the fly. The workgroup feature allows you to separate each project into a distinct "area." This is useful for involving people only in the projects that concern them. In addition to having a fun and interactive social network for your clique, time management tools will ensure that you and your team (if you have one) remain productive. After the day's done, you can see a report of all timed activity or simply let Bitrix24 send you reports on a scheduled basis (daily, monthly, or weekly). A calendar also lets you collaboratively set due dates and meeting schedules. Integrate With Insight – Insightly If you've already got Gmail or Outlook, you're in for a treat. 
Insightly is a CRM that has a rudimentary-ish interface that lets you add up to 3 users for free, and its Mailchimp integration neatly interacts with your email accounts and other web applications to ensure you don't feel overburdened by having "one more tool in the shed." Get Around Google+'s Nasty API – Do Share Google+'s API has been a frustration for social media managers since the company started entering the social media game with a product that has the same proficiency as a senile giraffe. The company shows no signs that it plans to do things any differently, so things like post scheduling and automatic posting remain impermissibly difficult. Your cries have not gone unheard, however, since someone decided to develop a nifty little extension for Google Chrome that allows you to work with the stubborn social network and schedule posts. Do Share works around the brick wall by logging you into Google+ through your browser and posting whatever you tell it to. The only drawback is the fact that you have to keep the browser (and the extension) opened, at least until it posts whatever you want it to. This also means that you'll have to change your power-on habits if you're not used to keeping your PC on 24 hours a day. Get The Gist of What People Are Saying – SocialMention SocialMention is a little gem lets you search the entire blogosphere and social troposphere for anything. 
It's handy when you're looking for popular opinion about a particular company. You'll also get to sneak in on competitors, showing you where they're present and what people are saying about them. It searches through public repositories within several popular social networks, websites, and some less popular blogs. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Ask.Com, YouTube, and Delicious (yes, that network still exists). Social Media-Fu Simplified – Crowdbooster Facebook insights is cute. But if you really want a bird's-eye view of your social media presences abroad, Crowdbooster will give you much more. 
Its analytics platform comes tightly packed with tons of metrics that help you figure out just how engaged your followers are and offers recommendations each and every day on how to improve your followership. It supports the two major social networks, namely Facebook and Twitter. My Opinion Even to the most weathered veterans, social media is a tough ocean to navigate. Anyone who's been in this game long enough understands how fickle audiences can be and how difficult it is to adapt to these seemingly random changes. Just keep your eyes on the ball and remember these two things: stay organized and never be afraid to enlist help from these trusted platforms. If you need more, here’s a guide to 88 social media tools for you. What About You?
What kinds of tools do you consider paramount to riding the waves through social media networks? Follow & Share
Want more stories on breaking with the status quo? See our category Trends & Innovations, join us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, RSS and get our weekly E-mail Newsletter for updates and free bonus content. About the Author
Miguel Leiva-Gomez covers enterprise technology solutions while playing an advisory role to struggling and aspiring businesses that wish to get their feet wet in difficult markets. His extensive experience with software and hardware has made him able to navigate the terrain of technology and bring it to a level that businesses can understand. The post 5 Tools Every Social Media Manager Should Know About appeared first on VIRALBLOG.COM.     |
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When Should You Start Monetizing Your Blog?
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:53 AM PDT
| When Should You Start Monetizing Your Blog? Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:29 AM PDT "At what point in the progression of developing and managing your blog is it best to try to monetize?" One DailyBlogTips reader asked this question in our current survey (closing tomorrow, so please get your responses in now!) It might well be a question that you have too, if you're hoping to make money from your blog. And for most bloggers, the answer is sooner than you think! In fact, it's a good idea to put as much thought as you can into monetization before you even launch your blog. If you want to make money, you need to see your blog as an integral part of a business, and you need a clear plan for how your business will make money. You also need to think about how this will fit in with your blog. It's a good idea to set reader's expectations from day one. Even if you know you're unlikely to make money in your first couple of months, make sure readers understand your blog isn't just a hobby. (If you train them to think everything will be free forever, you may struggle to get their money when you do monetize!) Depending on your monetization method, you might: - Choose your blog theme to allow for the easy placement of ads.
- Focus on writing review posts with affiliate links in.
- Add a "Hire me" page to your blog to promote your services.
- Have a section about your upcoming ebook in your sidebar.
… and so on. Of course, most bloggers accept they won't make money from day one. You do need to get your blog online, write posts, and create something truly valuable for readers. But that doesn't mean you need to wait to think about monetization until your blog's been going for months (or even years). If you haven't launched your blog yet, make sure you spend some time thinking about how it will generate revenue for you. Advertising and affiliate links are popular and easy to get started with, but you might find it's actually a lot faster to make money by offering a service or product. If your blog is still quite new, make sure you prepare readers for any monetization that's going to happen soon. For instance, you could throw in the occasional mention of the ebook you're working on. If your blog is well established, don't hold back on monetizing because you're afraid of readers' reactions. You may get a bit of a backlash, but most readers will be accepting and even encouraging – especially if you monetize in a way that's a win-win for you and for them. Next week, I'll be writing about ways to monetize a new blog, so stay tuned for that. If you've got any great tips or lessons learned, add them in the comments and I'll pick some of the best to use in next week's post. Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
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Vine Update Lets Users Edit Videos, Save Multiple Drafts (Jordan Crook/TechCrunch)
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:52 AM PDT
| Vine Update Lets Users Edit Videos, Save Multiple Drafts (Jordan Crook/TechCrunch) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:45 AM PDT | | Blackberry's Android BBM app drawing lots of suspicious 5-star ratings (Lee Hutchinson/Ars Technica) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:15 AM PDT | | App monitoring service New Relic unveils its vision for analytics, updates its mobile SDK and more (Ken Yeung/The Next Web) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:55 AM PDT | | TiVo Roamio DVRs can stream or download TV to iPhones, iPads (Ben Drawbaugh/Engadget) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:30 AM PDT | | Mac App Store bug allows iWork trial users to update the entire suite for free (Update: Aperture, too) (Mike Beasley/9to5Mac) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:55 AM PDT | | Flash Player now sandboxed under Safari on Mac OS X (Lucian Constantin/PC World) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:25 AM PDT   Lucian Constantin / PC World:
Flash Player now sandboxed under Safari on Mac OS X — Adobe has worked with Apple to sandbox Flash Player under Safari in Mac OS X, restricting the ability of attackers to exploit any vulnerabilities they might find in the browser plug-in. — “With this week's release of Safari in OS X Mavericks …
| | How Box.com allowed a complete stranger to delete all my files (Dan Tynan/ITworld) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:00 AM PDT | | Here's Carl Icahn's Letter To Tim Cook Saying He Wants Apple To Buyback $150 Billion In Stock Immediately (Linette Lopez/Business Insider) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:15 AM PDT | | Samsung fined $340,000 for faking online comments (Aaron Souppouris/The Verge) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:45 AM PDT  Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:
Samsung fined $340,000 for faking online comments — After being caught paying for false praise and negative comments about competitors, Samsung has been fined just over $340,000. The issue first arose internationally in April, when Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) announced it was opening an investigation into the allegations. | | Pinterest Raises $225M, Moves to Expand Globally (Mellisa Tolentino/SiliconANGLE) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:45 AM PDT  Mellisa Tolentino / SiliconANGLE:
Pinterest Raises $225M, Moves to Expand Globally — Social scrapbooking service, Pinterest, has once again raked in some massive funding. — According to AllThingsD, Pinterest has raised $225 million in a Series E funding round led by Fidelity Investments, with the participation … | | Netflix needs to invest in content to gain subscribers, but that hurts profit growth (Peter Lauria/BuzzFeed) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:05 AM PDT | | Microsoft erects a giant Surface tablet in the center of London (Tom Warren/The Verge) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 04:30 AM PDT | | The Boss Is Watching: Tracking Technology Shakes Up Workplace (Wall Street Journal) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 03:20 AM PDT | | YouTube MP3 Converter Loses Court Battle But The Music Plays On (Andy/TorrentFreak) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:50 AM PDT | | Proposed bipartisan bill increases risks and costs to patent trolls, has chance of passing (Joe Mullin/Ars Technica) Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:00 PM PDT | You are subscribed to email updates from Techmeme
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Avoid These Community Landmines
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:50 AM PDT
| Avoid These Community Landmines Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:30 PM PDT Over the year's we've compiled a good list of reasons why communities fail. These are landmines to avoid during the community development process: - A weak community concept. This is the ultimate showstopper. If your concept is weak, the community has no chance of success. The majority of failed communities had a concept that was either a) about them or b) does not aligns with the target audience's goals and aspirations (very often, there is no specific, narrow, target audience).
- Selecting or developing the wrong community platform. I've seen organizations spend millions on custom-built platforms which fall far short of their needs. Select an existing platform (or at least use Drupal/BuddyPress). Lithium, Jive, Yammer, Socious, HigherLogic, Ning, Vbulletin, Vanilla forums and many others offer great platforms at different price points and customization.
- Poorly designing the platform. If you select a good platform, but use a poor design, your community will struggle to succeed. For example, if you bury the latest activity below the fold (the scroll-down point) on the page. If you have large graphics taking up the homepage, or if you have too many features, the community is unlikely to succeed.
- Poor platform setup. Finally, for platforms, if there are other technical issues with the platform, this will lower your chances of success. This includes poor integration with existing systems, lack of core features such as notifications or a usable CMS.
- Failing to hire a full-time community manager. If you don't hire a full-time community manager, you probably won't succeed. You need someone that is fully committed to building relationships, creating content, initiating and responding to discussions. This is what it takes to get a community off the ground. If you can't hire someone, don't build a community.
- Hiring a bad community manager. If you hire someone that lacks passion, expertise, or connections within the topic, you're going to struggle. The ideal hire loves the community's topic already, has a lot of experience within that sector, and bring many pre-existing relationships with them. You need someone that is capable of reaching out to strangers and fostering strong relationships with them.
- Short-term goals / misplaced expectations. Many organizations undermine their own efforts by establishing poor expectations about what success looks like. They compare long-established communities to their own fledgling effort and decide they have failed. Communities look like failures before they're successful.
- Lack of direct outreach or relationship development. If the community manager doesn't directly interact and build relationships with the target audience, the community will struggle to reach critical mass. Many organizations try to build a community using a macro approach. They invite lots of people and see what sticks. This is linked to…
- … A big launch. If the organization has a big launch, invites thousands of members to join a community, fails to properly cultivate a small community before trying to build a big community, the community won't attract a core group of active members.
With a little foresight and awareness, all of these can be avoided. It might help to send this list to your boss before you begin your community efforts. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | You are subscribed to email updates from The Online Community Guide
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SiliconBeat
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:49 AM PDT
| Quoted: Icahn urges $150 billion Apple stock buyback Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:59 AM PDT “If you execute this buyback as proposed, we expect the share price to appreciate to $1,250.” – Activist investor Carl Icahn, in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, urging a $150 billion stock buyback to dramatically increase the price of Apple shares. Icahn’s fund has reportedly invested about $2.5 billion in Apple stock, only to see its price fall 25 percent over the past year. “The shares are undervalued,” Icahn wrote in the letter, which was posted on his new Shareholders Square Table website on Thursday morning. “It is our belief that a company's board has a responsibility to recognize opportunities to increase shareholder value.” Apple stock closed Wednesday at $524.96. Carl Icahn, seen in a 2007 file photo. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) | | Off topic: Moody states, iPad Air ad, spiders (eek, spiders!) and the ’89 quake Posted: 24 Oct 2013 06:24 AM PDT Which state matches your personality? Take this test and find out. (I got Washington DC, which is obviously wrong because it’s not even a state.) Would you buy an iPad Air from Walter White? Don’t freak out, but there’s a spider right next to you, right now. And finally, a week late (or right on time, if you go by the World Series schedule), an oral history of the 1989 quake, as told by those in the crowd — and on the field — at Candlestick Park. October 17, 1989 – Will Clark leaves Candlestick Park after the Loma Prieta earthquake delayed Game 3 of the World Series. Photo by Pat Greenhouse/Mercury News archives | | Shutl acquisition prepares eBay Now for European expansion Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:18 AM PDT EBay announced Tuesday it had acquired U.K. startup Shutl, a potential game-changer in the same-day delivery scene that paves the way for eBay to bring its delivery service to Europe. The Shutl acquisition will add speed and overseas markets to San Jose-based eBay’s year-old same-day delivery service. Shutl, which was founded in London in 2009 and made a name for itself with 15-minute deliveries, partners with local couriers to deliver 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rather than a standalone website or app, such as eBay Now or Google Shopping Express, Shutl appears as a widget on retailer websites that the shopper can select during online checkout. Shutl opened a San Francisco office in February and promised to start same-day delivery in the city this year. However, Shutl never moved beyond its Market Street storefront, because, as we discovered this week, it had been courted by eBay. Not only does the Shutl model offer the technology and courier networks for high-speed delivery speed, but it provides eBay Now with an obvious entry into the U.K. market. And eBay isn’t wasting anytime jumping to the other side of the pond. The company said Tuesday it planned to launch same-day delivery in London — which, along with Berlin and Amsterdam, has become one of Europe’s hottest tech scenes — by early next year. If things go according to plan, eBay will become the first US-based same-day delivery service with an international presence. Google’s same-day delivery, Shopping Express, made its public debut with service in 88 zip codes from San Francisco to San Jose last month. Walmart also offers same-day delivery in San Francisco, San Jose, Denver and some parts of the East Coast. Amazon has same-day delivery in 11 metropolitan areas, plus grocery delivery in Los Angeles and soon, San Francisco. None have announced plans to go overseas. Google and eBay have jumped into the same-day delivery scene to fend off online retail colossus Amazon and tap into the $2 trillion local commerce market by connecting local retailers with consumers through online and mobile platforms. They hope to be the go-to service for consumers’ everyday needs such as toiletries and groceries. “Approximately 75 percent of commerce happens within 15 miles of the consumer's home. E-commerce is quick and convenient, two things that delivery is not. Together with eBay, we believe that we can transform this market and fulfill our mission,” Shutl Founder and CEO Founder Tom Allason wrote in a blog post. With the acquisition, eBay has knocked out one competitor from the increasingly crowded delivery market. Shutl, with its 90-minutes or less delivery promise, was one of the few competitors that threatened eBay’s courier speed. EBay Now delivers on-demand in about an hour (get a behind-the-scenes peek during a Mercury News ride-along), while most competitors require that shoppers choose a three- to five-hour window, and in many cases consumers have to place their order by early morning. The acquisition may also signal expanded delivery hours for eBay. Shutl operates around-the-clock, while eBay Now is available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. EBay did not announce how much it paid for Shutl, and the company did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday. It said in a press release that it would be keeping the “talent and expertise” at Shutl, suggesting that employees would be folded into the ever-growing eBay complex. Also on Tuesday eBay began same-day delivery in Chicago, where Shutl also had operations. EBay said it would add service to another 21 markets, “including major metro areas in North America,” by the end of 2014, according to a news release. But that timeline might be ambitious. EBay promised to be up in running in Chicago and Dallas weeks ago; no word yet on when the Dallas service will make its debut. Shutl and eBay also overlapped in New York City, where eBay Now started using bicycle couriers to deliver last year. EBay Now launched in San Francisco in 2012 and expanded to San Jose in February of this year. Image shutl.com | | Tesla shares fall; Elon Musk says Germany is “top focus” Posted: 23 Oct 2013 10:36 AM PDT Tesla Motors saw its share price fall further Wednesday amid news that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may investigate the Model S fire and a dour research note from Merrill Lynch. On October 1, a Model S in Washington State caught on fire after the driver ran over a sharp metal object on the freeway which punctured the battery pack. The driver was not injured, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote extensively about the incident in a blog post. Now that the federal government is up and running again, it appears that NHTSA is looking at the incident more closely. Though an official investigation has not begun, the agency is gathering information to determine if agency action is warranted. Bank of America analyst John Lavallo II released a report Wednesday that called Tesla’s shares “vastly overvalued from a fundamental standpoint” amid the potential NHTSA investigation and concerns about Tesla’s ability to win over consumers in Europe. Tesla was down to $162 in mid-day trading. The Palo Alto-based company reports its third quarter earnings Nov. 5. Meanwhile, CEO Elon Musk is in Germany, where he said that “right now, Germany is our top focus in the world.” He also calls hydrogen fuel cell cars “bull—-.” Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk in Germany. Image via YouTube. | | Tracking tracking: NSA’s French collection; GPS and law enforcement; what the TSA knows Posted: 23 Oct 2013 10:28 AM PDT From the NSA to the TSA, we’ve got your tracking news right here: • First, more developments in the NSA spying saga. James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, is denying a report that the National Security Agency recorded more than 70 million phone-call records and text messages of French terrorism suspects and other citizens. The Le Monde report has angered the French, just the latest of U.S. allies to voice displeasure as revelations of the scope of NSA surveillance trickle out. As we’ve written, Clapper has admitted to lying to Congress about the NSA’s collection of data. The Verge points out that to explain himself, Clapper split hairs about the definition of “collection.” • Elsewhere: A federal appeals court ruled (PDF) Tuesday in Philadelphia that the government must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS unit to a suspect’s car. In U.S. vs. Katzin, FBI agents tracking robbery suspects attached a GPS device to one of the suspects’ cars without getting a warrant. The suspects who were arrested argued that the use of the GPS tracker without a warrant violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The ruling comes after the Supreme Court last year decided that attaching GPS to a car constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. However, the Supreme Court stopped short of saying that law enforcement needed to obtain a warrant in such cases. Tuesday’s ruling — the first on this matter since the Supreme Court decision — was “a victory for all Americans because it ensures that the police cannot use powerful tracking technology without court supervision and a good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of wrongdoing,” ACLU Staff Attorney Catherine Crump, who argued before the three-judge panel, said in an emailed statement. • On to the caboose of this tracking train: The Transportation Security Administration does quite a bit of tracking itself, with much of the “pre-screening” happening before passengers arrive at the airport, according to the New York Times. That in itself may not be surprising, but consumer and privacy advocates worry about an expanding effort that includes a database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. The Automated Targeting System contains plenty of personal data that is apparently shared with local, state and federal agencies, as well as businesses. “The average person doesn't understand how much intelligence-driven matching is going on and how this could be accessed for other purposes,” Khaliah Barnes, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the NYT. Photo: National Intelligence Director James Clapper, seen in this 2010 photo, is denying that the NSA recorded more than 70 million phone-call and text-message records of the French. (Associated Press archives) |
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Barneys accused teen of using fake debit card for $349 belt because he's a 'young black American male': lawsuit (NY Daily News)
Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:47 AM PDT
| Barneys accused teen of using fake debit card for $349 belt because he's a 'young black American male': lawsuit (NY Daily News) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:25 AM PDT | | Harry Reid Told Caucus That Pete Sessions Was Behind Obama Insult, Senators Say (Jennifer Bendery/The Huffington Post) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:25 AM PDT | | Lew calls on Congress to replace sequester (Erik Wasson/The Hill) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:20 AM PDT  Erik Wasson / The Hill:
Lew calls on Congress to replace sequester — Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday said House and Senate budget negotiators should replace the sequester with other spending cuts. — Lew said the sequester has been a drag on the economy, and that it should be replaced with longer-term measures to reduce spending.
| | Fox News Poll: 60 percent of voters think implementation of ObamaCare is 'a joke' (Fox News) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:20 AM PDT | | The U.S.-Saudi crackup reaches a dramatic tipping point (David Ignatius/PostPartisan) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:15 AM PDT | | NYT's Rick Berke to join POLITICO as executive editor (Dylan Byers/Politico) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:15 AM PDT Dylan Byers / Politico:
NYT's Rick Berke to join POLITICO as executive editor — Rick Berke, the veteran New York Times editor, has been named executive editor at POLITICO. — Berke, who joined the Times as a reporter in 1986, replaces Jim VandeHei, who was promoted earlier this month to President and CEO of POLITICO and Capital New York. | | Stayaway from Layaway - Layaway plans are immensely popular ... (Alex Tabarrok/Marginal Revolution) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:15 AM PDT  Alex Tabarrok / Marginal Revolution:
Stayaway from Layaway — Layaway plans are immensely popular, a fact I find deeply puzzling much like the popularity of Justin Bieber, Snooki, and homeopathy makes me question the rationality of my fellow human beings. — The typical layaway plan requires a deposit of 10-15% of the price of the good, say a new TV. | | Live Blog: Thursday's Hearing on HealthCare.gov Problems (Washington Wire) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:15 AM PDT | | Rep. Nolan: Firings Needed Over Health Law Woes (Cole Premo/CBS Minnesota) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:50 AM PDT  Cole Premo / CBS Minnesota:
Rep. Nolan: Firings Needed Over Health Law Woes — MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Frustrated Democrats are complaining about the problem-plagued rollout of the new health care program known as Obamacare. And one Minnesota Congressman, Democrat Rick Nolan, says President Obama needs to “man up, step up” and start firing people. | | Cop helps admitted shoplifter with groceries (WSVN-TV) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:45 AM PDT WSVN-TV:
Cop helps admitted shoplifter with groceries — SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, Fla. (WSVN) — A South Florida police officer went above and beyond the call of duty when she lent a helping hand to a struggling single mother she stopped for shoplifting. — Jessica Robles admitted she made a decision to shoplift groceries out of desperation. | | The Devil and Herman Cain (Nicholas G. Hahn III/RealClearReligion) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:45 AM PDT Nicholas G. Hahn III / RealClearReligion:
The Devil and Herman Cain — It's been two years since allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced, but Herman Cain is finally fighting back. — The former Republican presidential hopeful gave RealClearReligion an exclusive look at evidence he'll be using in a soon-to-be published column … | | Teacher Took Students to Strip Club: Police (nbcchicago.com) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:45 AM PDT  nbcchicago.com:
Teacher Took Students to Strip Club: Police — Travis Lechien, of Crown Point, Ind., faces up to one year in prison — A northwest Indiana teacher who allegedly took some students to a strip club and gave them alcoholic beverages at his home was terminated Tuesday night, district officials said. | | What makes HealthCare.gov so complicated? (Kyle Cheney/Reuters) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:40 AM PDT  Kyle Cheney / Reuters:
What makes HealthCare.gov so complicated? — Building a website in 2013 should be as easy as U-R-L, so what's the deal with HealthCare.gov? — The White House billed the Obamacare portal as the Kayak.com of health coverage — only instead of plane rides, it was selling health insurance. | | Florida Cop Buys $100 in Groceries for Woman Caught Shoplifting Food (Christina Ng/ABC News) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:40 AM PDT | | Gansler says breaking up teen party was not his job (Baltimore Sun) Posted: 24 Oct 2013 08:35 AM PDT | You are subscribed to email updates from memeorandum
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Earlier today, I highlighted some of the 
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.
